News — Book Reviews

“Daniel D. Victor has made a name for himself by bringing us some really great Sherlock Holmes stories in his ongoing series, “Sherlock Holmes and the American Literati”. These books feature encounters between Holmes and famous American writers, including “The Final Page of Baker Street” (Raymond Chandler), “The Baron of Brede Place” (Stephen Crane), “Seventeen Minutes to Baker Street” (Samuel Clemens), and “The Outrage at the Diogenes Club” (Jack London). Now, in “Sherlock Holmes and the London Particular”, he gives us Holmes’s fascinating encounter with Richard Harding Davis, a famed American reporter and novelist at the turn of the twentieth...

“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 foreword, and the text is enhanced by a dozen photographs and...

“It is rare that I pick up a Holmes pastiche and immediately fall in love with it – but it happened with this book. Symonds managed to catch the voice of early retirement Watson so perfectly and with so much love and whimsical sarcasm that it is a joy to read from beginning to end. The story itself is set in a time when European powers were slowly realizing that a war unlike any before was approaching. Holmes and Watson come together for an adventure set in 1906 to make sure that the Sword of Osman, an insignia of the...

”With eloquent, refined, and precise prose, this novel calls forth the ethos of the time and the nature of Sherlock’s mind. In A.S. Croyle’s The Bird and The Buddha, a young Sherlock Holmes stalks a serial killer with the aid of a lovely young doctor whose need to solve the mystery is almost as great as her passion for the romance-averse detective. In this, the second book in Croyle’s Sir Arthur Conan Doyle-inspired Before Watson series, questions arise that threaten to lead the sleuthing pair to some unsettling conclusions: is the killer someone whose goal is to end suffering, or...

Review of The Bird and The Buddha - A Before Watson Novel - Book Two ”With eloquent, refined, and precise prose, this novel calls forth the ethos of the time and the nature of Sherlock’s mind. In A.S. Croyle’s The Bird and The Buddha, a young Sherlock Holmes stalks a serial killer with the aid of a lovely young doctor whose need to solve the mystery is almost as great as her passion for the romance-averse detective. In this, the second book in Croyle’s Sir Arthur Conan Doyle-inspired Before Watson series, questions arise that threaten to lead the sleuthing pair...