Customer Reviews

Gaslight Grimoire: Fantastic Tales of Sherlock Holmes

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4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a collection of Sherlockian tales in which, to quote David Stuart Davies' Forward, "Ghosts may apply." Each of the tales involves some `supernatural' element, a Djinn, a Vampire, a painting, quite a variety of individuals and items. In fact, Chico Kidd and Rick Kennett's "The Grantchester Grimoire" is only the second pastiche I know of that pairs Holmes and Hodgson's Carnacki the Ghost Finder in a single tale. Further, each tale is written by one who knows Holmes and Watson intimately, which makes them disturbing at the very least.

The stage is set by the opening tale, "The Lost Boy," by Barbara Hambly. When the Darling children disappear, Mr. Darling consults Sherlock Holmes and Mrs. Darling goes to an old friend who, like her, knew Peter Pan from her youth. At the end of this sad and lovely story, one is left wondering who, exactly, was "The Lost Boy" of the title.

Each of the tales has its own context and viewpoint. Nothing carries across from one to the next except the certainty that things will be not quite what they seem. The sheer nastiness of the villain in Christopher Sequeira's "His Last Arrow" is balanced by the delight of an aged Holmes in his (2nd?) meeting with Count Dracula in Bob Madison's "Red Sunset." Martin Powell's "Sherlock Holmes in the Lost World" gives new meaning to `Non-stop Adventure' with a surprise villain thrown in as an extra. Strictly speaking, Chris Roberson's "Merridew of Abominable Memory' has no supernatural element, but it is a true horror story and it fits right in with the rest of the collection.

As is true with most anthologies, some tales appeal to one taste and some to another. This group seems well mixed, with a variety of approaches and themes. I have mostly commented on those stories that appealed to me. There was, however, one perfectly marvelous tale by Kim Newman called "The Red Planet League" that deserves special attention. It is told by "...your humble narrator - Colonel Sebastian `Basher' Moran ..." and it is worth the reading if only for the delicious villainies of `Basher.' Of the eleven tales included, all are worth reading and several will stand up to re-reading. The only bad feature I found was the quality of the binding on my copy, which seems to induce cover curl.

Reviewed by: Philip K. Jones, October, 2008.

There are eleven stories in this "grimoire"; stories where Holmes encounters crimes and/or events beyond the usual scope of the rational detective. Some are good, some are not. Many have little to do with classic Holmsian approaches.

The first story is "The Lost Boy". A combination of Holmes, Peter Pan, and a dash of H.P. Lovecraft. As a story it is "neither fish, nor fowl". It lacks the childishness of Peter Pan, the deductive trill of Holmes, and the terror of old HPL. The adventure is good, but Holmes attracting fairies?

Next is "His Last Arrow". This is a Watson driven story, and pretty good. But, again, the situation is not so much Sherlock Holmes as it is an alternate fantastic view of the detective. In other words, this is not a story about the great detective so much as a fantasy tale. It's still pretty good, and the ending is a surprise.

Now "The Things that Shall Come Upon Them" is a good story. With conflicting views as to weather there is a mechanistic vs. spiritual answer to the problem in on hold past the end of the story. Are they being haunted? Or are they being burgled? This one is good.

"The Finishing Stroke" is an inventive way to use the old "artist as mystic" trope. I liked it a great deal as a story. A pity the art at the start of the story kind of gave away the plot.

"Sherlock Holmes in the Lost World" isn't particularly good. A rehash of the "Lost World" dinosaur's plateau story with Holmes in it. Not much to recommend, either as a story or a Holmes pastiche.

Next is "The Grantchester Grimoire". I liked this one a lot. Again, the art at the start gave too much away, but it was a good, classic gothic tale, where the Detective was doing what we expect him to do. Missing evil books and ghosts at the windows lead to certain dark ends.

When I got to "The Steamship Friesland", I became a bit disgusted. This is not to do with deduction, but just having a ghost tell Holmes what was going on. Seriously, where's the Holmes connection, aside from the fact he's the one the ghost talks to?

"The Entwined" is a tough call. The girl confessing to murders she could not have possible done, but holding certain knowledge of them is a good plot line. The idea is good, but it's more HPL (as in you don't need a great deal of deductive ability) than it is Holmes.

"Merridew of Abominable Memory" takes place with Watson in a respite home, retelling a story of his former days with Holmes to the Doctor. Again, this is not so much a Sherlock Holmes story as it is a glimpse into horror. Holmes does play his usual role, but the point of the story is more about why Watson is hating his memories than the deductions of Holmes.

And then there's "Red Sunset". Holmes, at 100+, in a gangster 1940's situation. Need I say more? And there are vampires. And it's Dracula. And even with these spoilers, you couldn't appreciate the story less than if you read it cold.

The last, "The Red Planet League", is an interesting one. Holmes isn't in it. It's about a rather convoluted plan of Moriarty's (chronicled by Col. Moran) to get back at a fellow astronomer who has disputed his great book on asteroids. It's a good story, and a fantastic plot. It's a sort of anti-Holmes, showing all the meticulateness of a serious plan, just to be done for evil. I thought it rather clever, over all.

The collection as a whole disappointed, but some of the stories are certainly worth reading, if you can get them separate from the rest.

I love Barbara Hambly's work as a writer, and this book was worth it just for her story. As a collection it gave me my Holmes fix, and I will definitely read it again. And probably several more times after that. I'd say it was a good, solid B+ or A- level Holmes read - close, but stumbling occasionally into too obvious-ness.

Even though Arthur Conan Doyle was a well-known occult writer, he had to keep Sherlock Holmes, his most famous creation, grounded in reality. Doyle couldn't weaken his popularity by giving Holmes a number of occult and fantastic cases to solve. This book takes care of that.

Watson was severely injured, and should have died, while serving with the British Army in Afghanistan. but there seems a cost to Watson from that dark time in his life, and this intersects with the role of a strange Afghani man named Farakhan many years later when Holmes and Watson work a case; a case of what looks like suicide by crossbow. The story ends with a weird and mystical twist.

During World War II, Holmes is in a California nursing home. The damage to British morale would be too severe if he should be killed by the Nazis. Holmes helps a local detective discover how a man can be shot three times, twice in the chest and once in the head, and walk away. It has to do with the importation of fifty pine boxes from Romania, filled with vampires willing to work for the Allies.

In other stories, Holmes and Watson meet up with two famous literary occult detectives, Flaxman Low and Thomas Carnacki. Holmes is very much of a realist; no matter how weird and occult things may seem, there is usually a rational explanation. But he does not totally dismiss un-rational explanations.

I really enjoyed these stories. They are well done, and they are nice and weird without being too weird. Holmes fans will love this book, and so will occult fiction fans.

I bought this book in Toronto because it had a Kim Newman story ("The Red Planet League") I hadn't seen before. I'll buy any Kim Newman story I see.

Like all of Newman's work, this story is entertaining, with allusions to classic Victorian science fiction and fantasy and 1950s Hollywood versions of it. It doesn't have the social criticism of Newman's best work (for instance the Zorro-werewolf story "Out of the Night, When the Full Moon is Bright" in The Mammoth Book of Werewolves (The Mammoth Book Series), or any of his stories about the Flower Power Antichrist Derek Leech, such as "Another Fish Story" in The Secret Files of the Diogenes Club), but the story does have the original idea of Professor Moriarty as hero with his criminal compatriot Colonel Moran as his biographer, à la Doctor Watson.

Several stories in Gaslight Grimoire have Holmes and Watson interacting with other heroes of their time, like Hesketh Pritchard's Flaxman Low and William Hope Hodgson's Carnacki the Ghost Finder.

My favorite story in this collection is Barbara Hambly's "The Lost Boy," which has a different Watson as narrator, and shows Holmes responding emotionally to a woman in a way that's consistent with the misogyny of the Conan Doyle stories. At the end of this story I felt sorry for two characters--three if you count the boy who never grew up.

The ending of the second story in the book, Christopher Sequeira's "His Last Arrow," completely surprised me. If you've ever wondered why Holmes can solve mysteries that are incomprehensible to everyone else, the answer is here.

"The Finishing Stroke" by M. J. Elliott will appeal to anyone who, like me, is fascinated by the various versions of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. (ADDITIONAL RECOMMENDATIONS: If that includes you, you should read Will Self's novel Dorian: An Imitation and see the movie Pact With the Devil starring Malcolm McDowell.)

All the stories in Gaslight Grimoire are enjoyable at the very least, and the book reminds me of what Oscar Wilde said: I can believe anything as long as it's truly incredible.

The idea of combining the ultra-rational (supposedly) mind of Sherlock Holmes with supernatural happenings is one bound to produce some interesting challenges, and many of the authors in this anthology met those challenges with good stories. From the first - where Holmes, Dr. Watson's wife, and Peter Pan - yes, THAT Peter Pan - must solve a kidnapping, to the last, which doesn't even include Holmes, but rather features Dr. Moriarty as the - well, protagonist, if not exactly good guy - every story in this collection is different.

Some of the stories had no supernatural content at all - "Merridew of Abominable Memory," for example, features a character with an eidetic memory; perhaps the extent of that ability is stretched a little beyond what we normally think of as a photographic memory, but not into the realm of a supernatural power, and the crimes involved are entirely down-to-earth. And the aforementioned final story, "The Red Planet League," is not exactly supernatural either: Moriarty and a rival scientist disagree on an astronomical issue, and Moriarty gets even by using some science fictional ideas, but not fantasy or the supernatural. This is one of the funniest stories in the book, in my opinion. The first story, involving Peter Pan, although OK, is somewhat weak, and would be totally incomprehensible and pointless to anyone who hadn't ever read "Peter Pan." Another story, "His Last Arrow," is a thoughtful story of Dr. Watson's introspection on why he continues to associate with Holmes and what drives his need to write about it; the supernatural nature of it is rather unlikely and would probably bother some Holmes fans, as Holmes does not come out on the good side of Watson's analysis.

One of the things I really enjoyed about the book: the illustrations by Phil Cornell which accompany each story. For many of them, it's not obvious what the illustration means at the beginning of the story, but at the end, you go back and look and say, aha! If only I had interpreted this correctly, I would have seen it coming! But unless you are Holmes, you won't have guessed which details of the illustration are important in advance. Perhaps my favorite story AND my favorite illustration was "Red Sunset."

A suggestion: read this and _The Final Solution: A Story of Detection_ by Michael Chabon (# ISBN-10: 0060777109) together. You'll enjoy them both!

Realistically, if you're lucky, you get one real Sherlock Holmes story in a collection like this. And although a couple of them are fun reading, none of these stories succeed in evoking the spirit of Holmes. Try August Derleth's "Solar Pons" series.

I can't say I was surprised by the stories in this book. The blurb pretty much gives an accurate description. The stories all have a supernatural element. I guess I just decided that I don't like a book to have stories that are ALL supernatural in nature. It gets boring. I much prefer a collection of stories that has some with supernatural resolutions and some that have a logical explanation. This keeps me guessing more, which is a good thing in an anthology of detective tales! The companion book, Gaslight Grotesque, is pretty much the same. Good, but not great.

When a book is bye-lined as "Fantastic Tales of Sherlock Holmes", the readers (already hooked or potential) have to select from either of two options: to indulge themselves with a strange but highly intriguing collection like "Shadow Over Baker Street", or to apprehend that another bunch of ordinary-to-boring stories are attempted to be passed off as Sherlockian pastiches. This particular book has both sides (probably more "natural" in that way only), and I am trying to give a very brief idea about the stories.

1. The introductory "Ghosts May Apply" by that tirelessly Sherlockian anthologist David Stuart Davies and introduction by Charles Prepolec are good intro-s and are more than the usual "getting-in the path towards actual stuff".
2. "The Lost Boy" by Barbara Hambly is a sad & rather boring tale involving Holmes, Peter Pan, the Great Old One and Mrs. Watson. READ IT SINCE YOU HAVE BOUGHT THE BOOK.
3. "His Last Arrow" by Christopher Sequeira is a mystic jumble that vilifies the legend that is Holmes without having any conviction in its telling. RUBBISH AND DISTINCTLY AVOIDABLE.
4. "The Things That Shall Come Upon Them" by Barbara Roden is the best story in this collection in terms of structure, logic, as well as characterization, that involves Holmes, Flaxman Low and a sinister character made famous by that provost of Eton over whom we all go ga-ga. YOU MUST READ IT!
5. "The Finishing Stroke" by M.J. Elliott is a proper X-Files kind of adventure, and I thoroughly enjoyed it (esp. the ambiguous ending that left lot to think about). GOOD.
6. "Sherlock Holmes in the Lost World" by Martin Powell is a distinctly inferior attempt in reconciling two of Conan Doyle's creations into a rip-roaring adventure (if you are thinking about who the 2nd one might be then boo!) that fails on every count. AVOIDABLE.
7. "The Granchester Griomoire" by Chico Kidd & Rick Kennett revives the spirit of `472 Cheyne Walk' very successfully in this work involving Holmes & Carnacki, but somehow falls short of the level achieved by Barbara Roden. GOOD.
8. "The Steamship Friesland" by Peter Calamai is again a mumbo-jumbo tale trying to tie-up the loose ends left at the end of that classic of all classics "The Five Orange Pips". INFERIOR, BUT CAN BE READ.
9. "The Entwined" by J.R. Campbell deserves a place in the "Weird Tales" category and it is TRULLY WEIRD. That is the only comment that I can offer.
10. "Merridew of Abominable Memory" by Chris Roberson is a brutal take on the power of memory and how wrong it may cause if the power is to be exercised by evil (if you are remembering "Rain Man" then you have no idea about this). GOOD.
11. "Red Sunset" by Bob Madison is top-notch in its hardboiled style that manages to pit Holmes against the ultimate bad guy of English literature (no, I am not talking about Moriarty). EXCELLENT.
12. "The Red Planet League" by Kim Newman does not have Holmes in it, and yet, it manages to make this book very-very enjoyable because it narrates an adventure undertaken by the bad guys of the Holmesian world, and tags in several other turn-of-century characters as well. MORE THAN EXCELLENT.

So, as the summary goes: the book is recommended; read with caution at the first phase, then enjoy like there is no tomorrow (or no more volumes to devour).

It really isn't fair for me to give this only 2 stars as I assume the book is fine but I was expecting it to be like one of the many other modern Sherlock Holmes books and it was different in that it contains super-natural and very abnormal stories. I prefer the more "standard" holmes style of stories dealing with real life events. Again, I should have read more about it before buying but at first glance it didn't apear odd to me.