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Book Description Holmes and Watson track down a cold-blooded murderer in the thrilling second installment in Holmes's American adventures Sherlock Holmes rides again in this delightful mystery, based on another "newly discovered" manuscript. The year is 1896, and St. Paul's magnificent Winter Carnival is underway when Holmes and Watson are summoned by the city's most powerful man, railroad magnate James J. Hill. It seems a wealthy young man has disappeared on the eve of his wedding, and his fiancee has suspiciously discarded her wedding dress. After a grisly discovery in the carnival's ice palace leads to a flurry of clues, Holmes is on the case. His pursuit of the murderer takes him through the highest echelons of St. Paul society, over the frozen Mississippi River, and into cahoots with one Shadwell Rafferty, a gregarious saloonkeeper and part-time private investigator whose quick wit and fast thinking make him a formidable rival and an invaluable ally. A splendid sequel to Sherlock Holmes and the Red Demon, and written in the same deliciously authentic Sherlockian style, this latest adventure offers an exhilarating portrait of America on the verge of a new century as well as an intriguing mystery that is nothing short of truly chilling. "A rattling good mystery." --Kirkus Reviews "A solid, complex mystery distinguished by its vibrant portrayal of 19th-century St. Paul." --Publishers Weekly * Nominated for a Minnesota Book Award Reader Reviews 0 of 1 people found the following review helpful: Better Than the Red Demon Stuff, April 11, 2003 Reviewer: a_mathematician from Doha, Qatar I was again reluctant to read this sequel of the "Sherlock Holmes and the Red Demon," and the author disappointed me by writing a better novel (exactly as what happened when I read Meyer's "The West End Horror" after "The Seven-Per-Cent Solution"). But let me make this statement here: "The West End Horror" is by far much better than this "Sherlock Holmes and the Ice Palace Murders." Again the same rich guy from Minnesota invited Holmes to his home town to investigate some mysterious occurrences in the Ice Palace there ... As if there are no good detectives in America. As long as we are talking nonsense here, why did not he summon Ellery Queen, who is not less intelligent than Holmes, or maybe Colombo (hohohoho). The story this time had some mystery elements. It was, as a matter of fact, a whodunit. I figured the murderer out from half of the mystery, not because I was abnormally cleaver, but because of a fallacy the murderer inserted. The strange thing is that Millett did not allude to this fallacy, maybe he did not even know that it was there, and maybe I was lucky! A new character is introduced in this novel, and Irish clever guy by the name Shadwell Rafferty. I'm not so enthusiastic about him, because he does not enrich the world of Sherlock Holmes, and people are more used to one superior detective in the story. After all, this is a pastiche to praise Sherlock Holmes, and no one else. We reach to the conclusion of the story and the villain who killed every body was apprehended, and then nothing much, the story does not give me the impression I get from Doyle's writings. And I am not going to recommend the book, because I could have done well without reading it.
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