No matter how devious the mystery, and violent the detail, no alert reader of "The HouseofSilk" will be able to spend more than a half-dozen pages in its company without wanting to laugh.
On the other hand, it is this resolute over-egging of the pudding that gives "The HouseofSilk" its charm: a kind of constant creative exuberance, born of a suspicion that unless every single element of the Holmes legend can be brought to the feast, the story is bound to fall flat.