One Step into the Light

Ever since he accepted my pastiche two years ago, publisher Steve Emecz has encouraged me to join other MX authors in starting my own blog. My hesitation up to now has not been altogether due to laziness. Rather, having only one 29-page e-book in active publication, I was unconvinced that other Sherlockians--much less a wider audience--would have any real interest in what I had to say.

Steve got around my reluctance by coaxing me into starting with book reviews, which--along with author interviews--are frequent subjects for a blog. My reviews led to correspondence with several of the authors, who have been extremely helpful to my own literary efforts. Besides Steve himself, I would especially like to thank (listing them alphabetically) Sherry Croyle, Dick Gillman, David Marcum, Chris Redmond, David Ruffle, and Marcia Wilson.

Instead of turning my first blog into an Oscar acceptance speech, I had intended to follow Steve's suggestion of "collecting all [my] reviews together in a blog." In this posting, I've listed seven of my first 13 reviews, several of which have not previously appeared on Goodreads. At Steve's suggestion, I'll feature the remaining reviews individually in future blogs. I'll also provide some information on my own past and future publications (the latter still being in the very early stages). Here is the first set of reviews:

The Papers of Sherlock Holmes Volume 1 and 2 by David Marcum

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


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.

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.


Sherlock Holmes: The Julia Moriarty Trilogy by Dick Gillman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Imagine the awesome mind, and awful morals, of Professor Moriarty in a more attractive, equally lethal package. Impossible, you say? Not at all, for Dick Gillman has uncovered a fact that seems to have escaped Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: the professor had a younger sister! Now she’s back, bent on resurrecting her late brother’s criminal network, wreaking havoc on the British Empire and—far worse—gaining her revenge on Sherlock Holmes. Gillman introduces Julia in three interwoven stories, published as a trilogy in this slim but entertaining volume. In “The Shadow of James Moriarty,” his feminine shadow inserts a horrifying intermission into a play by Oscar Wilde, leading to an initial confrontation with our heroes Holmes and Watson. “The Highgate Magician” raises the diplomatic stakes, for a young woman’s seemingly simple disappearance masks an international intrigue. Finally, in “The Severed Finger,” Julia engineers a kidnapping that could cost Great Britain the Boer War before it has begun. Throughout the trilogy, Holmes dazzles with deductive brilliance, Watson provides strong support, and Mycroft is caught between conflicting loyalties. It can be said, without revealing spoilers, that this new Moriarty proves as dangerous a nemesis for Holmes as the original. She is also, alas, far more elusive. Bad news for our detective, but good news for readers, who can look forward to Mr. Gillman bringing Julia back to fight another day.

Sherlock Holmes and The Julia Moriarty Trilogy – 2nd Edition 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, Nook and Apple iBooks (iPad/iPhone).


An Evening In Baker Street by David Ruffle

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


The prolific David Ruffle’s latest book is a slender, but unusual and entertaining volume. Its title work, told only in dialogue, is not a story. Instead, it is a meditation on their long partnership by Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, while they sit reminiscing after Holmes has announced his intention to retire. As they review the highlights of the Canon, old friends drop by to visit; old enemies return in retrospect; and the two debate everything from the doctor’s pawky humor to the great detective’s doubts about divine order in the universe and his own place in the new century. Few Sherlockians understand the relationship between Doyle’s central characters as well as David Ruffle. The reasons he cites for Holmes’ retirement eschew the apocryphal, romantic explanation first proposed by Baring-Gould. Holmes and Watson receive a satisfying send-off, but one that keeps them firmly grounded in the Canon. Along with historical photographs and Sidney Paget illustrations, the book includes two excellent, though inconclusive, cases. “The Loch Ness Affair” demonstrates that even Holmes’ best-laid deductions can sometimes gang agley, while “An Essex Adventure”—a ghost story set in a real rectory of ill repute—would surely please a spiritualist like Conan Doyle. All in all, An Evening in Baker Street offers another fine outing from David Ruffle for his fans.

Holmes and Watson – An Evening In Baker Street is available for pre order from all good bookstores including The Strand Magazine, Amazon USA, Amazon UK and for free shipping worldwide Book Depository.

Lives Beyond Baker Street: A Biographical Dictionary of Sherlock Holmes's Contemporaries by Christopher Redmond

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Canadian Chris Redmond, author of such books as Sherlock Holmes Handbook and In Bed with Sherlock Holmes, compiled a Tin Dispatch Box of Holmes’ unpublished cases as early as his teens. Since 1994, he has edited that invaluable website for Canonical readers and scholars alike, Sherlockian.net.

The present volume, as its introduction notes, began as an attempt to link Conan Doyle’s original stories to the historical events and personages on which they might be based. It lists several possible candidates for such characters as Irene Adler, the King of Bohemia, Lord Bellinger, and Professor Moriarty. However, Redmond’s research quickly outgrew this limited conception, so his book amounts (if I counted them correctly) to no fewer than 806 entries.

To illuminate the ever-changing “society of late Victorian (and early Edwardian) Britain,” Redmond assembles an array of “barons, knights, and tycoons”; but he also features actors, artists, bakers, courtesans, scientists, soldiers, shopkeepers, and writers. In short, almost every facet of Holmes’ world is represented. Special emphasis is placed on aspects of Victorian life of interest to Chris Redmond and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: criminology, spiritualism, medicine, and sexuality.

Considering the broadness of its coverage (and my own erratic expertise), the dictionary seems consistently accurate and comprehensive within its stated limits. To be sure, there are occasional typos (Lvov, not “Lviv,” on p. 111), omissions (Gustav Mahler?), or odd choices (e.g., Catherine “Skittles” Walters [p. 124] is mentioned as a mistress of the future Duke of Devonshire [p. 97]; the Duchess of Manchester, whom the duke married after a thirty-year affair, is not.)

Redmond’s introduction is slightly coy about research; but the articles make clear that he consulted original works and traditional sources for the period (e.g., the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the British Medical Journal, and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) as well as Sherlockian tomes and useful websites. Best of all, the author’s engaging and informal style makes his dictionary as delightful to browse as it is helpful to research.

In summary, Christopher Redmond has produced both an informative primer for readers with more than a superficial interest in the Canon, and a resource for writers of Sherlockian pastiches that will be well-nigh indispensable.

Lives Beyond Baker Street is available for pre order from all good bookstores including The Strand Magazine, Amazon USA, Amazon UK, Waterstones UK and for free shipping worldwide Book Depository.

The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part II: 1890 to 1895 by David Marcum

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories. Part II: 1890-1895. Edited by David Marcum.

The second volume of MX Publishing’s anthology of traditional pastiches covers the very apex of the Canon: 1890-1895. These were the years of John and Mary Morstan Watson’s tragically brief marriage; of Sherlock Holmes’ immortal duel with Moriarty; of Watson’s lonely vigil during “The Great Hiatus”; and of the renaissance of memorable cases that followed Holmes’ return. These new stories are fully worthy of the period they chronicle. While their authors include both established Sherlockians and other writers from a variety of backgrounds, the pastiches share (thanks to David Marcum’s careful editing) the style, characterizations, and format of Conan Doyle’s originals. Consistency of approach does not mean the stories lack variety. Poems, ghosts, desecrated Bibles, and near-suicides offer clues to murder. A rape victim finds in Mary Watson a sympathetic friend. Her husband, doubly bereft, solves cases during the Hiatus, while the mysterious Sigerson intervenes in Canada to stop a war. Young Sherlock’s first mentor is featured in the volume’s only play. Professor Moriarty—on the night before his death—chillingly recounts revenge he took at a far more tender age. Other Canonical villains, like Stapleton and Ryder, also turn up; and two of the best stories focus on the long, uneasy friendship between Lestrade and Holmes. In short, there is plenty here to keep fans busy until the next volume of Marcum’s anthology arrives. But wait! Volume III is already published! Volume IV will follow it in May, and more volumes are slated for annual appearance. Thanks to MX Publishing’s generosity, all profits continue to support the restoration of Undershaw, the house where Conan Doyle wrote The Hound of the Baskervilles and many other stories.

The MX Books of New Sherlock Holmes Stories are 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, Nook and Apple iBooks (iPad/iPhone).

The Bird and the Buddha - A Before Watson Novel - Book Two by A S Croyle

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


A.S. Croyle returns with her second “Before Watson” story, based on the memoirs of Poppy Stamford, Sherlock Holmes’ first love. Four years after their adventures in Ms. Croyle’s wonderful first novel (When the Song of the Angels is Stilled), Poppy and Sherlock reunite to investigate a series of ritualistic murders outside the British Museum. Like its predecessor, The Bird and the Buddha is set against the background of an actual Victorian disaster: the sinking of the Princess Alice in the Thames with seven hundred souls aboard. Populating the story are well-drawn secondary characters: some real (Oscar Wilde); some Canonical (Mycroft and Lestrade); and some original, like Poppy’s uncle, Dr. Ormond Sacker, who wrestles with an ethical dilemma central to the case. Croyle demonstrates her mastery of the period’s historical detail; and various intriguing elements, such as the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, are woven skillfully into the plot. Meanwhile, Poppy and Sherlock struggle to redefine their own relationship, after his disavowal of her love for the sake of his vocation. A progressive new physician, seeking acceptance in Victorian Britain’s unwelcoming milieu, Poppy must also face the frustrations of loving a young man who wants to turn himself into a reasoning machine. Even cast adrift emotionally, she remains the most appealing heroine since Irene Adler. While their romantic future remains uncertain at the novel’s end, the good news is that Ms. Croyle has more cases for Poppy and Sherlock in the works.

The Bird and The Buddha - A Before Watson Novel - Book Two is available for pre order from all good bookstores including The Strand Magazine, Amazon USA, Amazon UK, Waterstones UK and for free shipping worldwide Book Depository.

You Buy Bones: Sherlock Holmes and His London Through the Eyes of Scotland Yard by Marcia Wilson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


It is high time someone made real people of the Scotland Yard detectives, rather than mere foils to be outshone by Sherlock Holmes. Marcia Wilson accomplishes the task brilliantly in her novel You Buy Bones. Set at the beginning of the Canon, it creates backstories for Gregson, Bradstreet, and Lestrade that show them to be conscientious, caring men, faithfully performing an often thankless job despite their private troubles. Yet, the book’s lead character is not Lestrade or Holmes (who is around just long enough to set impossible deductive standards) but Dr. John H. Watson. Here is the Watson of A Study in Scarlet: physically shattered by his wounds at Maiwand, emotionally scarred by family woes that mirror those of Bradstreet and Lestrade, robbed of his profession as a soldier, but (for reasons central to the novel’s gruesome plot) unsure of his new calling as a doctor. It is Watson who provides the driving force as he and two of the Yarders pursue a mystery rooted in their pasts to a truly horrifying end. The novel’s payoff is a long time coming, but its thrilling conclusion rivals anything in Conan Doyle. Marcia Wilson offers atmospheric Edinburgh settings and commendable research, thoughtfully footnoting those niggling details I was too lazy to look up. She writes with empathy, a wicked sense of humor, and a style that—if perhaps too breezy to be authentically Victorian—moves the action at a lively pace. By its end, she has given us both a memorable tale and a deeper understanding of the characters we love. One can ask no more of a pastiche. Let’s hope that there are many more to come.
You Buy Bones 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, Nook and Apple iBooks (iPad/iPhone).