The Fifth Heart

by Dan Simmons

Paperback Edition, 664 pages

Originally published 2015

“Henry James hated epilogues and refused to use them in his fiction. He said that life granted us no “epilogues”, so why should art or literature?”

In a similar vein to the brilliant Drood Dan Simmons now focuses on a different historical duo. On a trip to France Henry James makes the decision to end his life only to find intervention in the unlikeliest of people; the fictional detective genius made real Sherlock Holmes. James gets roped into traveling with Holmes to America to investigate the apparent suicide of Clover Adams seven years previous. Her brother doesn’t believe the suicide verdict and hires Holmes to delve a little deeper.

The crux of the story is the suicide investigation but an intriguing subplot, and what interested me the most before picking up The Fifth Heart, was Sherlock Holmes realisation that he might not be real and is instead a fictional character. This was an interesting idea and i was fascinated to see how it would play out. Sadly it’s completely underutilised to the point of barely being featured. Holmes does ask a few people their opinion on his reality crisis but he never becomes fully committed to exploring his theory. If i’ve missed the point of the Sherlock Holmes existential crisis then the author should have been clearer because as the reader it seemed completely pointless. There is a scene that did make me think of the Deadpool movie, which drew an audible sigh of disappointment.

Without the ‘Am i real?’ subplot fully explored The Fifth Heart is just an average Sherlock Holmes novel with the inclusion of other famous historical characters. This isn’t the Dan Simmons that impressed me so much with The Terror, Ilium and Hyperion but a more watered down version. Give this one a miss and read Drood, which stars Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins. It’s way better.

My score – 3/5