The Fifth Heart

Readers love what they love. We all have our specific tastes when it comes to the type of story in which we like to indulge. Similar themes arise in Dan Simmons’ historical and suspenseful mystery tome, The Fifth Heart, which celebrated its tenth publication anniversary this year.

This long narrative depicts the stalwart detective Sherlock Holmes and lauded novelist Henry James embarking to the 1893 United States to solve the mysterious death of a young woman, a close friend to Henry. Both Holmes and James have secrets interlaced with love and other issues, as do their close acquaintances and enemies, but their shaky relationship proves compelling as Holmes dives deeper into the mystery, which connects to anarchists and the machinations of the supposedly deceased villain Professor James Nolan Moriarty.

Simmons whisks the reader through the slums and suburbs of Washington, D.C., and Chicago, with sojourns to Boston, New York, and Mark Twain’s Hartford home neighboring Harriet Beecher Stowe’s. We meet the high society of the nation’s capital, adventurers like Teddy Roosevelt, officials in the highest offices of Grover Cleveland’s administration, and familiar faces from the Holmes canon.

Holmes is his fascinating self, a step ahead of his literary companion as well as the reader. He disguises himself as the lowly laborer, the Scandinavian world explorer, the highbrow aristocrat. He infiltrates the criminal underworld and boudoirs of magnates. Meanwhile, James is the humorously antithetic nonparticipant, aggravated by Holmes’ theories and tactics in solving the murder of his friend.

A notable absence is the indefatigable fidelity of Watson, which diminishes the novel’s allure. Yet, there are transformations and revelations we see in our two protagonists that propel the reader forward. Simmons also knows how to raise the stakes, and just when he takes us to the highest rung, he adds a few more. The scenes with Holmes’ subterranean gravesite and gabled rooftop investigations are particularly intriguing. The Chicago World’s Fair backdrops a sequence of events where the fate of the nation precariously sits on the edge of the new concept of the “high-rise.”

Simmons unveils the mysteries and secrets within secrets of the characters and plots with the deftness of an inveterate storyteller. Though the absence of Watson and the author’s arguments against early labor unions detract from the work, it is his characters’ journeys and the art of their secrets that hook the reader. If it is for the love of mystery and love for a different time and place—at the dawning of the modern age—for which you read, you’ll do well to grab a pipe and wingback chair and uncover the secrets of The Fifth Heart.