Sherlockian Interview - Victoria Weisfeld
Posted by Steve Emecz on
To celebrate the Kickstarter for Volumes 46-48 of the MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories we're interview the contributors.
Today it's Victoria Weisfeld.
Tell us a little about yourself – Where you live and your main hobbies.
Originally from Michigan, for the last forty years, I’ve lived in the bucolic college town of Princeton, New Jersey. It’s conveniently located about an hour from both New York City and Philadelphia, in opposite directions. The college community assures that a lot is always going on—for example, we had a premiere for the film Oppenheimer at our local movie house, because Oppie worked at the Institute for Advanced Study here. I’m just finishing an adult ed class on neo-noir films (some too grim, even for me) and about to start one on indigenous peoples. This has to do with one of my main hobbies—genealogy. I’d never realized how many and diverse were the interactions of my ancestors (going back to the 1600s) with indigenous Americans. Not all pretty.
What’s the name of your story in this collection, and what is it about (with no spoilers)?
My story in the MX Anthology (part XLVII) is “The Widow’s Pique,” in which Holmes and Watson set out to help Mrs. Hudson, distressed at the mysterious illness of her cousin. Holmes is often engaged in some abstruse area of study—in this case, it’s the manufacture of cotton cloth. Watson’s medical training of course comes into play, as well as his teaching at the then-new School of Medicine for Women. I like to give Watson a bit of a chance to shine.
What other projects have you recently completed that we can check out?
Currently, I’m reading The Complete Sherlock Holmes, and I’m on page 1063. The self-effacing Watson fascinates me.
“The Widow’s Pique” is my fourth Holmes/Watson pastiche. Last December, another appeared in Sherlock Holmes: A Year of Mystery: 1885, a story that also has a medical theme, involving England’s repressive laws regarding sexually-transmitted diseases. (Sex and the Victorians, always a heady combination!) In the July/August 2024 issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, my story “Among the Long Shadows” appeared—involving the murder of a female flight instructor at the museum commemorating women flyers’ role in World War II. All told, more than 40 of my short stories have been published, along with my mystery-thriller, Architect of Courage.
