From Publishers Weekly
Like its predecessor from the same editors, Murder in Baker Street (2001), this solid anthology offers some choice Sherlockian plums. The ubiquitous Watson often takes center stage in these 10 tales: Colin Bruce's "Adventure of the Dying Doctor" pits the good doctor and Mycroft Holmes against an improbable insurance and stock fraud scheme entailing an errant comet, while Holmes watches benignly from the sidelines. Bill Crider's "Adventure of the Young British Soldier" features a grudge-driven villain intent on poisoning Watson's former orderly, a hero from their service together in the Afghan War. Sharyn McCrumb's eerie, supernatural "The Vale of the White Horse" appeals mostly to those interested in sorcery and demonic spirits, not usually the province of Holmes and Watson. Other stories bring the legendary detective into contact with Queen Victoria, whose would-be assassins are foiled in the nick of time, and film genius D.W. Griffith, who is threatened by German spies seeking to prevent him from helping the allied war effort. Sherlock's own stage portrayer, William Gillette, solves a jewel theft case in a style worthy of his celebrated mentor in the book's highlight, Daniel Stashower's "Adventure of the Agitated Actress." Holmes devotees will welcome the three essays that conclude the volume, but others may wish the editors had supplied an additional tale or two instead.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Book Description
Eccentric, coldly rational, brilliant, doughty, exacting, lazy—in full bohemian color the world’s most famous literary detective and his loyal companion Dr. John Watson investigate a series of previously unrecorded cases in this new collection of original tales. In the Scottish Highlands and Afghanistan, in the cases of a dying doctor and a mooning sentry, of a black basalt bird and white chalk horse, popular contemporary mystery writers—among them Sharyn McCrumb, Carolyn Wheat, Anne Perry and Malachi Saxon, Jon L. Breen, Bill Crider, Colin Bruce—craftily celebrate the mind, methods, and manners of the peerless Sherlock Holmes. In addition, with one foot in the Victorian age and the other in the computer age, Christopher Redmond illuminates the vast possibilities that new technology offers Sherlockians in "Sherlock Holmes on the Internet," while in "A Sherlockian Library" editors Jon Lellenberg and Daniel Stashower provide a new list of fifty essential titles on Arthur Conan Doyle and the Holmes canon. Finally, an essay by mystery novelist Philip A. Shreffler explores one of English literature’s most famous friendships in "Holmes and Watson, the Head and the Heart."
