A Sherlock Holmes Trilogy

Rating:
Summary: Sadly, earlier negative review appears correct
Review: First, I'll admit that I read only the posted excerpt for this book, so take these comments and the rating with a grain of salt. Just from reading the few pages posted, however, I must concur that the earler negative review of this book is probably correct. In just those few pages, I found numerous sloppy and unnecessary punctuation errors. What's worse, the case in the excerpt is supposed to take place in 1884 -- and yet Watson discusses Holmes' experience with coal tar derivative, which took place during the Great Hiatus of 1891-94; his book, "A Study In Scarlett," which hadn't even see magazine publication in 1884, much less book publication; and the Dreyfus affair, which didn't take place until 1894. Either the author is horribly inept on his historical and Sherlockian facts (which seems unlikely given his back cover bio) or he simply made the careless error of writing 1884 when he meant 1894 and never caught it in proofing the copy. Either way, it doesn't bode well for the rest of the book. Having written a pastiche or two myself, I know it isn't as easy a genre as it may appear, so I'm inclined to be sympathetic toward the author. But he really needs to do a better proofing job in the future--or hire a professional to help out next time.

Rating:
Summary: Rudimentary, my dear Watson...
Review: Here's another candidate for what I hope will remain a fairly short shelf, the Holmes pastiche whose author thought enough of it to pay to have it published, but not enough of it to revise and rewrite it up to any acceptable literary standards. The other volumes on this shelf at my abode are Fullenkamp's SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE ADVENTURE OF THE THREE DRAGONS, and Stefanie's THE CHARTERS AFFAIR.

What we get here are three short novels, averaging about 90 pages apiece. Both dialogue and narration are best described as "rough," and the book has many misprints on top of the author's own continual gaffes. [See if you can guess what punctuation has been inexplicably replaced by a capital C, on p. 57 and many other places in the first adventure! See if you can spot the reference to the "annuls of crime." See Mycroft say, "You must drop it," when he really means (to judge from remarks immediately following) that Sherlock needs to solve the crime as soon as humanly possible.]

What is one to make of a spying adventure during WW I in which the female villainess (who, alas, remains mostly offstage) is named Frederica Von StRada? [I guess it is a mercy she wasn't named Emmie Amelingling, if we have to keep the operatic reference!] What is one to make of Holmes depending upon pendulum dowsing to locate a German submarine base, in the same adventure? Not even Conan Doyle, despite his gullibility and fanatic devotion to what we now call the New Age, would have let Holmes mingle with the supernatural... a realm where Holmes, functioning as Holmes, could only act as a debunker to the foolish beliefs Conan Doyle would have been terrified to have debunked. [See the recent, fine biography of Conan Doyle by Daniel Stashower for more on this point.]

The three cases, apart from the spy adventure, which is all frantic action, involve a not very mysterious murder near Stonehenge, leading to an incomprehensible climax involving buried treasure, and a complex case of art forgery. The art forgery adventure suffers from lack of a Holmesian summing up, so that the reader is left even more mystified than Watson by some of the events. The Stonehenge adventure suffers from total and complete predictablity from the earliest pages onward.

If, like me, you think there was something to be said for Edward D. Wood Jr. as a writer of prose fiction, you may also find a place in your heart for works like this one. Otherwise, I think you really must drop it, Mister or Ms. Gentle Reader!

Rating:
Summary: A Sherlock Holmes Trilogy
Review: What a pleasure to read a Holmes and Watson critique where they are not chasing Drakula or Frankenstein , or worse yet dealing with a chase on Planet Mars. These 3 short stories take us back to "Victorian and Edwardian Times" and have all the atmosphere of those times which was so interesting in the original stories by Arthur Conrad Doyle.

Rating:
Summary: A Sherlock Holmes Trilogy
Review: What a pleasure to read a Holmes and Watson critique where they are not chasing Drakula or Frankenstein , or worse yet dealing with a chase on Planet Mars. These 3 short stories take us back to "Victorian and Edwardian Times" and have all the atmosphere of those times which was so interesting in the original stories by Arthur Conrad Doyle.