News — book review

"There is a lot of interest in Sherlock Holmes currently, with the BBC’s television series Sherlock and the American CBS series Elementary drawing a new generation of television viewers into the classic characters of Holmes and Dr. Watson. I have seen a few episodes of both shows and while as entertaining as most any contemporary crime drama, both are set in the current-day and their characters, for those of us who have read the canonical Sir Arthur Conan Doyle detective stories, do little but carry on the names of the Conan Doyle heroes—especially in the American series where so many aspects of the original premise...

American scientist Frederic Golden wrote the famous article on Einstein for Time Magazine’s ‘Man of the Century’ edition, at the end of 1999. Who better then to review the new Sherlock Holmes novel that covers the controversial subject of his daughter. “Thank you so much for sharing your latest Sherlock caper with me. A wonderful, page-flipping read. You’ve caught the Conan Doyle ambience and cadences beautifully. How did you ever manage to have Holmes and Watson riding in a tarantass -  a priceless touch? At times, I was sure I was back again in the old master of Baker Street’s...

"The Story and the Scripts Behind No Place Like Holmes: Select Episode Scripts From The Hit Sherlock Holmes Web Drama Comedy by Ross K Foad. MX Publishing. 2012. 252pp. At www.nplh.co.uk/ you’ll find No Place Like Holmes, a series of comedy-dramas written and directed by Ross K Foad (who also plays Sherlock Holmes), based on the premise that Holmes and Watson were frozen in a time-spell by the demonic Hugo Baskerville, emerging eventually in the year 2010. We witness them, as the website says, fighting both evil masterminds and modern appliances. The films — thirteen so far, plus three Mary Morstan Mysteries, two reminiscences from the...

"It’s Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee but festive celebrations are not the only thing afoot in this riveting and exciting read by Mike Hogan. I couldn’t help by find myself thoroughly engaged throughout this novel. I enjoyed that Mike didn’t just make use of the classic canonical characters such as Mycroft and Lestrade, he also makes use of characters from the Greek Interpreter along with his insertion of historical figures. Mike keeps true to Doyle’s style and the characteristics of Doyle’s characters. I enjoyed the relationship between Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Watson, and young Winston Churchill. The three play off each other...

"This book looks at a wide range of Sherlockian topics from dentistry (Hirayama is a dentist in Tokyo) to the tracking of Heidegger’s bicycle. Hirayama is best known as the driving force behind The Shoso-in Bulletin, an international Sherlockian journal published from 1991 to 2004. This work consists of 28 articles/essays written by Hirayama for his publication and also others. Four of the articles are coauthored with John Hall, a English Holmesian. For the Sherlockian purist, the articles on the first nine cases in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes may be the strongest in the book. But all are interesting, and this book will...