Holmes Is Missing Review: Does the Sequel Live Up to Book One?

Read time: 4 minutes

🎧 Listened in audio 📢 Narrated by Christine Lakin ⏱ Duration: 9 hours
Genre: Mystery 🏷️ Publisher: Hachette Audio, Little, Brown & Company

Book Blurb:

Holmes, Margaret and Poe run the private detective agency that solves the crimes no one else can, until Holmes announces he wants out and disappears without a trace. In New York City, Margaret and Poe are called in to investigate the abduction of six newborns from a private hospital, and they have to take on the case without their missing partner. When word comes of more missing babies, this time in London, Margaret follows the trail across the Atlantic. But cracking the crime of the century means finding Holmes first. Before they can save the babies, they have to save their friend.

Let’s talk about the book:

Let me start with this disclaimer: if any of you are reading this book first before going into the first book in the series, STOP. There’s just so much context here that is carried forward from book 1 that most of the things would be difficult to follow. The interpersonal relationships, the situations the characters are in, the backstory, and even professions, all of them (I assume) carry forward from book 1, and I couldn’t follow any of it. Read this series in order.

Now, coming to the portions I did understand, but still have questions. Why is the name of the book “Holmes Is Missing”? Holmes is very much there throughout the book. He keeps saying he is going to back out, but still remains very much present throughout. I am confused on why the title is what it is.

The plot itself is bleak and dark. Trigger warning: this book talks a lot about kidnapped babies, literal infants taken from hospitals. If you can’t handle it, keep FAAR away from this book.

The story plotline was just going, going, going, and I didn’t quite like the way the pacing was handled. It was too fast at times, and terribly slow at other times. The characters Margaret, Holmes, Poe, and Victoria were not too connectable. I ended the book feeling… nothing. While I was going through the story, I thought maybe I’d go back and read book one. But by the time I finished it, I wanted to be done with this series one way or the other.

I did finish it, but I am not going back to this one. It’s not my type of mystery.

Would I recommend it?

Honestly, it’s a mixed bag for me. The premise had potential (a detective going missing while his own agency scrambles to solve the case of a lifetime should have hit hard), but the pacing swings between rushed and dragging made it tough to stay invested, and none of the characters, Margaret, Holmes, Poe, or Victoria, ever felt like people I connected with. If you’ve read book one and loved it, this might land better for you since so much depends on that foundation. For me, it was a decent enough read to finish, but not one I’m eager to revisit or continue.

⭐⭐⭐

If You Liked the Mood of This One, Try These

1. Holmes, Marple & Poe by James Patterson & Brian Sitts Book one in this very series, and honestly the one you need to read first to have any of Holmes Is Missing make sense. Meet the trio before their partner disappears on them.
Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy

2. All the Missing Girls by Megan Miranda If the “missing person driving the plot” hook is what pulled you into this one, this book takes that idea and tells it backward, day by day, which makes for a genuinely different kind of tension.
Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy

3. Local Woman Missing by Mary Kubica Another one that deals with a child gone missing and the dark family secrets that unravel around the search. Heavier subject matter, similar to the trigger warning territory Holmes Is Missing sits in.
Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy

4. The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides If what you wanted from Holmes Is Missing was a bigger emotional payoff at the reveal, this psychological thriller delivers exactly that kind of ending that makes you want to immediately reread the first chapter.
Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy

5. The Housemaid by Freida McFadden For when you want the fast, propulsive pacing this book was going for, without the pacing dropping off in the middle. Twisty, quick, and hard to put down.
Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy

Missed Your Chance to Meet the Detectives First?

If you’re anything like me and need context before diving into a series, drop a comment below: have you read Holmes, Marple & Poe yet, or are you tempted to jump straight into book two anyway? And if you’ve read this one, did the title make sense to you by the end?

Book Links:

Want to purchase this or any of your favorite books while supporting a local bookstore? Consider purchasing using the sites below. These sites work with independent local bookstore owners to fulfill your book orders. #SupportLocal

Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org
Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy
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