News

We caught up with Charlie a couple of days before the paperback release of his debut Sherlock Holmes pastiche 'The Case of The Russian Chessboard'. Originally released on Amazon Kindle, this short novel has had rave reviews for its stark portrayal of a mystery involving Russian exiles. What led you to write a Sherlock Holmes pastiche? I thought I could do better than the ones I’d been reading! I remember reading June Thompson’s ‘Secret Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes’ and ‘Secret Files’ and thinking ‘What makes so many of these well-written stories so unsatisfying, compared to Conan Doyle?’ I did some...

Last week the world's largest unofficial fan site for BBC's Sherlock, Sherlockology, went live, with tens of thousands of visitors in the first 24 hours. A quick look through the site and you can see why. They have a huge amount of information about the BBC series, which enlisted an immediate response from the show’s producers within hours of the site going live. In term's of The Great Sherlock Holmes Debate the timing couldn't have been better as now the team behind Sherlockology have thrown their considerably large hat in the ring and joined the BBC team. This is important...

With well over 1,000 journalists from around the world reading the Great Sherlock Holmes Debate press release, and dozens of enquiries, it has been a tough decision on where the first press pass for the debate would go. Should we go mass-readship, or specialist Holmes? In the end we opted to go with a Victorian and Holmes specialist. Always 1895 has garnered a strong following built on the highly detailed articles on Holmes that come out weekly. We also have assurances that they will display Holmes and Watson esque detective skills tracking down the stories behind the teams and team...

The match-ups in The Great Sherlock Holmes Debate are getting fascinating, with the two leading Sherlock Holmes podcasts - I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere and The Baker Street Babes lining up on opposite sides of the debate. As we announced a few days ago, 'The Babes' will be supporting BBC's Sherlock and now 'The Lads (as it were) from I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere, Scott and Burt, will be contributing to the Guy Ritchie films. They have a secret weapon too - they have interviewed an adviser to the films on their podcast so have lots of material to work...

"This is a pleasing book, whether the reader is a casual admirer of the Sherlockian Canon or a true aficionado". The Ill Dressed Vagabond (aka Philip K Jones) is one of the world's leading Sherlock Holmes reviewers. He maintains a huge online database of stories and pastiches. Here he reviews the collection of short fiction from Gerard Kelly - The Outstanding Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes. "This collection brought back a number of old friends and introduced me to a pair of new acquaintances.  Eleven of these tales were published in pamphlet format in 1999.  They have not been easy to...