Steve Emecz's Blog: Musings of a Sherlockian Publisher - Posts Tagged "roger-johnson"

"In The Many Watsons Kieran McMullen takes a look at fifty-four actors, male and female, who have played Dr Watson or a Watson character on screen. It’s good to see the Watsons getting their share of attention, though the text needs proofreading, and I could wish that the actors had been dealt with in alphabetical or chronological order. Should there be a second edition, I hope Mr McMullen will include some at least of the radio Watsons – Leigh Lovell, Alfred Shirley, Norman Shelley, Michael Williams, Andrew Sachs, Larry Albert… Royalties from this light, lively collection of essays will go to the Undershaw Preservation Trust."

Roger Johnson

The Many Watsons is available from all good bookshops including in the USA Amazon and Barnes and Noble , in the UK Amazon and Waterstones . For elsewhere Book Depository who offer free delivery worldwide. In ebook format there is Kindle , iPad , Nook and Kobo . 

"Holmes Sweet Holmes by Dan Andriacco.  I loved No Police Like Holmes, Dan Andriacco’s first novel about Sebastian McCabe and Jeff Cody, and I’m delighted to recommend  the second, which has a curiously topical touch. Holmes Sweet Holmes concerns the murder of Peter Gerard, writer, director and star of 221B Bourbon Street, which reimagines Sherlock Holmes as a jazz-playing American in 1920s New Orleans. The film is a hit, but some Sherlockian fundamentalists have sent hate mail. Did an angry Sherlockian break in to St Benignus College and kill Gerard? And how could Gerard be murdered twice? The characters are appealing, the plot is cunning, and the writing is literate and witty. This is classy stuff!"

Roger Johnson

Holmes Sweet Holmes is available from all good bookstores worldwide including in the USA Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Classic Specialities, in the UK Amazon and Waterstones, and for everywhere else Book Depository who offer free worldwide delivery - and in all electronic formats including Amazon Kindle, Nook,  iPad and Kobo.

"56 Sherlock Holmes Stories in 56 Days by Charlotte Anne Walters. After submitting her novel Barefoot on Baker Street, Charlotte Anne Walters set herself the task of re-reading all the short stories in the Canon, one a day, and writing about each of them on the same day for her blog at http://barefootonbakerstreet.wordpress.com/. For the book publication she has added her observations on the four long stories. Her remarks are often amusing, occasionally thought-provoking (why so little protest about the uncanonical back-story for Mary Morstan in Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes? I suspect it’s because so much else in the film is defiantly uncanonical), and always personal and entertaining. She seems unaware that the text in the Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes is American, and differs in several instances from what was (and ought still to be) the standard British text. And I can assure her that marriage between first cousins was and is perfectly acceptable in British law – and church law, if it comes to that. Royalties from the book go to the Undershaw Preservation Trust. "

Roger Johnson

56 Sherlock Holmes Stories in 56 Days is available from all good bookstores including in the USA Barnes and Noble, Amazon, in the UK Amazon and Waterstones. For elsewhere Book Depository offer free delivery worldwide.  In ebook format there is Amazon Kindle, Nook and iPad format.

"Steampunk Holmes: Legacy of the Nautilus by P C Martin. I suppose the combination of Sherlock Holmes and Steampunk was inevitable. Guy Ritchie’s first Holmes film had elements of Victorian super science, but the true hybrid flowering is in Steampunk Holmes. Full details are at www.steampunkholmes.com, but for the less elaborately electronically enabled, such as me, the first adventure is now available in its most accessible form: i.e. a book. Steampunk Holmes: Legacy of the Nautilus places Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson in a world where electricity has yet to be developed, the internal combustion engine is irrelevant, and steam power has been developed to the highest degree. Holmes’s favoured transport is a powerful motorcycle. Watson sports a mechanical right arm. And Mycroft Holmes is Sherlock’s beautiful, devastatingly intelligent sister. The story, as you’d expect, involves Captain Nemo and his famous submarine, cleverly working them into a reimagining of ‘The Bruce-Partington Plans’. With character portraits by Daniel Cortes and a superb cover by John Coulthart, it’s very stylish – though for the best of Mr Cortes’s illustrations you’ll need to check the website. "

Steampunk Holmes: Legacy of The Nautilus  is available from all good bookstores including in the USA Barnes and Noble, Amazon and in the UK Amazon and Waterstones. For elsewhere Book Depository offer free delivery worldwide. Also available on Kindle.

„There is the possibility of a Fenian attack also in The Amateur Executioner: Enoch Hale Meets Sherlock Holmes, the first collaboration between Dan Andriacco and Kieran McMullen (MX; £7.99). Hale, a native Bostonian, is a reporter for London’s Central News Syndicate – where, in 1920, Horace Harker is still a familiar figure, though far from revered. It becomes evident that the apparent suicide of a Music Hall artiste was only the first of a series of murders by hanging. Hale’s determination to find the link between the victims is variously helped and hindered by a cast of remarkable characters that includes his friend TS Eliot, WB Yeats, Bernard Shaw, Ezra Pound, Alfred Hitchcock and Winston Churchill – not to mention Chief Inspector Wiggins and Sherlock Holmes. In contrast to most tales involving Holmes, The Amateur Executioner takes us into an ambiguous and murky world where right and wrong aren’t always distinguishable. I look forward to reading more about Enoch Hale.”

The Amateur Executioner  is available from all good bookstores including in the USAAmazon, Barnes and Noble, in the UK Amazon, Waterstones,  and for everywhere else Book Depository who offer free worldwide delivery. In ebook format there is Kindle,  iPad and Kobo.

“The second novel about Holmes and Irene Adler by Amy Thomas, The Detective, the Woman and the Winking Tree (MX; £9.99), uses the same narrative technique as the first, The Detective and the Woman : Miss Adler’s chapters are told in the first person, and Holmes’s in the third person. It works well, not least because the woman emerges as a strong, intelligent and entirely credible character, whom Holmes rightly comes to admire. The subject of this new joint investigation is the apparently impossible disappearance of a Mr James Phillimore – who, as we remember from Dr Watson’s guarded remark, ‘stepping back into his own house to get his umbrella, was never more seen in this world’. Amy Thomas is a Baker Street Babe – and that is a recommendation.”

The Detective the Woman and the Winking Tree is available from all good book stores including in the USA Amazon, Barnes and Noble, in the UK Amazon, Waterstones,  and for everywhere else Book Depository who offer free worldwide delivery. In ebook format there is Kindle,  iPad, Kobo and Nook.

“The Shoso-in Bulletin, published in English between 1991 and 2004, was the most truly international Holmesian periodical of all. It was founded by our distinguished Japanese member Hirayama Yuichi, whose own contributions alone justified the Bulletin’s existence.East Wind Coming: A Sherlockian Study Book by Yuichi Hirayama and John Hall (MX,www.mxpublishing.co.uk) gathers twenty-eight of Dr Hirayama’s essays, from The Shoso-in Bulletin, The Baker Street Journal, The Ritual and elsewhere, along with four written jointly with a leading English Holmesian, John Hall. Yuichi has discovered, in a Japanese detection manual of 1940, the simple means by which Holmes determined the direction Herr Heidegger’s bicycle travelled on the moor. In Grand Duke Paul of Russia, he has identified the most credible candidate for the King of Bohemia. As a dentist, he explains, entirely convincingly (alas!), that Sherlock Holmes was toothless. The collaborations examine Holmes’s sporting prowess, Watson’s qualifications, and the travesty of Holmes in the Arsène Lupin canon, but most stimulating, I think, are the authors’ discussions of the first nine cases in The Adventures. Altogether it’s a grand collection!”

East Wind Coming is available from all good bookstores worldwide including in the USA Amazon and Barnes and Noble, in the UK Amazon and Waterstones . Fans outside the US and UK can get free delivery from Book Depository. In ebook format it is in Amazon Kindle, Kobo, Nook and Apple iBooks(iPad/iPhone).

"The Amateur Executioner: Enoch Hale Meets Sherlock Holmes by Dan Andriacco and Kieran McMullen. MX Publishing. 2013. 180 pp. Enoch Hale, a native Bostonian, is a reporter for London’s Central News Syndicate (where, in 1920, Horace Harker is still a familiar figure, though far from revered) and a friend of Chief Inspector Wiggins of Scotland Yard. As it becomes evident that the apparent suicide of a Music Hall artiste was only the first of a series of murders by hanging, Hale’s determination to find the link between the victims is variously helped and hindered by a cast of remarkable characters that includes his friend T S Eliot, W B Yeats, Bernard Shaw, Ezra Pound, Alfred Hitchcock and Winston Churchill. The presence of each person is rarely gratuitous and is never forced. Given Hale’s personality and background, and the edgy mixture of crime and politics in which he becomes involved, their participation is almost to be expected. So, of course, is that of Sherlock Holmes. In contrast to most tales involving Holmes, The Amateur Executionertakes us into an ambiguous and murky world where right and wrong aren’t always distinguishable. I look forward to reading more about Enoch Hale."

The Amateur Executioner  is available from all good bookstores including in the USA Amazon, Barnes and Noble, in the UK Amazon, Waterstones,  and for everywhere else Book Depository who offer free worldwide delivery. In ebook format there is Kindle, Nook, iPad and Kobo.

"The essays collected in Watson Is Not an Idiot: An Opinionated Tour of the Sherlock Holmes Canon by Eddy Webb (MX Publishing; www.mxpublishing.co.uk) were originally posted on Mr Webb’s blog at http://eddyfate.com. They are necessarily opinionated, as they must be; they’re also intelligent, incisive and well-written. The nearest equivalent to Watson Is Not an Idiot is probably Martin Dakin’s Sherlock Holmes Commentary, but Mr Webb takes the line throughout that the chronicles of Sherlock Holmes are fiction, written by Arthur Conan Doyle. His book can help us appreciate just what is good in the stories, what isn’t, and why they still appeal when so much contemporary work is forgotten. It would make an ideal present for the Holmesian neophyte or for the long-time scholar.”

Watson Is Not An Idiot is available from all good bookstores including  Amazon USA, Amazon UK, Waterstones UK, and for free shipping worldwide Book Depository . In ebook format it is in Amazon Kindle,  Kobo, Nook and Apple iBooks (iPad/iPhone).

"Dan Andriacco’s new novel brings Sebastian McCabe, Jeff Cody and Lynda Teal from Erin, Ohio to London. McCabe has been challenged to a debate, Holmes vs Dupin; Jeff and Lynda are on their honeymoon, but they’re inevitably drawn in when a distinguished Holmesian collector disappears. His name is James Phillimore, and he vanishes in just the way that his fictional namesake did, stepping back into his house to retrieve his umbrella. Perhaps for the first time, Sebastian McCabe finds himself up against a truly deadly enemy, one who sees himself as a real-life Moriarty. The book actually gives us two separate mysteries on the same theme. Within the present-day narrative is a fine Sherlock Holmes pastiche, “The Magic Umbrella”, which may just be relevant to the disappearance of the real James Phillimore. And there’s a bonus: Jeff and Lynda spent the earlier part of their honeymoon in Rome, where Lynda solved the curious case of the Vatican Cameos. Dr Andriacco’s writing, as always, is witty and assured. Jeff, Lynda and Sebastian are people you’d truly like to meet."

The Disappearance of Mr James Phillimore is available from all good bookstores including Amazon USA, Amazon UK, Waterstones UK, and for free shipping worldwide Book Depository . In ebook format it is in Amazon Kindle, Kobo, Nook and Apple iBooks(iPad/iPhone).