News — Book Reviews

"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...

"A new ‘Sherlock Holmes’ novel has a lot to live up to. And frankly, I was not hopeful for this offering. As an avid Arthur Conan Doyle – and Holmes – fan, I was sceptical that anyone could match Conan Doyle’s intellect whilst matching his fast-paced and gripping style. I was wrong. Symonds story could be described as a gripping yarn, which captured the essence of both Holmes and Watson very well. The story in short; Holmes and his faithful sidekick were contacted by the mysterious and duplicitous Prince Regnant of Bulgaria, following the theft of an ancient and sacred manuscript. Holmes is tasked...

"Written by Lynnette Porter and published by MX Publishing, Benedict Cumberbatch – In Transition: An Unauthorised Performance Biography is no ordinary biography as we know it from most other celebrity biographies. The author focuses almost entirely on the career of Benedict and gives an overview of his projects, backed by numerous quotations and anecdotes. The book begins, after a long introduction, with Benedict’s childhood and his education at Harrow, Manchester and LAMDA, and includes some very nice quotes from his mother, Wanda Ventham. We, as theater fans, are delighted that the chapter on his career in the theatre is especially...

"The essays collected in Watson Is Not an Idiot: An Opinionated Tour of the Sherlock Holmes Canon by Eddy Webb (MX Publishing; www.mxpublishing.co.uk) were originally posted on Mr Webb’s blog at http://eddyfate.com. They are necessarily opinionated, as they must be; they’re also intelligent, incisive and well-written. The nearest equivalent to Watson Is Not an Idiot is probably Martin Dakin’s Sherlock Holmes Commentary, but Mr Webb takes the line throughout that the chronicles of Sherlock Holmes are fiction, written by Arthur Conan Doyle. His book can help us appreciate just what is good in the stories, what isn’t, and why they still appeal when so much contemporary work is forgotten. It...