The Italian Secretary, by Caleb Carr

This Sherlock Holmes detective novel, in the voice of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, had everything going for it in Mr Carr, who's previous book (also set historically) delighted me.

At first, when things went wrong for me, I thought: maybe I should imagine it as a film.

But the writing was like cobblestones: amusing for a few steps, but after walking a few chapters on them, just annoying.

Bottom line: I got to page 120 out of 316 before pulling the plug.