News — book review

“Steampunk Holmes: Legacy of the Nautilus by P C Martin. I suppose the combination of Sherlock Holmes and Steampunk was inevitable. Guy Ritchie’s first Holmes film had elements of Victorian super science, but the true hybrid flowering is in Steampunk Holmes. Full details are at www.steampunkholmes.com, but for the less elaborately electronically enabled, such as me, the first adventure is now available in its most accessible form: i.e. a book. Steampunk Holmes: Legacy of the Nautilus places Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson in a world where electricity has yet to be developed, the internal combustion engine is irrelevant, and steam power...

“The Hound of Baskervilles: A Sherlock Holmes Play by Simon Corble. The Hound of Baskervilles doesn’t easily lend itself to the theatre, but dramatists seem unable to resist the challenge. I’ve not had the chance to see it performed, but Simon Corble’s play is pretty close to the top of my list of favourites. It was written to be performed out of doors, with the audience following the actors from place to place. Mr Corble boldly adapts the story rather than simply dramatising, and the result is clever, witty, exciting – and refreshingly intelligent. David Stuart Davies contributes an appreciative...

“56 Sherlock Holmes Stories in 56 Days by Charlotte Anne Walters. After submitting her novel Barefoot on Baker Street, Charlotte Anne Walters set herself the task of re-reading all the short stories in the Canon, one a day, and writing about each of them on the same day for her blog at http://barefootonbakerstreet.wordpress.com/. For the book publication she has added her observations on the four long stories. Her remarks are often amusing, occasionally thought-provoking (why so little protest about the uncanonical back-story for Mary Morstan in Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes? I suspect it’s because so much else in the film is defiantly...

“Sherlock Holmes and the Dead Boer at Scotney Castle by Tim Symonds. Once again Holmes and Watson become entangled in a potentially devastating political conspiracy. In 1904 an invitation to address the exclusive Kipling League at a Sussex country house has unexpected consequences for them. Holmes suspects that the lecture was arranged to provide an alibi for the murder at nearby Scotney Castle, but uncovering the truth stretches his powers to the limit as the killers have learned more from him then he supposed – and the Kipling League’s schemes, like those of Baron Maupertuis, are colossal. It’s an engrossing...

“As Randall Stock notes in his foreword, a chronology is not a biography, but A Chronology of the Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, May 22nd 1859 to July 7th 1930, the magnum opus of Brian W Pugh, is more valuable than most of the published lives of Conan Doyle. The new edition adds about fifty pages, seven of them containing a chronological summary of the journal recently published as ‘Dangerous Work’: Diary of an Arctic Adventure(enthusiastically reviewed in DM 325). Here are lists of ACD’s various homes, his sporting career, the burial places of the Doyles, statues and plaques, and more, including some fascinating photographs. But...