Cry for Thunder is an oddball teaming of The Night Stalker's Karl Kolchak and Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. They never meet of course, since they are separated by a century of time, but the story they work on separately does link up.
This is a Kolchak story though for the most part with the Sherlock Holmes bits, properly narrated by his worthy companion Dr. Watson through a document Kolchak uncovers occupy about a third of the total narrative. The story begins in the American wild west where two cowboys encounter a mysterious shadow and then there is the enigmatic photograph of said cowboys with a giant bird which seems to be a very dangerous item to know about or handle.
Sadly this isn't much of a mystery and Kolchak's handling of it seem fairly chaotic and unfocused as he plumbs the depths of Native American mysticism and pursues a properly cretinous villain. I did though have a hard time keeping his motivations in focus as he ambles about the story doing Kolchakian things. Likewise Holmes seems muted somehow in his sections of the tale.
This is a prose adaptation of a comic book story written by Moonstone's publisher Joe Gentile, a hale fellow well met. I have not read the comics, nor do I much care to, but I did eagerly look forward to this prose handling of two of my favorite characters and I sadly have to say that the result is a decided ho-hum. I was disappointed.
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