Charged with a theft from an ATM that he did not commit, Jaisukh Sharma is freed due to the intervention of private detective Shergill Hans who deduces what really happened. When Shergill finds himself short of money, he moves in with Jaisukh. From then on, they become embroiled in solving several cases for the police as well as continuing to cross paths with the fearsome Robin Hood Gang. Until the time comes to put the RHG away, once and for all.

This is a small set of short stories, heavily influenced by Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. Character-wise, they are what you would expect, the genius detective with his sidekick having adventures, but they are transplanted Holmes and Watson with a few tweaks. But that doesn’t leave too much time to see them as anything of than caricatures of the originals. The writing is fine, no obvious formatting or spelling mistakes and it’s an easy book to read through as everything comes in small bite-sized chunks letting you read each story quickly.

The stories themselves are ok for the most part with a little bit of setup followed by some deductive reasoning to show explain what happened and then it’s all tied up, but they area little one paced and borrow very heavily from the original Sherlock stories to the point where it’s difficult to tell if it is a retelling or a parody. However, it is certainly redeemed by the last story where the truth comes out, and each of the previous stories are necessary to get there. What is different, is Shergill’s dealings with the RHG and how that impacts all the stories as they occur, changing what are simple stories into something with a far more interesting meaning.

Overall, the majority of the stories are ok, but it comes with a good twist and reasoning. It’s certainly worth a read, if you like the Holmes stories and are looking for a quirky twist on the originals.