What do You think about The Patient's Eyes (2004)?
David Pirie, the author, claims that Arthur Conan Doyle based the charactor of Sherlock Holmes on a real person, Dr. Joseph Bell. This book features Doyle and Bell as the main characters. When the impoverished young Arthur Doyle opens his first medical practice, he is puzzled by the symptoms presented by Heather Grace, a sweet young woman whose parents have died tragically several years before. Heather has a strange eye complaint, but is also upset by visions of a phantom bicyclist, who vanishes as soon as he is followed. But this enigma is soon overshadowed as Doyle finds himself embroiled in more threatening events-including the murder of a rich Spanish businessman-that call for the advice of the eminent Dr. Bell. But Dr. Bell dismisses the murder of Senor Garcia as a rather unimportant diversion from the incident which Bell considers to have real criminal implications: the matter of the solitary cyclist-and the patient's eyes... I liked the book, even though it had a lot of tedius detail, dialogue and behaviors typical of the setting's time period. The plot was a bit off the wall and the solution was surprising and not quite satisfying.
—Mary
A fairly enjoyable read, but not one that I feel will stick with me. I'm trying to put my finger on what exactly I didn't love about the book.I think the main problem for me was pacing. This book is the first in a series, and it seems that the story is told in a strange order. Doyle and Bell meet, Doyle becomes his clerk, and then suddenly several years have gone by. Doyle is constantly referring to a terrible case that occurred somewhere in that intervening time, but he never gives us more than the basic details and tantalising hints. I feel like that time jump cheats the reader out of seeing the friendship develop between Doyle and Bell. They go from teacher and clerk to friends, but we never see how that happened. It made the friendship a bit hard to buy into for me. We are just expected to take their word for it that their relationship has progressed to friendship without much evidence.Bell was an interesting character and was the brightest spot in the book for me. He is not Sherlock Holmes, but one can see how he acted as the inspiration for the character. The sections at the beginning when Doyle is trying to figure out exactly what Bell does in his office were excellent.Doyle was less interesting to me. I had a difficult time connecting with him. At times he felt a bit too simple and naive, but maybe that's what Pirie was going for. The beginning of the book with older-Doyle describing his case files was fascinating to me.I believe that the second book in the series deals with that mysterious case in Doyle and Bell's past. I think I'll pick up the second book to see if shedding some light on that incident helps my enjoyment of the story.The mysteries were quite good. Pirie takes well-known Holmes cases and puts a spin on them. The main mystery here is based on the Solitary Cyclist. It makes you think you know what's going to happen, but Pirie puts a great twist on the ending that I really enjoyed.Overall, it was an enjoyable read with some flashes of brilliance, but I felt disconnected from the story most of the time. I still think I'll continue with the series, just to see how it all plays out.
—Stephanie
Combines elements from different Holmes stories and puts them in new settings, together with new material, so that even a reader thoroughly familiar with the original stories is hard pressed to predict the solution to each mystery. If anything, their fresh setting heightens the frisson of pleasurable recognition over each transplanted element.With the device of presenting stories about Bell and Doyle rather than Holmes and Watson, Pirie is free to jettison the parts of the duo's personalities that recent adaptations emphasize (e.g. Holmes' Asperger's syndrome) and develop characters that are at once familiar and different. It may be scandalous to say so, but Pirie is more successful than the original stories at working Watson/Doyle’s profession of doctor into the plot.The novel skips over an incident that happened soon after Doyle’s and Bell’s first meeting, but keeps hinting at it (Bell standing on a beach). I kept expecting the novel to eventually fill in this incident, but oddly it never did, perhaps saving it for a sequel.
—Lee
