News — Book Reviews

To get a four star review from The Bookbag is impressive, and all the more so if it is your debut book. Gerry Kelly gets a very solid thumbs up for his collection of new Sherlock Holmes stories; "I'll spare people the details of Holmes and Watson as crime-solvers – I'm assuming anyone likely to pick this one up is probably familiar with the Victorian duo. This is generally very faithful to the Arthur Conan Doyle originals and the best stories in this set of thirteen sound authentic enough to take their place alongside some of the canon. The strong...

"I first became aware of Robert Perret when reading his Sherlock Holmes short stories that have appeared in numerous Sherlockian anthologies over the last few years. He has a real gift of tapping into Watson’s Tin Dispatch Box and revealing some truly intriguing mysteries. His new collection, “Dead Ringers”, has eleven mysteries, including some of my favorite Perret tales: “The Gnarled Beeches”, an account of the terrible aftermath of the Canonical “The Copper Beeches”; “The Bogus Laundry Affair”, with a fascinating and terrifying trip beneath London’s streets, and “The Dead Ringer”, a tale of Holmes’s early days in Montague Street,...

“This second volume in Phil Growick’s project to commission new paintings as illustrations for new Sherlock Holmes stories is big and handsome, like the first. Seven of the thirteen stories have been published before, and you’ll recognise some of the authors who have contributed: Mark Mower, Denis O Smith, Tracy Revels, Mike Hogan, Tim Symonds, the ubiquitous David Marcum. The painters’ names and their work may be less familiar. There’s a remarkable variety of style and medium: each painting is unique, and as Mr Growick says, art is in the eye of the beholder. A share of the proceeds from...

“These eight stories are presented by our Watson’s nephew, Christopher Henry Watson MD, writing in 1948, and are to be accepted as “overlooked gems” from the older Watson’s collection. Mark Mower works hard to capture the elusive atmosphere of “1895 and all that”, and largely succeeds. The plots are varied and ingenious, and there are plenty of allusions and references to our beloved Canon. The final one of these stories is a particularly nice sequel to the affairs of a certain builder from Norwood. In conclusion, this book is a pleasing and entertaining read, and a worthy contribution to the...

“The small town of Erin, Ohio seems to attract characterful residents and visitors, including Professor Sebastian McCabe, BSI (magician, crime-writer) and his brother-in-law, would-be crime-writer Jeff Cody, who serves, sometimes reluctantly, as Watson to his Holmes. Erin should be used to crime by now, and when complaints about “inappropriate behaviour” at St Benignus University are followed by two murders on campus, there are plenty of clues. Too many clues, in fact, and the killer seems to be invisible… Can McCabe’s expertise in magic help him to solve the case? I hailed the first of the McCabe & Cody mysteries as...