Book Review - The Redacted Sherlcok Holmes Volume 6

Strand Magazine

This anthology features five short stories about cases that could not be published for various reasons, either because they featured material so sensitive that it could negatively affect the British government and its interests, or because it could unjustly harm the reputations of innocent people.  The stories include WWI spycraft, the return of the King of Bohemia along with new scandals, and jettison the Baring-Gould timeline for Watson’s lifespan by having the legendary duo horrified at the atrocities at Nazi concentration camps.  The more readers know about the original stories, history, and general knowledge, the more in-jokes one will understand.  This is particularly apparent in “The Sorceress and the Sea-Lord,” the humor of which requires a cursory knowledge of the works of Gilbert and Sullivan.  Pearson also chooses to adopt the theory that Mycroft proved to be a villain, thereby leading to a rift between the brothers, which may irk fans of the character.  These stories are clearly the work of a devoted fan with a lot of knowledge of the source material, and take Holmes and Watson outside of their most famous settings and into other realms of history and literature.

All volumes of The Redacted Sherlock Holmes are available from this site (links on product pages to Amazon etc...) including a new collection of scripts for several of the stories turned into plays.