There are pseudonyms, and there are pseudonyms. “Katherine Addison” is one of the latter.
“Addison” is a pen name for Sarah Monette, who’s achieved some notoriety in the field with the Melusine novels and her Kyle Murchison Booth stories, which have appeared in Clarkesworld, Uncanny, and other fine places. In 2014 she adopted the name Katherine Addison to publish The Goblin Emperor, which became one of the most successful books of the year, nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award, and winning the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Award. It was included in Unbound Worlds‘ list of The 100 Best Fantasy Novels of All Time.
What do you do when your pseudonym is more famous than you are? Write more books under the pseudonym, of course. And that’s exactly what Monette has done. Her next Addison novel, The Angel of the Crows, arrives from Tor in two weeks, and it looks like a doozy.
It’s a Sherlock Holmes pastishe in which Holmes is an outcast angel called Crow, Watson is suffers from a supernatural injury picked up in the war, and the city of London is crawling with vampires, werewolves and darker things. Kirkus calls it “A Sherlock Holmes–esque novel that truly breaks the mold,” and The Nerd Daily pronounces it “good for Holmes fans of any stripe.”
Addison… makes note of the inspiration she drew from Cumberbatch’s Sherlock in particular, so it’s no surprise that since Sherlock opened with “A Study in Pink,” The Angel of the Crows opens with what we might call a Study in Gold… Yes, this version of Victorian London is densely populated by angels, monsters, creatures, fey, and various and sundry supernatural alongside the usual assortment of villains, murderers, and thieves. But that’s no real impediment to the world’s greatest detective or his newly stalwart companion. Dr. Doyle, who is essentially-but-not-quite Dr. Watson, joins the enigmatic Crow, who is Sherlock but for one distinct difference: Crow is an angel.
The Angel of the Crows takes us through the most famous of Holmes’s cases, including “A Study in Scarlet,” “The Sign of the Four,” and “The Hound of the Baskervilles,” as well as taking on Jack the Ripper.
The Angel of the Crows will be published by Tor Books on June 23, 2020. It is 448 pages, priced at $27.99 in hardcover and $14.99 for the digital edition. Read the first two chapters here.
See all our coverage of the best upcoming SF and fantasy here.
Last week, I mentioned that I wrote over 40,000 words about Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe enduring Stay at Home together. And that the series was inspired by how I felt on the day that Ohio postponed its Primary Voting Day. That scene is below. So, if you’re a Nero Wolfe fan, read on. If not – well, you’re here for my weekly column, so read on anyway!
The elevator made its usual groans of protest as it carried Wolfe’s one-seventh of a ton down from the rooftop plant rooms, where he spent two hours in the morning, and two more in the afternoon, with Theodore Horstmann, tending to 10,000 orchids. It was my personal opinion that the elevator needed more than a two hour recovery period period after having to move him from the ground floor to the roof level. Gravity was not its friend.
No man ever followed routine like Nero Wolfe. Mycroft Holmes looked like an undisciplined lout compared to my employer. Every morning at 11 AM, he came down from the plant rooms, entered the office, greeted me with “Good morning, Archie,” crossed to his desk, and followed a routine there. So imagine my surprise, sitting at my own desk, when I heard him turn and take two steps down the hall, towards the front door, or the kitchen.
I looked up as silence settled in the hall. He had stopped. “Archie, stop this foolishness. Why is the car not ready? Get out here.”
While I am by no means a sigher in Wolfe’s class, working for him has made me a pretty good one. I let one out, got to my feet, and went out of the office. It was Election Day: except, it wasn’t. There were only a few things guaranteed to get Nero Wolfe to venture out of his office and undertake a journey into the wild world outside. And Sunday Mass wasn’t one of them. But he had never failed to sally forth to vote since I had come to work for him. He viewed voting as his side of a solemn contract with the government.
But this April 28th, 2020, was different. The coronavirus pandemic had started parts of America into shutdown mode the prior month. Those who thought that pre-emptive action was a good thing touted the governor of my old home state, Ohio, as the kind of leader we needed in Washington. Others, who probably would have said we should stay out of World War II, thought that it was too soon. Regardless of which side you were on, by early April, it was clear that America was in trouble. Rumors were that Ft. Knox was switching its gold reserves over to toilet paper, because it was harder to find.
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