Steve Emecz's Blog: Musings of a Sherlockian Publisher, page 6

Coming out in September - Sherlock Holmes and The Sword of Osman

It’s 1906. Far from England, the Ottoman Empire ruled by the despotic Sultan Abd-ul-Hamid 11 is on the verge of imploding. Rival Great Powers, especially Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany, sit watching like crows on a fence, ready to rush in to carve up the vast territories, menacing England’s vital overland routes to her Indian possessions. At his medical practice in London’s Marylebone Watson receives a mystifying telegram. It’s from Holmes. ‘Dear Watson, if you can throw physic to the dogs for an hour or two I would appreciate meeting at the stone cross at Charing Cross railway station tomorrow noon. I have an assignation with a bird lover at the Stork & Ostrich House in the Regents Park which has excited my curiosity. Yrs. S.H.’

Watson finds the invitation puzzling. Why should such a mundane meeting at a Bird House excite the curiosity of Europe’s most famous investigating detective or anyone else? For old times’ sake Watson joins his old comrade-in-arms. Within days Holmes and Watson find themselves aboard HMS Dreadnought en route to Stamboul, a city of fabled opulence, high espionage and low intrigue. Their mission: at all costs stop a plot which could bring about the immediate collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

Pre publication copies available from The Strand Magazine

Review of Sherlock Holmes - Tangled Skeins by David Marcum

“I thoroughly enjoyed all five of the stories in the ‘Tangled Skeins’. All very different but all have the same A.C.Doyle magic woven into them by the author. David Marcum captures the real feel of London and it’s populace during the period when Holmes was practicing and also beyond, when in retirement. Vivid scenes are set and he brings them to life with just sufficient detail to allow your imagination to fill in the rest. Bravo! I shall definitely be reading more of Mr Marcum’s work!”

Reviewed by Dick Gillman

Sherlock Holmes - Tangled Skeins is available from all good bookstores including The Strand Magazine,  Amazon USA, Amazon UK, Waterstones UK and for free shipping worldwide Book Depository . In ebook format it is in Kindle, Kobo and Apple iBooks(iPad/iPhone).

Review of The Papers of Sherlock Holmes Volume One and Two

“This hardback edition, published in 2014, combines two earlier collections. Volume I consists of traditional pastiches, ranging from the faintly comic to the genuinely tragic, and even including a case-within-a-case. All the stories are cleverly plotted and very much in Conan Doyle’s own style. The latter tales are more ambitious, in that they begin during the period of Holmes’ supposed “retirement,” when (at his brother Mycroft’s urging) he worked to counter German espionage prior to World War I, as recounted by Doyle in “His Last Bow.“ That poignant case was hardly Holmes’ last bow for David Marcum. With remarkable originality, he sets his next two stories in the 1920s, when Holmes and Watson find themselves visiting Marcum’s own ancestors in east Tennessee. Fine as these stories are in their own right, even more valuable for Sherlockian scholars is the skillful way that Marcum (in this volume and its recent successor, Tangled Skeins) fleshes out the bare chronology of Baring-Gould’s Sherlock of Holmes of Baker Street with biographical detail, offering a fascinatingly complete picture of the lives of Holmes and Watson, from before their first meeting until the doctor’s death in 1929. Even readers who wrongheadedly regard the Canon as detective fiction will find The Papers of Sherlock Holmes well worth investigating.”

Reviewed by Thomas A. Turley, author of "Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Tainted Canister”

The Papers of Sherlock Holmes Volume 1 and 2 Hardback Edition is available from all good bookstores including   Amazon USA, Barnes and Noble USA, Amazon UK,Waterstones UK, and for free shipping worldwide Book Depository .

Review of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson: The Day They Met

“… Wendy C. Fries writes with such wonderful humour and joy, not one story falls short. Holmes and Watson are portrayed vividly and with such skill you do not need the date markers or hansoms or the London Eye to tell whether you’re in Victorian London or in modern London…”

Reviewed by The Melbourne Review of Books

Read the full review here.

Sherlock Holmes and John Watson: The Day They Met is available from all good bookstores including   Amazon USA, Barnes and Noble USA, Amazon UK, Waterstones UK, and for free shipping worldwide Book Depository . In ebook format it is in Kindle, Kobo,Nook and Apple iBooks (iPad/iPhone).

Is Benedict Cumberbatch The Definitive Sherlock Holmes?

One of my prize possessions as a Holmes fan is a limited edition print which has most of the main actors that have played Sherlock Holmes (below). It includes of course the current main protagonists Benedict Cumberbatch and Robert Downey Junior (sorry Jonny Lee Miller, but whilst Elementary is an increasingly interesting series, Sherlock Holmes it ain't) and some previous legends like Jeremy Brett and Basil Rathbone.

You can't engage with a Holmes social network for more than about two minutes without coming across the question of which actor is the 'best' Sherlock Holmes. It's often quite a fiery debate and one that polarises the fan base. I'd like to focus on a slightly more specific question that follows on from my last article 'What's all the fuss with Benedict Cumberbatch?' - namely, does Cumberbatch represent the definitive portrayal of Sherlock Holmes?

Read more on LinkedIn

What's All The Fuss About Benedict Cumberbatch?

You'd have to have been living on a desert island for the last five years to have missed the meteoric rise of Benedict Cumberbatch. Steve Emecz asks on his blog 'What's All The Fuss About Benedict Cumberbatch?' LinkedIn Blog

Kirkus review of When the Song of the Angels is Stilled - A Before Watson Novel

“Before Sherlock Holmes meets John Watson, the young detective solves crimes with a bright lady friend in this delectable ‘before Watson’ novel.

In Croyle’s (The Caretaker, 2009) new series, Holmes is a loner college student at Oxford in 1874 when he’s bitten by a dog visiting the campus with its owner, Priscilla ‘Poppy’ Stamford…”

Read the full review here.

Pre publication copies are available from The Strand Magazine.

Review of The Conan Doyle Notes: The Secret of Jack the Ripper

“Diane Gilbert Madsen has given readers another winner in the DD McGill Literati Mystery Series. The Conan Doyle Notes: The Secret of Jack the Ripper is a marvelous tale of DD McGill who is an investigator for insurance fraud and her bookseller friend, Tom Joyce, who is asked to assess the value of the literary estate of a wealthy Chicago estate owner. McGill immediately alienates herself from those associated with the estate and Tom experiences a nasty fall down a flight of stairs. Even though the police believe the fall to be an accident, McGill is convinced it was an attempted murder. In a move to gather evidence illegally, McGill is discovered and arrested. Her antics don’t end there as Tom convinces her to become even more involved in the estate owner’s diary, which has now mysteriously disappeared.
McGill’s personality is so lovable that any reader will immediately forgive her illegal activities in the name of justice. And Tom’s persistence in pursuing clues that might lead to the identity of Jack the Ripper is nothing short of pathological but in a charming way! The secret to the mystery just might lie in long-lost notes taken by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Neither McGill nor Tom will rest until things are set straight. The Conan Doyle Notes: The Secret of Jack the Ripper is a great mystery read by itself but Madsen’s characterizations make the reader bound and determined to make this a one-sitting reading experience. This one has it all: a stalker, attempted murder, murder and a fire that threatens to undermine the two sleuths’ abilities to solve their own mystery.”

Reviewed by Karen Pirnot for Readers’ Favorite

The Conan Doyle Notes: The Secret of Jack the Ripper paperback edition 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, Nookand Apple iBooks (iPad/iPhone).

The Conan Doyle Notes: The Secret of Jack the Ripper hardback edition is available from all good bookstores including  Amazon USA, Amazon UK, Waterstones UK, and for free shipping worldwide Book Depository.

Released today

The Best and Wisest Man - Being A Reprint of the Reminiscences of Mrs. Mary Watson, née Morstan

1888: Dr. John H. Watson, Army Corps surgeon turned colleague of the celebrated consulting detective Sherlock Holmes, decides not to assist in future cases as he is engaged to Mary Morstan. 1926: Mary Forrester discovers her mother’s diary, covering the years 1889 to 1893 — her marriage to Watson. What occurred in those years? How was the quintessential male friendship of Holmes and Watson seen through a woman’s eyes? How stable was a marriage where Watson was liable to abandon Mary at Holmes’s summons? Who, ultimately, was Mary Morstan — a figure seldom referred to in Arthur Conan Doyle’s sixty Holmes stories? This blend of fact and fiction sheds light on a virtually unexplored dimension of the Great Detective’s exploits. It is a perspective Sherlock Holmes —who elevated “true, cold reason … above all things” - would probably not appreciate. But for all its warmth and irrationality, there is just as much truth in the heart.

The Best and Wisest Man is available from all good bookstores including   Amazon USA, Amazon UK, Waterstones UK, and for free shipping worldwide Book Depository .

    

Review of Sherlock Holmes and the Horror of Frankenstein

"There are certain characters who Sherlock Holmes has run across a number of times: Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Arsene Lupin etc. However, there is one literary character with whom the great detective has seldom matched wits - Frankenstein and his Monster. This in retrospect, this makes some sense. Mary Shelly’s novel is not set in metropolitan London, and it set some seventy years before Holmes took up his magnifying glass and deerstalker. However, that doesn’t mean that some authors haven’t tried to combine this famed characters into one story. Luke Benjamin Kuhns’ Sherlock Holmes and the Horror of Frankenstein does just that. How does it fare? Let’s find out…

It is 1885 and a spat of grave robberies have startled London. Sherlock Holmes, in the midst of a bout of great ennui, is disinterested in case. That is until he’s approached by Inspector Bradstreet of Scotland Yard. It seems that at the scene of the latest grave robbery, a night watchman has been murdered. His curiosity sufficiently piqued, Holmes and Watson begin their investigation. The murdered man’s face betrays signs of tremendous horror, and upon further investigation Holmes discovers a giant footprint nearby. By the detective’s estimation, the man’s murderer was at least eight feet tall. Who is the murderer? What do they want with the bodies, and is there a connection with the infamous Dr. Frankenstein?

Despite the fact that this graphic novel shares a title with one of Hammer horror’s lesser-known works, it owes more to the style of the Universal horror films of the ‘30’s and ‘40’s. There’s a genuine sense of mystery, adventure and horror mixed into the plot. Plot tropes from Universal’s films are mixed in from the mad scientist and his lab. I won’t spoil the story, but one character who appeared in one of Universal’s most famed Frankenstein films turns in a wonderful appearance here. Despite its horror story trappings, author Luke Kuhns manages to weave an excellent Sherlockian plot and his presentation of the characters through dialogue is excellent. I am not very familiar with Kuhns’ writing, but this makes me interested to look into more.

As I mentioned above, this is a graphic novel. Illustrator Marcie Klinger did an excellent job in capturing the Gothic atmosphere of the story. The artwork is dark and evocative and very nicely detailed. However, I was rather surprised to find Sherlock Holmes dressed in a standard twentieth-century trench coat though!

Without giving away too much plot, Sherlock Holmes and the Horror of Frankenstein gets around the logistical problems of combining these two famous stories by acting as a sequel to Mary Shelly’s original. For fans of Frankenstein, some of the characters some of the original novel pop up in flashback and fill in some of the gaps. In this way, the story is able to work on its own without trying to limit itself to the confines of a previously-published work. I applaud the original story telling, especially since I had no idea what to expect going into the graphic novel.

In all, Sherlock Holmes and the Horror of Frankenstein is a very surprising work. Author Luke Kuhns is obviously well-versed in both his Sherlockian and horror film knowledge. With an interesting, original plot, and moody (though at times anachronistic) artwork, the graphic novel comes recommended from me. I give it 4 out of 5 stars.”

Reviewed by Nick Cardillo

Sherlock Holmes and The Horror of Frankenstein is available from all good bookstores including   Amazon USA, Barnes and Noble 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).