Publisher's Weekly
British author Roberts follows the mediocre Sherlock Holmes and the Crosby Murder (2002) with an equally unmemorable effort, which draws on two of Dr. Watson's legendary untold tales. Holmes's failure to bring the vicious thieves of the valuable Vatican cameos to justice rears its head seven years later, when the prime suspect, Cardinal Tosca, a prominent member of the Catholic Church, returns to England. Meanwhile, Holmes's probe into a protection racket victimizing small businesses leads him to a Mafia-like secret society known as the Rule of Nine. Predictably, the two cases quickly become one, and a real-life Italian-American undercover detective joins the campaign, posing as an organ grinder to infiltrate the gang. The search for the stolen cameos is sidetracked by a murder investigation in which the master detective typically disagrees with the theories of Scotland Yard. The solution to the murder turns on a set of coincidences that strain credulity. Despite his convincing portrayals of Holmes and Watson, the author, who has done some excellent pastiches in the past, fails at marrying a traditional tale of deduction with the adversaries he's chosen for Holmes-a ruthless organized crime syndicate. Conan Doyle did much better with a similar premise in "The Adventure of the Red Circle." (Jan.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews
One more fix for those living in a state of Sherlockian symbiosis. Yet again a manuscript purporting to be the work of John H. Watson, M.D., falls into the hands of an editor who (1) can't vouch for its authenticity and (2) can't be stopped from publishing. With that caveat, the game's afoot for the zillionth time. London business establishments have been reporting a string of incidents that's dampened their 1895: mice let loose in a ladies' hairdressing salon, dogs encouraged to raid a butchershop, specialized break-ins targeting specialized places. Holmes and only Holmes-certainly not poor Watson or perennially lamebrained Lestrade-discerns a reprehensible pattern. It's the protection racket, of course, shipped across the pond and adapted to the foul purposes of the fiendish Rule of Nine gang, a Mafia variant with guess how many non-negotiable rules of thuggish behavior. Donning his deerstalker, Holmes discovers that this Yankee hanky-panky is connected to the unsolved case of the Pope's purloined cameos, an adventure that still sticks in the great detective's craw. Will it remain lodged there? Or will steely ratiocination have its belated day? Roberts (Sherlock Holmes and the Crosby Murder, 2002, etc.) swells the canon but fails to brighten it. For Baker Street die-hards, maybe.