Alias Simon Hawkes: Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in New York

Rating:
Summary: Please don't let this be the last!
Review: The character of Simon Hawkes (Sherlock in disguise in New York) is great! I have often felt that other stories of the so-called "lost years" ignored one crucial fact: Holmes could change his name, his looks, etc. but you could never take the detective out of the man. As he often said, his work was his life. This author needs to write more in the same style as his previous books. Both get five Sherlock Stars from me!

Rating:
Summary: Please don't let this be the last!
Review: The character of Simon Hawkes (Sherlock in disguise in New York) is great! I have often felt that other stories of the so-called "lost years" ignored one crucial fact: Holmes could change his name, his looks, etc. but you could never take the detective out of the man. As he often said, his work was his life. This author needs to write more in the same style as his previous books. Both get five Sherlock Stars from me!

Rating:
Summary: CLever and Original
Review: The stories in this collection are among the weakest Sherlock Holmes pastiches this reviewer has ever encountered. (And I am guilty of reading a lot of them.)
To begin with, the character known as Simon Hawkes bears not the slightest resemblance to the real Sherlock Holmes. In truth the central character is so totally devoid of personality that he resembles no one at all.
The writer has relieved himself of any obligation to imitate the prose style of Watson by casting the stories in the third person. Also a presumed American accent might account for other oddities. Unfortunately the author's prose style is almost as drab as his characters are lifeless. In addition the author has fallen into the trap into which writers of historical stories often stumble - namely the tendency fill the story with irrelevant historical detail. For example, did we really need three paragraphs of background on the New York Elevated Railway in order to get Holmes (or whoever) into a train ?
Finally in regard to plotting, we will consider the first story, essentially a novella. The author apparently considers this to be an ingenious locked room story. Alas, the solution is so obvious that anyone beyond a complete novice will see it even as the events unfold, making the rest of the endeavor a truly tedious exercise.
Perhaps the overall result could be given two stars, but I see no reason to encourage, in this overcrowded field of pastiche writers, someone who cannot write well, who cannot create real characters and who has no ability in plotting.

Rating:
Summary: A great disappointment
Review: The stories in this collection are among the weakest Sherlock Holmes pastiches this reviewer has ever encountered. (And I am guilty of reading a lot of them.)
To begin with, the character known as Simon Hawkes bears not the slightest resemblance to the real Sherlock Holmes. In truth the central character is so totally devoid of personality that he resembles no one at all.
The writer has relieved himself of any obligation to imitate the prose style of Watson by casting the stories in the third person. Also a presumed American accent might account for other oddities. Unfortunately the author's prose style is almost as drab as his characters are lifeless. In addition the author has fallen into the trap into which writers of historical stories often stumble - namely the tendency fill the story with irrelevant historical detail. For example, did we really need three paragraphs of background on the New York Elevated Railway in order to get Holmes (or whoever) into a train ?
Finally in regard to plotting, we will consider the first story, essentially a novella. The author apparently considers this to be an ingenious locked room story. Alas, the solution is so obvious that anyone beyond a complete novice will see it even as the events unfold, making the rest of the endeavor a truly tedious exercise.
Perhaps the overall result could be given two stars, but I see no reason to encourage, in this overcrowded field of pastiche writers, someone who cannot write well, who cannot create real characters and who has no ability in plotting.

Rating:
Summary: CLever and Original
Review: These are well written tales that are sure to be enjoyed by anyone who likes a good story and mystery but which will prove, I think, to be especially tantalizing to the real mystery affectionado. As most mystery lovers know, Edgar Allan Poe originated the "locked room" mystery with his "Murders in the Rue Morgue". Since then the "locked room mystery" (in which the victim's body is found in a locked room with seemingly no possible way out for a killer) has been a staple of the mystery genre. "The Sign of Four" by A. Conan Doyle, the Holmes novella, was also a locked room mystery.

What makes two stories in this collection so good is that they are very clever variations on the locked room mystery. There is originality here which is pleasant to see in a genre so much written in that one might think no further originality is possible. Yet here it is. "The Adventure of the Magic Alibi", a novella, turns the locked room story around and has the murder victim's body found outside the locked room while it is the killer who is inside the locked room with seemingly no way out.

So certain are the witnesses there on the night of the murder that the killer must have been in the locked room that the police are unable to arrest the killer even though the victim has written the murderer's name in blood before dying! And these witnesses are absolutely positive the killer was in the room with them despite never having actually seen him at the time! An impossibility! Well, not quite. That very "impossible" plot is pulled off nicely here.

The second variation on the locked room mystery is "The Adventure of the Glass Room" which is (unless someone discovers another) the first and only "locked room within a locked room" mystery. Here the victim(s) are found inside not one locked room but two! What is impressive about this story, besides the cleverness of the plot, is the fact that the existence of a glass room inside another room is so well explained that it seems rational under the circumstances. Very often clever "puzzle" plots outdo themselves by seeming totally unrealistic (as with a few mysteries by the great John Dickson Carr)but that is not the case with this story, which is grounded in a sense of 1893 reality.

The tale entitled "The Adventure of the Art Forger" is as much a suspense tale as a mystery and has its own kind of "tongue in cheek" connection with A. Conan Doyle's "The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb". Sherlockians will appreciate the deduction made here as it harkens back to Doyle's own Holmes story. As with Doyle's story, the deduction is a simple one if the reader is paying attention.

Then there is "The Adventure of the Talking Ghost", a nice tale of murder and seances. Here is a serial killer plot that could have been expanded into its own novel if the author chose to do so.This story ends the book nicely with a suggestion by the author that Sherlock Holmes is about to leave his hiding place of New York City (remember that Sherlock is running from the revenge of Moriarty's gang) and "become Sherlock Holmes again. " That is, return to England, to his home. As we Sherlockians know, Holmes did reappear quite dramatically causing his friend Watson to faint dead away for the first and only time in his life while, at the same time, causing Holmes' fans to applaud with joy...Very nice job here indeed.--Behind the Curtain Review