Sherlock Holmes Book Reviews - The Redacted Sherlock Holmes Volume X
Publié par Steve Emecz le
Pobel Sec Publishing
Orlando Pearson researches the historical premise of each of his stories thoroughly, finding fascinating quirks and little known anecdotes from the historical and famous into which to weave Holmes's presence. Every time I read one of his stories I learn some bizarre and fascinating true anecdote from history. The result is a charming and whimsical collection of stories, a little like a Victorian menagerie, that will have you reaching for Wikipedia or the Encyclopædia Britannica to winnow the truth from the fiction. A thoroughly enjoyable read.
"It is respectful, readable, and attentive to historical texture. It may not rival the taut brilliance of the originals, but it offers a thoughtful and entertaining extension of the Baker Street world."
Astonishingly, this is the tenth volume of The Redacted Sherlock Holmes, Orlando Pearson having now matched Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in writing 56 short stories featuring the famous detective. And I suspect Mr Pearson is far from finished.
The point of the redacted stories is that they supposedly deal with those cases that it was considered inappropriate for various reasons to present immediately to the general public, so that they were locked away safely until sufficient time had passed, the main characters having died, or the issues raised being no longer too dangerous or scandalous to reveal.
They are great fun to read, involving as they do, historical figures contemporaneous with the great detective. Who knew, for instance, that Sherlock Holmes was a pupil of Brahms on the violin – or was it the other way round? After all, Brahms’s double concerto for violin and ‘cello opens with notes in a rhythm that mimic the name Sherlock Holmes – dotted crochet, quaver, crochet. Or that the 83-year-old detective, on a visit to Berlin in 1937, was enough of a musicologist not only to discover a missing Schumann violin concerto, but to memorise it and restore to it the improvements that “the Jew Joachim,” a virtusos violinist, the Paganini of his age, had made to the manuscript, in the face of Nazi … let’s call them redactions? Watson and Holmes even travel to Siberia and are present when a meteor breaks through the Earth’s atmosphere and explodes dramatically over the tundra, Holmes having predicted the event from his observations at the Greenwich Observatory. Would such an event, he wonders, account for the extinction of the dinosaurs?
On a much more down-to-earth level, Holmes even provides advice regarding erectile dysfunction – not sparing Watson’s blushes, though couched in Latin terminology – to the sexually voracious writer of erotica, Anaïs Nin (right) in her pursuit of the author, Henry Miller.
All absolute hokum, you may be thinking, but, in fact, as Henry Durham, historical adviser to the collection (and a dead ringer for Mr P) points out in his notes, much of this is rooted in reality – the Tunguska event in Siberia, for instance – which adds even more spice to the tales.
A lot of fun and educational, too. I look forward to Volume XI.
Amazon USA
"if you have ever mused what Holmes might say when he came face to face with the Grim Reaper himself, look no further than this collection of highly imaginative stories!"
"Holmes has a varied experiences with a small handful of musical composers. With several afterwords of various cases, provides an enjoyable repast to these stories. Loved this book."
The Redacted Sherlock Holmes Volume X is available from this site and all good bookstores.
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Arthur Conan Doyle wrote fifty-six short works about Sherlock Holmes. With this book of eight tales Orlando Pearson joins him on this number.
In Volume X of The Redacted Sherlock Holmes, the Great Baker Street Detective busts two city scandals, engages with three great composers and three kings, couples two famous writers, investigates the fall of the dinosaurs, and jousts with Death and the Devil.
Can Orlando's fourth Holmesian novel be far behind?