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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...

“This book is the fourth in a series of Sherlockian anthology volumes from MX Publications and the new title addition indicated that the publisher plan to continue this remarkable series.  All of the authors have donated their royalties for this publication to the support of Undershaw.  It includes twenty-two short stories and novellas as well as a poem. The poem is a “Toast to Mrs. Watson,” by Arlene Mantin Levy, written as a series of rhymed couplets.  “The Tale of the First Adventure” is a short story by Derrick Belanger that tells how Sherlock learned to restrict the details he...

“THE MX BOOK OF NEW SHERLOCK HOLMES STORIES, edited by David Marcum (London: MX Publishing, 2015), is an anthology of straight-forward pastiches, carefully selected from what Marcum calls the “Great Watsonian Oversoul.” Marcum believes that “there never can be enough good Holmes stories, relating the activities of the true, correct, and traditional Holmes,” and he offers more than sixty stories, almost all previously unpublished, by authors who are old hands at writing pastiches or newcomers to the genre. The stories (and occasional poems and scripts) are nicely done indeed, and the collection consists of three volumes (439/416/418 pp.) Recommended. MX’s web-sites are at <www.mxpublishing.com> and...

If you have ever read “A Scandal in Bohemia” and wondered what Watson’s allusion to “Mr. John Hare” means… if you aren’t sure who was in charge in southeast Asia when Mycroft Holmes mentions “the present state of Siam”… if you’re wondering about Watson’s portrait of General Gordon or Holmes’s Vernet relatives or what Scottish expert on poisons Scotland Yard consulted when the Baker Street duo weren’t available… this is your book. It provides one-paragraph biographies of 800 real-life Victorians and Edwardians who strolled down Oxford Street near Holmes and Watson or figured in the newspapers they read. That mention...