The Shafias’ ancient, twisted code

By Michael Friscolanti - Thursday, December 8, 2011 at 8:10 AM - 0 Comments

Photograph by Vincenzo D'Alto; Crown Exhibit

In his final hours as a free man—unaware that wiretaps were recording his every word—Mohammad Shafia stuck to a familiar theme.

“We lost our honour.”

“I don’t accept this dishonour.”

“Even if they hoist me up onto the gallows, nothing is more dear to me than my honour.”

“Isn’t that right, my son?”

During her stint on the witness stand, Shahrzad Mojab didn’t discuss those specific conversations. In fact, she didn’t once mention the shackled trio sitting in the courtroom prisoners’ box: Shafia, his wife, Tooba Yahya, and their eldest son, Hamed. But in a case that is all about culture and tradition and the fragility of a family’s reputation, Mojab’s expert testimony could prove most damning for the accused. Few have spent more time studying the one word that Shafia couldn’t stop saying—the one word that allegedly justified a mass execution.

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The defence calls: Mohammad Shafia

By Michael Friscolanti - Thursday, December 8, 2011 at 8:02 AM - 0 Comments

Colin Perkel/Canadian Press

Michael Friscolanti is covering the honour killing trial for Maclean’s, filing regular reports from the Kingston, Ont. courtroom to Macleans.ca and weekly dispatches for the magazine. The reports will continue for the duration of the trial, which is expected to run into December.

Mohammad Shafia was arrested three weeks after the car was found. By then, police in Kingston, Ont., were convinced that he, his wife, and their eldest son were responsible for the four dead bodies floating inside. “You are a wise man,” said Shahin Mehdizadeh, the Farsi-speaking cop sent to interrogate him. “I will prove to you that you had planned this.”

Piece by piece, the inspector laid out his evidence, each clue pointing to the same damning conclusion: a quadruple “honour kill” staged to look like a freak car accident. The passengers in that doomed Nissan Sentra—three of Shafia’s daughters, and his first wife in the polygamous household—didn’t make a late-night wrong turn into the Rideau Canal, Mehdizadeh told him. They were pushed in, rammed from behind by the family’s other car, a Lexus SUV. Continue…

Bestsellers – Week of December 5th, 2011

By Brian Bethune - Thursday, December 8, 2011 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

Fiction

Non-fiction

LAST WEEK (WEEKS ON LIST)

Mergers: Sarkozying up to the chancellor

By Nicholas Köhler - Thursday, December 8, 2011 at 6:00 AM - 0 Comments

Franck Prevel/Getty Images

Things were, as they say, touch and go there for a while between Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy—way too much “touch” for the German chancellor’s taste (aides say Sarkozy loves greeting her with his country’s customary cuddle and double-kiss, largely because he knows she detests it), not near enough “go” for the French president (“France is acting, while Germany is only thinking about it,” he exploded a couple of years ago, as Europe slid into the economic abyss without, as Sarkozy saw it, appropriate intervention from Germany).

But since the eurozone crisis took hold some months ago—all that bad Greek debt threatening to contaminate weaker European economies, like Spain and Italy—Merkel and Sarkozy have entered into an uneasy but powerful rapprochement. What else could they do? Germany and, to a lesser extent, France, are the economic superpowers who must either prop Europe up or watch it collapse. And so Sarkozy and Merkel now embody France and Germany’s long-time roles—the “dual engine of European integration”: they cozy up, meet endlessly, often into the wee hours, kibbitz on the horn, and even tag-team haranguing phone calls to recalcitrant colleagues like Silvio Berlusconi (whose unkind words about Merkel are much too salty to reproduce here). As Sarkozy put it: “It is vital that, in the face of this unprecedented crisis, France and Germany speak with one voice and form a common policy.” They are so united a front—the Maginot Line erased, a terrible booboo—that, as with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie (and Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck before them), observers truncate the pair into a single, sentient being: Merkozy. At times their joint efforts elicit the rhetoric of erotica—for example, when Joachim Fels, chief of global economics at Morgan Stanley, called their suggestion that Greece might leave the eurozone “taboo,” as though monetary policy and forbidden love are closely aligned concepts.

CLICK HERE TO READ ABOUT MACLEANS’ OTHER NEWSMAKERS OF 2011

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Mergers: And they all lived happily ever after

By Cathy Gulli - Thursday, December 8, 2011 at 6:00 AM - 0 Comments

Jackson Lee / Splash News

Shania Twain and Frédéric Thiébaud

It’s the stuff of classic country songs: a two-timing man cheats on his wife with her best friend. The wife finds out, confronts them both, and finds comfort in the arms of the equally heartbroken best friend’s husband. That’s how Shania Twain and Frédéric Thiébaud fell in love and came to be married on a beach in Puerto Rico last New Year’s Day. Now that’s a new beginning.

Lincoln Alexander and Marni Beal

Yes, he’s nearly 90, and she’s in her 60s. But Lincoln Alexander, the first black lieutenant-governor of Ontario, and Marni Beal, a sales rep at the Hamilton Spectator, are as in love as two high-school kids. Still, Alexander was nervous to propose: “An old codger like me marrying a girl 30 years his junior?” He asked her anyway, and she accepted. “I became his driver, caregiver, administrator … bodyguard with first aid/CPR training and life partner,” says Beal. “And he became mine.”

CLICK HERE TO READ ABOUT MACLEANS’ OTHER NEWSMAKERS OF 2011

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About that border deal between Canada and the U.S.

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Thursday, December 8, 2011 at 12:02 AM - 0 Comments

Amid the pageantry of a joint appearance at the White House alongside President Obama, the prime minister on Wednesday touted the new border security agreement in grandiose terms: the “most significant steps forward in Canada-U.S. cooperation since the North American Free Trade Agreement.” The agreement, though, is less a single leap than a series of many incremental gains, say the technocrats who labored in the shadows to put the multifaceted deal together. One Canadian official likened border negotiations to the cliché about football—it’s a “game of inches.” And this agreement covers a lot of inches—including myriad new ways in which the two nations will share data about travelers and cargo, the promise of a single on-line portal for importers and exporters who today have to schlep paper documents to a variety of government agencies, and pilot projects that will allow certain kinds of pre-inspected cargo to cross the border without stopping. It also includes a border wait-time measurement system and an inventory of border fees to help citizens and policy makers understand how well things are working—or not.

There is no doubt that Canadian officials have learned their lesson from years of trilateral “Three Amigos” summitry that resulted in lengthy bureaucratic to-do lists and more controversy than results. This time, they cut out Mexico, instead running a bilateral process focused on a limited number concrete high-impact results that could be implemented in a short period of time. Rather than endlessly negotiating over grand policy changes, they agreed to more modest pilot projects in complicated areas such as land border-preclearance in order to “build confidence” and demonstrate tangible results on the ground. Continue…

Bestsellers – Week of December 5th, 2011

By Brian Bethune - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 at 6:03 PM - 0 Comments

Fiction

Non-fiction

LAST WEEK (WEEKS ON LIST)

Back to work

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 at 6:02 PM - 0 Comments

The Defence Minister is apparently considering legal action.

Mr. MacKay’s office says statements like that show the minister was telling the truth when he said he was taking advantage of an opportunity to participate in an exercise. “Minister MacKay has had his character and personal reputation attacked,” spokesman Jay Paxton said. “Minister MacKay is looking into legal options against those who have attacked his integrity.”

However much today’s claim bolsters Mr. MacKay’s case, the government side didn’t bother to reference it when the opposition pressed the matter this afternoon. Thrice, Julian Fantino, covering for the absent minister, stood and explained that “the minister was called back from personal vacation to go to work,” without any mention of search-and-rescue training.

John Geddes looked at what apparently inspired to Mr. MacKay to cut short his vacation yesterday and the NDP’s Matthew Kellway pursued various questions on that front today.

As for his decision to hop in the basket to get to London for a press conference on a new military contract, I have a few questions. When exactly was this contract signed, when was the minister told and when did he decide to travel to London?

In response, Mr. Fantino said only what the script, as noted above, allowed.

And then this happened

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 at 5:01 PM - 0 Comments

After QP today, the Bloc’s Andre Bellavance rose to ask that Conservative MP Jim Hillyer apologize to the House for his gestures several weeks ago during a vote on the long-gun registry. Mr. Hillyer duly stood and clarified his gestures had nothing to do with the Montreal Massacre, but that he was “sorry, not just that this has been misinterpreted but misrepresented to be at all associated with the tragic events at École Polytechnique 22 years ago.”

The NDP’s Francoise Boivin and Bob Rae rose to add their remarks, both referencing the Speaker’s ruling yesterday. Then Gordon O’Connor, the government whip, stood and apologized. And then Mr. Hillyer stood again.

With everyone in the House seemingly dissatisfied with the situation, the Speaker declared the matter closed.

Here’s a transcript. Continue…

Among the ink-stained wretches at the Air Canada Centre

By Dave Bidini - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 at 4:54 PM - 0 Comments

A light, twinkling snow fell against the towered streets as I made my way to the rink last night, my first visit in two years. That this blog had such pull with the Leafs’ press office made me remember the means by which I’d crashed other media rows in past years: fudging credibility to sit in old Memorial Auditorium to watch the Sabres; an anthem-singing guest appearance at the Gardens on the eve of my wedding; and a plea to a novice university pop writer from Expos’ brass in the late 80s to cover a team that no one outside of Quebec wanted to cover. On this visit, however, it appeared as if I’d found legitimacy, passing easily through the glass doors of the rink to the tableclothed media desk in the guts of the Platinum Club, securing my card—my name on it and everything—from a nice woman in whom I confessed procedural unfamiliarity. “That’s okay,” she said, adding, “The elevator is just around the corner,” guiding me with the voice of a nursemaid and a flight attendant’s wave.

I found my ride, walked past P.J. Stock and secured my station—number 81—sitting on high across from the Sittler banner at the north end. Then two anthems, a Coke, a Leafite whispering team scratches into our ear from the press row speaker, and a stick save by James Reimer off an early Devils power play. Excited is too small a word to describe how I felt. So is old, for legitimacy rarely finds the young.

In the first period, the Devils scored two quick power play goals. Continue…

Why not searching on Google is stupid

By Peter Nowak - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 at 4:37 PM - 0 Comments

Alain Bachellier/Flickr

Last week, I had the honour of speaking at the Online Educa conference in Berlin, an annual meeting of education professionals that this year attracted 2,000 visitors from more than 100 countries. Conference organizers have put up a video of my speech, which was about how food technology is driving economic growth in the developing world and, as a consequence, the collective demand for education there.

I also had the pleasure of participating in a debate on technological developments and their effects on privacy and learning. My teammate Peter Bowers, a teacher in the U.K., and I had the task of arguing against the following statement:

This house expresses its concern about the effect developments in technology are increasingly having on personal liberty and believes this will have serious consequences for learning in the future.

On Thursday, before the debate, I wrote about how I thought the statement was indefensible; that technology enabled liberty and therefore learning like no other force on the planet. While true, the debate was ultimately quite lively and resulted in an almost even split among the audience. Alas, our side lost by a narrow margin.

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‘Disregard for the rule of law’

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 at 3:50 PM - 0 Comments

The Federal Court has ruled that the government’s attempt to reform the Canadian Wheat Board violates the legislation that governs the board.

In a ruling today, Federal Court Judge Douglas Campbell said the government violated the Canadian Wheat Board Act by not holding a vote among farmers before introducing legislation eliminating the Wheat Board’s monopoly position. Judge Campbell admonished the government for not consulting with farmers and “simply pushing ahead” with plans to essentially abolish the board. “Had a meaningful consultative process been engaged to find a solution which meets the concerns of the majority, the present legal action might not have been necessary,” the judge ruled. He added that the government had to be “held accountable for [its] disregard for the rule of law.”

During QP this afternoon, the NDP’s Pat Martin suggested that perhaps the Goldring precedent—removing oneself from caucus on the allegation that one broke the law—should apply here.

Former Illinois governor gets 14-year prison sentence

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 at 3:31 PM - 0 Comments

Former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich was sentenced to 14 years in prison and fined US$20,000 on 17 counts of corruption. The two-term Democrat was arrested in 2008, while still in office, for trying to extort campaign donations from other politicians, soliciting bribes and attempting to sell the U.S. senate seat once held by Barack Obama, among other charges. Although Blagojevich acknowledges his mistake, he claims he never set out to break the law, and that he is “unbelievably sorry.”

BBC

The Chicago Tribune

Aboriginal population could top two million by 2031

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 at 3:06 PM - 0 Comments

Canada’s aboriginal population could number more than two million people by 2031, up from about 1.3 million in 2006, according to Statistics Canada projections published on Wednesday. With an annual rate of growth between 1.1 per cent and 2.2 per cent, the aboriginal population will continue expanding faster than the non-aboriginal population, the report finds. By 2031, there will be between 1.7 and 2.2 million aboriginals in Canada. That will translate to roughly 5 per cent of the Canadian population. The report comes amidst the ongoing housing crisis in the northern Ontario community of Attawapiskat, where much of the aboriginal population is living in dilapidated shacks and unheated tents.

CBC News

Private detective arrested in phone hacking case

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 at 3:01 PM - 0 Comments

Glen Mulcaire, the private detective at the heart of Britain’s phone hacking scandal, has been arrested, according to reports in the English press. Mulcaire’s extensive notes have been key to a parliamentary inquiry into the dubious practice. As a contractor with the News of the World, the detective is believed to have intercepted voice mails from as many as several thousand prominent Britons.

The New York Times

California backs EU label on Canada’s ‘dirty’ oil

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 at 2:56 PM - 0 Comments

California announced on Wednesday it would support the European Unions’s plan to label fuel retrieved from Canada’s oil sands reserves as “dirty fuel” at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa, Reuters reports. On Oct. 4, the European Commission approved a proposal to label oil sands-derived fuel as highly harmful to the environment in a ranking system that allows fuel suppliers to identify the most carbon-intensive options. California has already introduced a system that goes a step further, allowing consumers to choose which fuel they use based on these labels. Alberta’s reserves have been a constant target of international criticism due to their potential effect on global warming. Oil derived from oil sands is said to emit more CO2 than coal or regular crude oil. Canada, in partnership with the oil industry, has lobbied against Europe’s ranking system, which it says is unfair and “not based on science.”

Reuters

Tories scrambling to extricate MacKay from chopper controversy

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 at 2:42 PM - 0 Comments

The Department of National Defence is searching for stories of politicians getting free airlifts and feeding them to journalists in an attempt to extricate Minister Peter Mackay from controversy over a hard-to-justify ride he got on a Canadian Forces’ helicopter, the Globe and Mail reports. One of the stories forwarded by officials in the Department of Defence has interim Liberal leader Bob Rae using a provincial police helicopter to fly to and from his cottage during the Victoria Day weekend in 1992, when he was premier of Ontario. Mackay initially said his own ride was part of a search-and-rescue exercise. Then emails from military officers showed he had requested the flight three days in advance to get himself out of a fishing camp in Gander River, Nfld., where he was on vacation, due to a last-minute need to “unexpectedly” head to London, Ont. The helicopter eventually hoisted the Minister out of the camp and took him to an airport from which he flew London, avoiding a two-hour car and boat ride. Prime Minister Stephen Harper said the use of the helicopter was “appropriate.” The opposition, however, isn’t laying down its weapons. NDP MP Christine Moore accused Mackay of “just completely lying.”

The Globe and Mail

Gay rights are human rights, Clinton tells UN

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 at 1:58 PM - 0 Comments

In a speech at the United Nations Human Rights Council this week, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signaled a vocal new place for the U.S.–in the worldwide battle for gay rights. “Some have suggested that gay rights and human rights are separate and distinct,” Clinton said in Geneva, according to the New York Times, “but in fact they are one and the same.” The speech coincided with a new memorandum on the same topic by President Barack Obama. Some believe the initiative could be an attempt by the administration to shore up a key portion of its base ahead of next year’s presidential election.

The New York Times

Gorbachev calls for new Russian elections amid anti-Putin protests

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 at 1:53 PM - 0 Comments

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has called for the results of Sunday’s parliamentary elections in Russia to be thrown out and for another vote to be held. Speaking with the Interfax news agency, Gorbachev said it’s becoming increasingly clear that the public doesn’t trust the election results. “I believe that ignoring public opinion discredits the authorities and destabilizes the situation,” he said. His comments come after two days of protests in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Thousands of people have taken to the streets in both cities, where they’ve been met by tens of thousands of riot police and troops from Russia’s interior ministry, the British newspaper the Guardian reported on Wednesday. According to the official tally, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s United Russia Party earned less than 50 per cent of the votes in Sunday’s election, indicating a significant drop in support. Even still, international observers and opposition parties contend the vote was rigged, pointing to reports of fraudulent voter lists and ballot-box stuffing. Gorbachev also addressed these allegations, urging government officials to admit that “there have been numerous falsifications.”

The Guardian 

Harry Morgan and the “Real” cast

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 at 1:18 PM - 0 Comments

Harry Morgan has died at the age of 96, one of the most recognizable and hard-working character actors in TV (with a busy movie career as well). Here’s his interview at the Archive of American Television.

Morgan was probably best remembered for two TV series that he joined in mid-run. With Dragnet, he became Joe Friday’s sidekick for the late ’60s colour revival, and with M*A*S*H, he was selected to be the new commanding officer of the unit. (Today he probably wouldn’t be eligible to become a regular: he was chosen because of his great performance in a guest role as one of the many crazy officers Hawkeye and Trapper encountered, but on most shows today that would disqualify him from coming back in a different part – certainly from coming back the very next year.) He made such a strong impression on both shows that people who encountered his episodes often think of him first, before the guys who were there before him. This is especially impressive on M*A*S*H because the early episodes went into syndication a few years after he started on the show, and he had to replace a very popular character who was taken off the show in the most spectacular and memorable way possible. Yet hardly anyone thinks of him as an interloper on the show, even the people who strongly prefer the first three seasons – he’s exempted from criticism, because he’s so much fun to see. Of course it helps that Larry Gelbart and Gene Reynolds gave him a stronger character to play than their other substitute (B.J.), but a lot of the strength of that character came from the personality of the actor who played him.

I sometimes feel like our perception of a television show, especially one that changes cast members over the years, can be different depending on when we start watching. (Not so much if we all start watching from the beginning, but most people don’t watch a TV series that way, even one with a very complicated mythology.) Depending on when you started watching M*A*S*H, or which season’s episodes you encountered first in syndication, the “real” cast of the show might be the original, or it might be the replacement cast. I started watching in the Potter/B.J. years, so finding that Hawkeye used to have a different sidekick and boss took some adjusting. The early episodes seemed fine, there was just an adjustment to be made, less comfort to be found. The same adjustment viewers had to make when the new characters showed up in 1975, except in reverse, as it were. I suppose that applies to a lot of shows – Buffy the Vampire Slayer is always an example I use, since one’s perception of the show, or what it does best, often depends on when you started watching it (or at least when you thought it got good). But it probably helps that some actors are so comfortable to watch that you feel you’ve been watching them in those parts forever; you can watch Morgan on Dragnet and M*A*S*H and feel like you’ve been watching him all your life.

Even when he’s miscast, like as a George Burns/Desi Arnaz type of put-upon sitcom husband in Pete & Gladys, he’s still fun to watch.

Rick Perry dislikes everybody

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 at 12:57 PM - 0 Comments

This ad, released by the Rick Perry campaign yesterday, hits so many offensive buttons (promising to end “Obama’s war on religion,” lamenting the fact that gays can serve openly in the military) that you almost wonder if its offensiveness is deliberate, designed to get much more free publicity for the ad than he’d get with something more measured. Well, mission accomplished, I guess; everyone’s going to be talking about it. But it really is an awful combination of persecution complex with a fervent dislike of everyone else in the world. I don’t even know that it will be that effective: an effective nasty ad is one that has the illusion of niceness. This ad doesn’t. It’s just nasty.

Perry has been one of the surprises of the U.S. primary cycle, since he really should have had everything going for him. The argument for his entry into the race was persuasive: he was an across-the-board conservative, he ran a state that saw some growth in jobs (not to say he “created” the jobs himself, just that it helps to preside over positive job growth at a time when jobs are the big issue) and unlike Romney and Gingrich, he’s currently holding down an important elected office, rather than running on the strength of a job he held years ago. But he’s just proved that people who don’t enter the race early, who have to be dragged into it or who choose to enter because there aren’t that many good candidates, tend to have serious weaknesses, or they campaign as if their heart isn’t really in it. Or, as in this case, they release unpleasant TV ads.

Good news, bad news: Nov. 24-30, 2011

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 at 12:40 PM - 0 Comments

Good news

'Nineteen Ten Remembered' sold for $2 million—a Canadian art record. (CP)

Measurable improvement

Welcome news from the UN anti-AIDS program, as new statistics suggest we’ve turned a corner in the war against the once-deadly disease. HIV-related deaths in 2010 were down 21 per cent from their 2005 levels, UNAIDS reports, while the number of people surviving with the virus has reached a record 34 million. The improvements are due mostly to better access to treatment, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, where infection levels are highest. But maintaining the momentum won’t be easy: donor funding for AIDS prevention fell last year as First World economies stagnated. Now is not the time to let up.

Mistakes were made

Egypt’s military rulers have issued an unprecedented apology for the recent killings of demonstrators in Tahrir Square, and are pledging to bring those responsible to justice. In Bahrain, King Hamad has bowed to pressure, and is promising human rights reforms after revelations that protesters in his country were tortured last winter. And in Yemen, President Saleh has signed an agreement to hand power to his vice-president—albeit one that leaves him immune from prosecution in the deaths of opponents. Positive developments. When will Syrians read the writing on the wall?

Continue…

User guide

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 at 12:30 PM - 0 Comments

On the argument that we would be well-served by drafting something similar to New Zealand’s cabinet manual, James Bowden notes that Lester B. Pearson’s government drafted something similar in 1968.

Most crucially, those calling for the creation of a “Canadian cabinet manual” have overlooked the existence of the Manual of Official Procedure of the Government of Canada, which the Privy Council Office produced under Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson in 1968. At the time of its production, no other Commonwealth country had ever produced a handbook on constitutional conventions of the Manual’s breadth and depth – a staggering 1,500 pages over two volumes. Sadly, as the Public Policy Forum pointed out in one of its reports, the Manual  has since been “shrouded in secrecy and kept from all but a few senior officials.” It was likely kept in cabinet confidence until at least 1988 and never generated much interest, until the wake of our latest cycle of minority parliaments.

Better still, James has copies of the manual and its appendices (note: those are large pdf files).

Sherlock Holmes reopens the case

By Brian Bethune - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 at 12:20 PM - 0 Comments

Daniel Smith/Warner Bros. Entertainment

Since his first appearance in print in 1887, Sherlock Holmes has never fallen out of pop culture’s good books. But sometimes he’s hotter than usual, as he was in the 1970s, with Billy Wilder’s film The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes and Nicholas Meyer’s novel The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, and as he is now. And just as the Holmes of a generation ago reflected that era’s concept of the iconic detective—a hint of homoeroticism between him and his faithful John Watson in Wilder’s film, drug addiction and Freudian analysis (by Freud himself) in Meyer’s novel—so too does today’s Sherlock suit our times.

In 2009’s Sherlock Holmes, and surely in its sequel, A Game of Shadows (which opens in theatres next month), Robert Downey Jr.’s incarnation of the sleuth of Baker Street defeats his opponents as much with mixed martial arts as with his wits. In the brilliant British TV series Sherlock, Benedict Cumberbatch’s title character has been literally updated: Holmes, more overtly Aspergian than ever, and Watson (Martin Freeman), as loyal and as damaged by war in Afghanistan as the original, roam 21st-century London. All that was missing from Holmes’s contemporary resurgence was more of the real thing, more Holmes à la Arthur Conan Doyle—an absence Anthony Horowitz has now filled with his sublimely Holmesian novel, The House of Silk.

It’s the first post-Conan Doyle novel to receive the imprimatur of the author’s estate, and for devotees of the canon—as the 56 Holmes short stories and four novels are known—the estate couldn’t have chosen better. Horowitz is a prolific writer for TV (Foyle’s War, Agatha Christie adaptations) and novelist (35 mostly young adult titles) and an impassioned Sherlockian since age 16. He’s crafted a superb, note-perfect Holmes story that races along like a runaway hansom cab, but Horowitz’s smartest work may have come before he wrote a word, in the cunning way he structured The House of Silk.

Continue…