Derrick Belanger's Blog: Book Reviews, Author Interviews, and Ramblings of a Sherlockian - Posts Tagged "big-book-of-sherlock-holmes"

I would like to end my Sherlock Holmes Christmas gift book suggestions with classic short story collections as well as a few books I've heard are excellent but I haven't gotten a chance to read yet.

My #1 choice is still the MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes stories which I mentioned in a previous blog entry. If you do not yet have all three volumes of this anthology, edited by the talented author David Marcum, then you are missing out on the greatest collection of new Sherlock Holmes stories ever written. Pause in your reading of this blog, order the books, and then come back! You will not be disappointed. Here are links to the volumes: The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part I: 1881 to 1889, The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part II: 1890 to 1895, The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part III: 1896 to 1929.

For an amazing anthology of previously published material, I highly recommend Otto Penzler's The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories. This dictionary size collection is the largest collection of Sherlock Holmes stories ever compiled. Yes, Holmes fans, you probably will have at least some of these stories in your collection, but only the most thorough collector will have a majority of them, and even so, this handsome edition is worth it to have all the tales between two covers. You have everything from traditional pastiches to comedies and fantasies, plus you have every author from Doyle himself to contemporaries like Gaiman, Neil and Lyndsay Faye. Worth every penny!

For those of you not wanting ginormous collections of Holmes stories, I have two new books that I can recommend wholeheartedly. The first is this excellent collection from author Mark Mower. A Farewell to Baker Street is a collection of five stories that spans the full time period which Holmes worked with Watson, even ending with their supposed last case together in 1926. My favorite case in this collection is "A Study in Verse" which deals with Edwin Halvergate, a gifted writer of haiku who studied under Professor Moriarty and is an equally dangerous criminal mastermind. I'd like to see a whole collection focusing on this delightful character.


Some Holmes writers like Mitch Cullin ascend the traditional pastiche and write what can only be described as literature. For those who prefer full, well rounded characters which stay with you for months after finishing a book, then I recommend Marcia Wilson's groundbreaking short story collection You Buy Bones: Sherlock Holmes and His London Through the Eyes of Scotland Yard. Ms. Wilson has taken the character of Inspector Lestrade and made him wholly out of flesh and blood. There is no bumbling fool next to Holmes here. Rather, we have an insightful character who has a deep understanding of Holmes and Watson. When reading this book, I felt like I was standing beside Lestrade throughout the stories and seeing the dear detective for the first time. This book is astonishing.

Okay, I've mentioned it before, but the softcover edition of my own novella Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of the Peculiar Provenance contains an extra story and an author interview, making it a short story collection. The reviews have been quite good, and looking at the cover, isn't it a perfect book for this snowy December?

Sherlock Holmes: The Pearl of Death and Other Early Stories For the bargain hunter, I was just notified that this short story collection from Gregg Rosenquist is currently on sale at Amazon in America for the shockingly low price of $2.50. This is a fun collection of short stories from Mr. Rosenquist who usually focuses on science fiction. The book has some short vignettes that are more on the ironic side than mystery, but he has some good traditional stories in the collection as well. Hey, for $2.50, can you go wrong?

Before I sign off, I would like to mention two Holmes books which I have heard are very good, but I have not had a chance to read yet. The first is Art in the Blood: A Sherlock Holmes Adventure by Bonnie MacBird, and the second is Mycroft Holmes by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Both are supposed to be excellent traditional Holmes novels. I own them, but just have not had a chance to read them. That's the problem with having so many pastiches in the world. With thousands in existence and hundreds of new ones arriving each year, it is difficult to keep up without going blind. Of course, this is a wonderful problem to have.

Take care everyone and a Merry Christmas to you!!

Derrick Belanger is the author of the #1 bestselling book Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of the Peculiar Provenance which was in the top 200 bestselling books on Amazon. He also is the author of the MacDougall Twins with Sherlock Holmes books, the latest of which is Curse of the Deadly Dinosaurand edited the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle horror anthology A Study in Terror: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Revolutionary Stories of Fear and the Supernatural. Mr. Belanger also is a frequent contributor to the blog I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere. Mr. Belanger resides in Colorado and continues compiling unpublished works by Dr. John H. Watson.