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Rating: 
Summary: huge fun - highly recommended
Review: I've just finished this and am amazed by how much I enjoyed it - I'd bought it expecting to hate it but not so. It's very patchy but no more so than Conan Doyle's original stories, and the only really terrible bit is one effort by his son Adrian which is a complete failure, although a very involved thing about Scotland (which left me wondering, why couldn't he have just put the brooch in his pocket? - you'll know what I mean when you've read it) tries the patience rather. Best are the 'Purple Hand' and 'Second Stain' stories, both of which the man himself would have been very proud of, but all are honourable additions to the mythos, hugely enjoyable and very sensitive to the much-loved originals.
Rating:
Summary: The Best of the Holmes Pastiche Collections
Review: In this volume Richard Lancelyn Green has assembled some of the best of the noncanonical Holmes short stories as of 1986. I personally think _The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes_ by Adrian Conan Doyle and John Dickson Carr is a slightly better collection overall, but this one comes close.
Adrian Conan Doyle is represented here as well, the adventure of "Arnsworth Castle" being simply a republication of "The Red Widow" from _Exploits_. (I disagree with the reviewer who thought the story was a "complete failure," but I also disagree with anthologist Green that it is the strongest of the younger Doyle's Holmes pastiches.)
The highlight of the collection is undoubtedly Denis O. Smith's "The Purple Hand." This is the first of Smith's Holmes tales (of which another -- "The Silver Buckle" -- appears in _The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures_); in general they are among the best pastiches in the short-story genre. (Smith has published them in three volumes under the title _The Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes_.)
Other high points include "The Tired Captain" and "The Green Empress," based on two unrecorded cases mentioned by Watson in the first paragraph of "The Naval Treaty." The latter of the two cases requires a brief explanation.
"The Green Empress" is the new title of the tale mentioned in a review below under the name "The Second Stain." Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, of course, wrote a story of that title as well, but the version he published does not seem to match the description in "The Naval Treaty." There is also a reference to the "affair of the second stain" in the opening paragraph of "The Yellow Face" (which the Bantam/Doubleday version for some reason emends so that it refers instead to the "adventure of the Musgrave Ritual"). Some Sherlockians claim this remark refers to yet a third case, though I do not happen to know the foundation of this claim. At any rate there would thus appear to have been at least two and perhaps three Holmes cases catalogued by Watson under the same name.
F.P. Cellie's tale fills in the details of the one mentioned in "The Naval Treaty." In 1967 it won a contest in South Africa under its original title of "The Second Stain," and its title has been altered for publication in the present volume. End of explanation.
Another highlight: this volume is the only one currently in print -- so far as I know -- in which Vincent Starrett's classic "The Unique _Hamlet_" is collected. In my own view this pastiche is somewhat overrated (being among other things ludicrously easy to solve), but at any rate it's a good one to have; at least it was one of the first, having been privately published in 1920.
And another point which may be of interest to Amazon shoppers: the larger and more recent collection _The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures_, edited by Michael Ashley (and with a foreword by Green), does not include _any_ overlap with the present volume. Owners of one may therefore feel safe in purchasing the other.
Rating:
Summary: A good collection.
Review: In this volume Richard Lancelyn Green has assembled some of the best of the noncanonical Holmes short stories as of 1986. I personally think _The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes_ by Adrian Conan Doyle and John Dickson Carr is a slightly better collection overall, but this one comes close. Adrian Conan Doyle is represented here as well, the adventure of "Arnsworth Castle" being simply a republication of "The Red Widow" from _Exploits_. (I disagree with the reviewer who thought the story was a "complete failure," but I also disagree with anthologist Green that it is the strongest of the younger Doyle's Holmes pastiches.) The highlight of the collection is undoubtedly Denis O. Smith's "The Purple Hand." This is the first of Smith's Holmes tales (of which another -- "The Silver Buckle" -- appears in _The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures_); in general they are among the best pastiches in the short-story genre. (Smith has published them in three volumes under the title _The Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes_.) Other high points include "The Tired Captain" and "The Green Empress," based on two unrecorded cases mentioned by Watson in the first paragraph of "The Naval Treaty." The latter of the two cases requires a brief explanation. "The Green Empress" is the new title of the tale mentioned in a review below under the name "The Second Stain." Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, of course, wrote a story of that title as well, but the version he published does not match the description in "The Naval Treaty." Some Sherlockians (according to Green) also claim to find a reference to another "Second Stain" case in "The Yellow Face," though I do not happen to know the foundation of this claim. There would thus appear to have been at least two and perhaps three Holmes cases catalogued by Watson under the same name. F.P. Cellie's tale fills in the details of the one mentioned in "The Naval Treaty." In 1967 it won a contest in South Africa under its original title of "The Second Stain," and its title has been altered for publication in the present volume. End of explanation. Another highlight: this volume is the only one currently in print -- so far as I know -- in which Vincent Starrett's classic "The Unique _Hamlet_" is collected. In my own view this pastiche is somewhat overrated (being among other things ludicrously easy to solve), but at any rate it's a good one to have; at least it was one of the first, having been privately published in 1920. And another point which may be of interest to Amazon shoppers: the larger and more recent collection _The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures_, edited by Michael Ashley (and with a foreword by Green), does not include _any_ overlap with the present volume. Owners of one may therefore feel safe in purchasing the other.
Rating:
Summary: The Best of the Holmes Pastiche Collections
Review: Richard Lancelyn Green has examined nearly a century's worth of Holmesian pastiches and collected some of the very best in this book. Stories date from 1920 through the 1980's. Many pastiches try to parody or reinvent the originals, but theses stories affectionately recapture the flavor and tone of the canon.
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