Sherlock Book Review - MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories XVIII
Posted by Steve Emecz on
The starred review from Publishers Weekly for The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Volume XVIII is a record-breaking tenth for the series.
There are shout outs for the stories by Craig Janacek, Paul Hiscock and Tom Turley.
"The 16 pastiches in Marcum’s splendid 18th Sherlock Holmes anthology prove that creative authors can recapture the essence of Conan Doyle’s characters with an impossible crime or seemingly supernatural angle without relying on vampires or werewolves. Craig Janacek combines the puzzle mystery and the paranormal brilliantly in “The Adventure of the Fair Lad.” While Holmes is on vacation in Ireland, a nobleman asks for his help following the disappearance of his son, Liam, believed to be a changeling by the locals. The boy reported seeing a little green man shortly before he vanished in a secluded patch of forest, where his footprints abruptly stopped. In Paul Hiscock’s baffling “The Cassandra of Providence Place,” Holmes is consulted by a girl who looks to be six or seven, whose vision that her father was to be murdered was realized, as were other of her predictions. And in Thomas A. Turley’s winning “The Solitary Violinist,” composer Gustav Mahler consults Holmes because he’s haunted by “the playing of a distant violin.” Sherlockians will again be grateful to Marcum and MX for high-quality new Holmes tales."
The full list of contributors in Volume XVIII is:
Thomas A. Burns, Jr., Roger Silverwood, Robert Stapleton, Craig Janacek, Gareth Tilley, Paul Hiscock, Tracy J. Revels, Arthur Hall, M.J. Elliott, Harry DeMaio, Tom Turley, Kelvin Jones, Matthew White, David Marcum, Nick Cardillo, and S.F. Bennett, with a poem by Christopher James, and forewords by David Marcum, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Roger Johnson, and Steve Emecz
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar joins several other NY Times bestselling authors (including Lee Child and Jonathan Kellerman) to have written forewords for the collection.
Volumes XIX, XX and XXI are currently on Kickstarter and will be published in May.