The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part III: 1896 to 1929

MX New Sherlock Holmes Stories #3

by David Marcum (Editor)

Part three of a record breaking three volume collection bringing together over sixty of the world's leading Sherlock Holmes authors. All the stories are traditional Sherlock Holmes pastiches.

This volume covers the years from 1896 to 1929 including contributions from Geri Schear, Paul Gilbert, Stuart Douglas, Lyn McConchie, Phil Growick, Seamus Duffy, Leslie Coombs, Mark Alberstadt, GC Rosenquist, Iain McLaughlin and Claire Bartlett, Andrew Lane, Peter K. Andersson, Matthew J. Elliott, Jim French, Tim Symonds, Bob Byrne, James Lovegrove, Larry Millett, Kim Krisco, C. Edward Davis, Joel and Carolyn Senter. The authors are donating all the royalties from the collection to preservation projects at Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's former home, Undershaw.

Genres: Mystery, Anthologies, Short Stories

440 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2015

Reviews

[Dale · Rating 5 out of 5]

The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part III 1896 – 1929

This is the Third volume of a set of three short story Holmes anthologies compiled for the benefit of the restoration of Undershaw, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s home. The beauty of the three volumes is so astonishing that it is an OMG moment just picking up the books. The stories are all different and new, from various viewpoints. This third five star volume covers 1896 – 1929.


Here is my story by story rundown. I have gone to great lengths to try to avoid spoilers. Any spoilers are totally unintentional.

“Two Sonnets” by Bonnie MacBird

I love sonnets! Four Stars

“Harbinger of Death” by Geri Schear

Miss Jane Asquith’s elderly aunt Catherine seems to be haunted by what she terms a “harbinger of death.” Her companion, Kate, hired by her brother, Jane’s Uncle Ambrose, is a Gypsy who has trances. She says Aunt Catherine will die on Friday the Thirteenth, which is in two days.

The mechanism of the crime is fairly ingenious! Four Stars.

“The Perfect Spy” by Stuart Davies

A dead man is found in the street with no visible wounds. Even more odd, everything that could identify him down to the labels on his clothes is missing.

Secret contracts, industrial espionage, and foreign spies figure in this exciting story! Four Stars.

“A Mistress—Missing” by Lyn McConchie

A lost cat comes to 221B and attempting to return the pet embroils Holmes and Watson in the investigation of the cat’s missing Mistress.

There is a line of humor in the whole story which enhances rather than harms the tale! Four Stars.

“Two Plus Two” by Phil Growick

Holmes exposes Doctor Watson to what the latter terms “semantics gymnastics.” Sound-alike words are the key to solving the mystery.

Begging the Author’s pardon, I didn’t get this one. Two Stars.

“The Adventure of the Coptic Patriarch” by Séamus Duffy

A very valuable old Coptic manuscript has turned up missing along with the elderly Coptic scholar who has come to verify the missive. The snow outside only shows footprints pointing towards the house; not away.

This could be the story mentioned in passing by Watson in RETI. Other mentioned but not written adventures are noted as well. A great seemingly impossible crime story! Five Stars.

“The Royal Arsenal Affair” by Leslie FE Coombs

Mycroft Holmes puts himself, Holmes, and Dr. Watson on the trail of a mysterious machine, the nature of which Mycroft will not say.

This is a case of “Mycroft orders and Holmes jumps.” Four Stars.

“The Adventure of the Sunken Parsley” by Mark Alberstat

A man has died as the result of some unknown poison, administered by some unknown means. Holmes is assisting an Inspector Neal of Scotland Yard.

This could be the case referenced by Watson in SIXN, except the family mentioned is not the Abernettys. It is a great little story. Four Stars.

“The Strange Case of the Violin Savant” by GC Rosenquist

The investigation of the disappearance of the parents of child prodigy on the violin Eric Leighton has been forcibly stopped by the Commissioner of the Police. But when young Master Eric himself also vanishes, the Yard sends Lestrade after Holmes.

A double mystery in one story with strange and unique twists! This story is Best in Book for me! Five PLUS Stars!

“The Hopkins Brothers Affair” by Ian McLaughlin and Claire Bartlett

Captain Jonathan Hopkins comes to Holmes with a puzzle involving the disappearance of his brother, Captain Matthew Hopkins along with entire ship and crew. The brothers have quarreled over changing their import/export fleet to steam instead of sail power.

A pretty little mystery. Four Stars.

“The Disembodied Assassin” by Andrew Lane

Lord Humblestone has been stabbed to death in his own study. As Lord Humblestone is favored by newly crowned King Edward VII, Mycroft has him under protective watch. He has two men outside the study; one at the door and one outside the window. In addition, one is in the sturdy with the man himself.

All claim no one came in or out, and the man inside the room is one of Mycroft’s closest agents, and Mycroft affirms he is innocent.

A twist on the “locked room mystery” that is brilliant! Five Stars.

“The Adventure of the Dark Tower” by Peter K Anderson

In this chilling tale Watson is on holiday in Herefordshire. While on a constitutional, Watson comes across Inchwood Cottage, presently inhabited by Dr. Emsley Purkis. He is investigating the cottage and surrounding woods, which contain the remains of an ancient tower. The woods also seemed to be haunted, and Dr. Purkis himself has seen a ghostly girl.

Watson writes to Holmes and Holmes solves the case from 221B Baker Street. Five Stars!

“The Adventure of the Reluctant Corpse” by Matthew J Eliot

A man drops dead at a party, and the corpse is stolen from under Watson’s nose by an armed assailant. The problem is, when the man is identified, he was noted as dead long ago. Then when the body is disinterred from the man’s grave, he has been freshly shot in the heart.

This has all the makings of a great story, but there is something a bit off that I cannot put my finger on. Three Stars.

“The Inspector of Graves” by Jim French

This entry is a radio-play. As I mentioned in the review for the previous volume, play-writing is an art form I am woefully unfit to review. I have no comment good or bad on this one. That said, I have quite a few old Holmes Radio Shows on cassette tape and enjoy them very much!

“The Adventure of the Parson’s Son” by Bob Byrne

A young man stands accused of horse mutilation. It seems like the local law enforcement are determine to convict him of the crime, even if they must frame him.

There is a break-down in the way this story is presented. I don’t know if the author intended this or something became confused when the story was prepped for printing. Things happen all out of sequence. You can get the gist of the story, but it is a very difficult read. 2 stars.

“The Adventure of the Botanist’s Glove” by James Lovegrove

A young housemaid, Mary Smith, comes to Holmes upon the death of her employer, Botanist Sir Peregrine Carruthers. The Botanist has died of anaphylaxis shock after being stung by a bee in his greenhouse, even with a syringe of Epinephrine actually on his person. He has a needle mark, and indeed his nephew upon hearing the man scream, broke the door and injected his uncle at once.

This is a rather neat little mystery. Four Stars.

“A Most Diabolical Plot” by Tim Symonds

Holmes has purchased his homestead on the Southern Downs and ordered his supply of honeybees. Meanwhile, Colonel Sebastian Moran has been released early as the prison he is in is to be demolished. He purchases a very remote piece of property and shuts himself away.

He then threatens Holmes with a showdown, as Professor Moriarty did, at a waterfall.

The instruments of death here are worthy of a certain Oriental Doctor! Five stars!

“The Opera Thief” by Larry Millet

Readers may be aware of Larry Millet’s Holmes series, with Holmes in Minnesota and starring Shadwell Rafferty, barkeep and detective, which began with The Red Demon. This story is part of that story arc.

Watson has gone to Minnesota to have a gallbladder operation at the Mayo Brothers. Holmes has come along for the ride.

They investigate the theft of a prop flute from the Metropolitan Opera House in St Paul. The Opera being preformed is Mozart’s Die Zamberflote— The Magic Flute.

This story has a very neat twist ending. Five Stars.

“Blood Brothers” by Kim Krisco

One of The Baker Street Irregulars has a missing brother. Holmes is waiting on the lad and his mother to arrive, when he is interrupted by Sir George Talbot Gregson, who also has a missing brother.

This is a great example of Holmes’ refusal to allow class status decide which cases he will investigate. Five Stars.

“The Adventure of the White Bird” by C Edwards Davis

Historical note: Charles Nungesser and François Coli were contemporaries of Charles Lindberg. In the race to cross the Atlantic by plane, they flew their plane The White Bird from Paris and vanished somewhere along the way. Their disappearance is an unsolved mystery.

Holmes and Watson are in New York on May 9, 1927 awaiting the landing of the White Bird. When it fails to show up, Holmes investigates a man who seems to have a grudge against France.

The story is well written, and the outcome is one of the suggested answers to the mystery! Five Stars.

“The Adventure of the Avaricious Bookkeeper” by Joel and Carolyn Senter

Holmes and Watson are spending a fortnight at 221B Baker Street, which Watson has rented for a month on the occasion of Holmes’ 75th Birthday. The landlady, Mrs. Hudson’s niece Agnes, has a sister with a problem. She wants to know why her husband has suddenly begun to act strange. He also has a hundred-pound note hidden in his desk, which later becomes two fifty-pound notes.

This is a neat little mystery. Four Stars.

The book ends on a positive note, and this part of the series closes as well. I am reliably informed that more volumes are in the works! Mr David Marcum, I can hardly wait!

Quoth the Raven…

[Elliot · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like all short story collections, there were some good one, some bad, and some mediocre. Unfortunately, there were more mediocre than good.

[Philip Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is the third of a series of four Sherlockian anthology volumes from MX Publications and it includes stories set in the period 1896 through 1929. All of the authors have donated their royalties for this publication to the support of Undershaw. It includes twenty-one short stories and novellas as well as a pair of poems.

The poems are a pair of elegant sonnets by Bonnie MacBird; “Out of the Fog” and “The Art of Detection.” The sonnet form is difficult and the two of these fit both the tongue and the mind. In “Harbinger of Death,” a short story by Geri Schear, Holmes is asked to help a young lady whose elderly aunt believes she is cursed to die on Friday the thirteenth. “The Adventure of the Regular Passenger,” a novella by Paul D. Gilbert, tells the tale of “...the peculiar persecution to which John Vincent Harden, the well-known tobacco millionaire, had been subjected” as cited in “The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist.” “The Perfect Spy,” a novella by Stuart Douglas, tells of murder and Boer spies in a world where unsuitable suitors and heiresses may not mix. “A Mistress – Missing” is a short story by Lyn McConchie that tells of an odd client who asks Holmes to find a missing lady and then pays him in kind.

“Two Plus Two” is a short story by Phil Growick that has Holmes exploring homonyms and their odd occurrences. “The Adventure of the Coptic Patriarch” is a novella by Seamus Duffy that tells an Untold Tale cited in “The Adventure of the Retired Colourman.” In “The Royal Arsenal Affair,” a short story by Leslie F. E. Coombs, Holmes is asked by brother Mycroft to investigate the theft of an unspecified apparatus from Woolwich Royal Arsenal. “The Adventure of the Sunken Parsley,” a short story by Mark Alberstat, tells an Untold Tale cited in “The Adventure of the Six Napoleons.” The author assures me that this is entirely different than an earlier story on the same subject, published in “The Hounds Collection [#01].” In the haunting “The Strange Case of the Violin Savant,” a short story by G. C. Rosenquist, Holmes meets a child prodigy violinist with communication problems.

In the short story, “The Hopkins Brothers Affair,” by Iain McLaughlin and Clair Bartlett, Holmes is asked to find a missing ship by its captain’s brother. In “The Disembodied Assassin,” a short story by Andrew Lane, Holmes is asked by Mycroft to solve a classic “locked room” mystery, which he does like clockwork. In “The Adventure of the Dark Tower,” a short story by Peter K. Andersson, Watson comes across an historical mystery that seems to lap over into the present day. “The Adventure of the Reluctant Corpse,” a short story by Matthew J. Elliott, presents Holmes and Watson with a living man Watson previously declared dead. Later, his corpse shows up again and the real mystery begins. “The Inspector of Graves” is a script of a radio episode written by Jim French that was first broadcast July 16th, 2006. It recounts a grave robbery that never happened. “The Parson’s Son” is a short story by Bob Byrne. It recounts the preliminary investigations by Holmes of the Edalji case which led him to ask Watson to bring it to Doyle’s attention. “The Adventure of the Botanist’s Glove” is a short story by James Lovegrove that presents a most ingenious murder method.

“A Most Diabolical Plot,” a short story by Tim Symonds, tells of a truly complex plan by recently released Sebastian Moran to assassinate Holmes. “The Opera Thief” is a short story by Larry Millet. It occurs after Holmes takes Watson to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, for gall bladder surgery and is one of the most tragic tales in this collection. “Blood Brothers,” a novella by Kim Krisko, presents two sets of brothers whose actions declare which are the wealthier pair. “The Adventure of the White Bird” is another novella, this time by C. Edward Davis. It recounts some of the early aviation efforts to fly the Atlantic for Ortieg’s prize that ended with Lindbergh’s successful landing in Paris. “The Adventure of the Avaricious Bookkeeper” is a novella by Joel and Carolyn Senter. In it, Holmes and Watson investigate a puzzle for Mrs. Hudson’s niece as they meet again in Baker Street in the 20’s.

This third volume continues the tradition set by the first two books in the series. The twenty-three items in this book include only two that I would rate as excellent, however, it also contains only six I would rate as good. The other fourteen are all very good and that gives the entire volume a rating of “very good” by any standard.

Reviewed by: Philip K. Jones, March, 2016

[Carson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Once you've read a fair amount of post-Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes stories, many of them blend together making it difficult to discern what was in the collection you just read versus the previous. However, I liked the fresh approach of the MX Holmes collection #3 as it takes place in the latter years of the Holmes/Watson partnership. I felt it did a good job of showing their age and the changes of the times, references to war, and keeping the stories fresh and relevant. That has got to be a challenging thing to do about a duo featured in so many thousands of stories. Definitely worth a read.

[Riju Ganguly · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were several interesting and extremely well-written stories. There were otherwise predictable stories that were made lively with the help of sharp writing and wit. There were dull stories. And there were stories that were so excessively into 'penny dreadful' mode that the anthology lost its lustre considerably.
Mixed bag, I would say. But, if possible, try to get hold of works penned by Peter K Andersson. His story 'The Adventure of the Dark Tower' was brilliant!

[Alex Budris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sherlock Holmes was trying to deduce why all my neighbors in my low income apartment complex - who are all on some form or another of gov assistance - all voted for Dump Truck - who two days after he was in office cut everyone's benefits - but I knew it was an impossible case. I was hurrying to finish this book so I could eat the pages because my food stamps were taken away even though I am on the lowest income tier on the application for the food bank. If it was up to DT and guys like Musk they would also take the book away because if a few more people in this country would learn to freakin' read maybe they wouldn't be jumping for joy to be fed shit while the corporations take over the world. I tried to explain to Sherlock that apathy and escapism are the only two ways to stop from going insane in a situation like this, but, as always, he had total faith in the ratiocinative process.

"The triumph of evil only depends on good men doing nothing!" Exclaimed Holmes.

"Burke said something like that," I said, "and it's bullshit. Men ARE evil. Anytime man does ANYTHING people get hurt and things are ruined... Hang up your deerstalker, sir, we are all most certainly doomed."

And with that I closed this edition of the MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories and fired up the sautee pan. There are plenty more of these where this came from - there must be a dozen or more volumes of this anthology. Which is great news if you like traditionally written Sherlockian tales. The stories that editor David Marcum chooses to include are all fantastic. Not a dud yet. I've got a stack of these by my chair and I'll be under the quilt with my cat reading mysteries for the next four years if anyone needs me.

[Gus Scholtz · Rating 5 out of 5]

This series is the greatest Holmes lore since Doyle. Marcum does it again and again and again.
About 25 stories is the 400 pages.

[Thomas Turley · Rating 5 out of 5]

The third volume of MX Publishing’s anthology of traditional pastiches covers a long span, from just beyond “The Great Hiatus” until the year apocryphally assigned to Watson’s death. Nonetheless, the great majority of these pastiches (like the original Canon) are set before autumn, 1903, the date of Sherlock Holmes’ supposed retirement. If this early focus comes as a minor disappointment, it is the only one. Under David Marcum’s careful editing, the stories continue to follow the classic style, characterizations, and format employed by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Their quality remains as high as ever. Two stories reference unpublished cases in the Canon, one involving sinking parsley and the other a “peculiar persecution.” An especially fine instance of deductive brilliance includes a stolen forgery and two Coptic Christian patriarchs. As befits the period, technology plays a crucial role in cases about a diabolical diorama and the real-life disappearance of two Charles Lindbergh rivals. Elsewhere, black cats, ghostly maidens, and reanimated corpses challenge our Great Detective’s skepticism of the supernatural. In deference to Holmes’ late-life hobby, two cases feature bees. Another provides a touching motive for his decision to retire. The final story is even more affecting, for it involves our two old friends in what appears to be the final case that they will ever solve together. On a happier note, readers who have finished the original trilogy have only days to wait before Part IV appears. Two more annual volumes are already in production. As always, profits from the anthology support the restoration of Undershaw, the house where Conan Doyle wrote The Hound of the Baskervilles and many other stories.