In The Shadow of Sherlock Holmes

by Leslie S. Klinger (Editor)

In the Shadow of Sherlock Holmes features 21 stories published during the earliest days of detective literature, 1862 to 1910. These stories are stand-outs in the field, and though not well-known today, they easily match or beat Arthur Conan Doyle's master detective in whose shadow they have been relegated. IDW corrects that literary oversight in this "best of the best" collection.

Genres: Mystery, Detective

362 pages, Paperback

First published December 13, 2011

About the author

Leslie S. Klinger is considered to be one of the world’s foremost authorities on those twin icons of the Victorian era, Sherlock Holmes and Dracula. He is the editor of the three-volume collection of the short stories and novels, THE NEW ANNOTATED SHERLOCK HOLMES, published by W. W. Norton in 2004 and 2005, winner of the Edgar® Award for Best Critical/Biographical Work and nominated for every other major award in the mystery genre. THE NEW ANNOTATED DRACULA, published by W. W. Norton in 2008, delivers promises a similar in-depth examination of Bram Stoker’s haunting classic and its historical context.

Since the 1960’s, the study of the rich fantastic literature of the Victorian writers has been Klinger’s consuming passion. He has written dozens of articles on Sherlockiana, published more than a dozen books on Sherlock Holmes and Dracula in addition to the Norton works, and regularly teaches UCLA Extension courses on Holmes and Dracula.

He and Laurie R. King have co-edited three anthologies of stories inspired by the Sherlock Holmes Canon, the latest being ECHOES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, published by Pegasus Books. In addition, he has edited a number of anthologies collecting original and classic detective and vampire tales.

His groundbreaking THE ANNOTATED SANDMAN, a panel-by-panel examination of Neil Gaiman’s near-legendary “Sandman” comics. Given unprecedented access to Gaiman’s scripts and based on hours of conversations with the author, Klinger adds hundreds of notes describing historical sources, literary and popular cultural references and illuminates the characters and milieu of the rich stories. Published by DC Comics, the first volume appeared in January 2012; the remaining three were published in 2013, 2014 and 2015. His THE NEW ANNOTATED H. P. LOVECRAFT, highly praised and nominated for various awards, was published by W. W. Norton in 2015. He is currently working on THE ANNOTATED WATCHMEN for DC Entertainment, to be published in July 2017, as well as THE NEW ANNOTATED FRANKENSTEIN, which will appear from W. W. Norton in July 2017.

In a completely different genre, Klinger and Laura Caldwell have co-edited a searing, heartbreaking true-crime anthology ANATOMY OF INNOCENCE: TESTIMONIES OF THE WRONGFULLY CONVICTED, to be published by W. W. Norton in March 2017. The volume pairs major mystery/thriller writers with exonerees to tell their harrowing tales.

Born in Chicago, Illinois, Klinger received an A.B. in English from the University of California, Berkeley, followed by a J.D. from Boalt Hall (School of Law, U.C. Berkeley). Since then, he has lived in Los Angeles, pursuing a legal career in tax, estate, and business planning. Klinger is a member of the Baker Street Irregulars, the Horror Writers Association, and the Mystery Writers of America. He served three times as the Chapter President of the SoCal Chapter of MWA and on its National Board of Directors and currently serves as Treasurer of the Horror Writers Association.

Reviews

[Glen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of mysteries featuring sleuths contemporary with Sherlock Holmes. They were all pretty decent, and all of them different than one another. A great collection.

[Quentin Wallace · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very good collection of detective stories from the late 1800s to the early 1900s. An eclectic mix, but all enjoyable.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

In The Shadow of Sherlock Holmes is a slightly misleading title as none of the short stories featured in the book have anything to do with Sherlock Holmes. It is merely that some of the stories take place in the time as Arthur Conan Doyle’s legendary Barker Street detective.

In The Shadow of Sherlock Holmes features about twenty short stories by authors well known and not so well known. To be honest some of the stories should maybe have stayed in the archives but it does at least give the reader a chance to see how well (or not) some of A.C. Doyle’s contemporaries faired compared to “the master”.

Edgar Allen Poe features, as does Wilkie Collins, Anton Chekhov, E.W. Hornung, Ernest Bramah and Baroness Orczy. Edgar Allen Poe is extremely well known for his tales of mystery, imagination and the macabre and of course for creating one of the worlds first looked room detective stories, The Murders in the Rue Morgue.

For those of you who don’t know Baroness Orczy, Emma Orczy was the creator of The Scarlet Pimpernel as well as the somewhat mysterious Man in the Corner, a detective who solved the seemingly unsolvable from the corner table of a tearoom in London. Crime and cakes combined. Sounds like an ideal way to spend an afternoon. He appears in about a dozen short stories and definitely comes from the Sherlock / Mycroft Holmes stable of detectives where brains win over brawn.

I've jotted down a synopsis on a small number of the stories. Have a look and see what you think. To be honest it’s a rather nice little read when you’re on holiday or don’t want to spend too much time on a novel.

The Purloined Letter by Edgar Allen Poe – is probably one of the most famous “detective” stories ever written. After the theft of a vitally important and politically sensitive letter, the famous Parisian amateur detective C. Auguste Dupin is requested to retrieve the document. It is possibly in the possession of a ruthless government official, who plans to use it for blackmail, but since no one can find it on his person or in his premises he is therefore untouchable. If the contents are revealed it could cause a downfall in the government. Can Dupin defeat a man who has so far defeated the Paris police?

The Swedish Match by Anton Chekhov - is from his A Night in the Cemetery and Other Stories of Crime & Suspense. Chekhov is not always known his crime stories but this rather intriguing locked room mystery with a missing body, a handful of suspects and a surprise ending, not earth shattering but it works.

Nine Points of the Law by E.W. Hornung – is a rather entertaining story from Raffles: The amateur Cracksman and involves a case art theft, where Harry “Bunny” Manders, A.J. Raffles’ partner in crime, has to save the day when an apparent theft goes wrong. Or does it? But let’s not ruin the day for “Bunny”. In case you don’t know anything about Ernest William Hornung he was an author in his own right and brother in law to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, so I suppose there is a connection to Sherlock Holmes in this collection after all.

The Ghost of Massingham Mansions by Ernest Bramah – is a short story featuring Bramah’s most famous creation the blind detective Max Carrados and is part of the collection The Eyes of Max Carrados published in 1923. It’s a nice little mystery allowing the blind detective to use his unique gifts, i.e. his heightened other senses, to solve the crime.

The other stories and authors featured are:

The Biter Bit by Wilkie Collins
The Stolen Cigar-Case by Brett Harte
A Princess’s Vengeance by C.L. Pirkis
The Absent-Minded Coterie by Robert Barr
The Secrets of the Black Brotherhood by Dick Donovan
The Episode of the Diamond Links by Grant Allen
A Clever Capture by Guy Clifford
The Stir outside the Café Royal by Clarence Rook
The Duchess of Wiltshire’s Diamonds by Guy Boothby
The Problem of Dressing Room A by Jacques Futrelle
The Hundred-Thousand-Dollar Robbery by Hesketh Pritchard
The Surrey Cattle-Maiming Mystery by Herbert Jenkins
Sexton Blake and the Time-Killer – Anonymous
One Possessed by E.W. Hornung
The Great Pearl Mystery by Baroness Orczy

It was a rather entertaining holiday read and if you fancy spending a few hours in the company of detectives who are not Sherlock Holmes, this is a good place to do it.

[Seth · Rating 2 out of 5]

The back cover of this collection says the stories "easily match or beat Arthur Conan Doyle's master detective," which aside from not really making sense is just blurbtalk. With a few exceptions, these stories are deservedly forgotten and lacking style, character, interesting plots, or any sense of how to structure a mystery.

Those exceptions include a Sherlock-less train mystery from Sir ACD himself, who shows up like Springsteen at SXSW to show the kids how its done, and the funny and ingenious "The Problem of Cell 13" by Jacques Futrelle, featuring his fantastic Thinking Machine. And at the other end of the spectrum is "The Stone of the Edmundsbury Monks" by M.P. Shiel, one of the most enjoyably terrible mysteries ever written, which I wrote more about here.

The book itself is an amateurish production, with one of the least appealing covers I've ever seen and art-school-quality illustrations that are unattractive in the most boring way possible. Rookie mistakes abound, including footnotes appearing on the wrong pages and the lack of any information about the man who edited this collection and wrote its notes and introduction, Leslie S. Klinger. That's a slap in the face to Klinger, who's one of the world's foremost Sherlockians (not to mention the editor of Neil Gaiman's new The Annotated Sandman .)

Anyone without a truly compelling interest in Victorian detective fiction can pass this up, or better yet put the $16.99 towards Klinger's perfect The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes.

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't normally enjoy short stories, but found that listening to these while driving was a lot of fun!

[Kevin Findley · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a long read, obviously. None of the entries stood out as a cut above the rest. I'm guessing that is why they are in Holmes' shadow. There were no bad stories here, but a few were, IMHO, fairly derivative of either Doyle or Poe. For fans of this genre, the forewards to each tale by the editor are going to be extremely interesting and valuable.

Recommended for hardcore fans and others, just make sure to break up the reading over a few weeks.

Find it. Buy it. Read it!

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Collection of very good mystery short stories from the past. The editor is a Sherlock Holmes expert and has done a great job choosing stories. Many of these stories are as
good as the Sherlock Holmes short stories.

[David Elkin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some interesting tales. Well worth the read if you are a fan of detective fiction from the late 1800's to the early 1900's. A mixed bag with some great tales and some that were ho-hum.

[Jamie · Rating 2 out of 5]

The introduction gives the reader the impression that this collection is of excellent stories that didn't quite manage to gain popularity during a time when the world was obsessed with Holmes. In reality, these stories were not, in fact, over-looked due to timing but to their own sorry quality. The only ones that were any good at all was The Problem of Cell 13 by Jacques Futrelle (a clever plot if forgetably written), The Story of the Man with the Watches by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (typical masterpiece, though I was very confused as to why it had been included in this particular collection), and The Axton Letters by William Macharg and Edwin Balmer (an enjoyable read dispite the droning diary entries and obvious solution).
I dearly wish I'd read Seth Madej's review of it before buying it, but I had yet to discover Goodreads. I do not intend to make that mistake again.

[Denise · Rating 5 out of 5]

For Holmes aficionados, this is an interesting and enjoyable look at what other authors were doing with detective fiction from 1862 to 1910. A few of the stories were excellent and all were worth reading. I disagree with some other reviewers that this book is not worth your time. I enjoy reading widely. Seeing what other authors were doing at the same time as Conan Doyle allows me to put his writing in perspective and appreciate even more what he accomplished with the Sherlock Holmes stories.