Customer Reviews

Murder, My Dear Watson: New Tales of Sherlock Holmes

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I went ahead and invested in this follow-up to last year's "Murder in Baker Street", hoping that the stories would be better. Well, they weren't. The tales are just flat and unexciting. What happened to the good stories some of these authors used to contribute to previous anthologies? Out of this batch, maybe two are worth reading. Other than that, I would recommend saving $$ and renting it from the library.

"Murder, My Dear Watson" is one of the annual anthologies published by Carrol & Graf in their `New Tales of Sherlock Holmes' series. Most of these anthologies contain a few attractive stories with mediocre to bad stuff being presented generously. Fortunately, this particular collection scores significant points in terms of stories that involve Holmes' (albeit apocryphal) singular tales with certain `matters of interest'. Now for a very brief description of these tales:
1. "The Adventure of the Dying Doctor" by Colin Bruce is a very humane story where Watson (surprise!) is the main character, with a cameo by James Moriarty and Mycroft Holmes.
2. "The Adventure of the Young British Soldier" by Bill Crider is another story where Watson and his erstwhile orderly Murray take centre-stage. Of course Holmes is there, sharp as ever, poetic as well.
3. "The Vale of the White Horse" by Sharyn McCrumb is a complex tale with hints of bizarre hereditary traits and the consequences. It was a brilliant story with depths that are rarely aimed at.
4. "The Adventure of the Mooning Sentry" by Jon L. Breen is a mediocre story about one of Holmes' post-retirement `missions'.
5. "The Adventure of the Rara Avis" by Carolyn Wheat is a rather sensationalistic attempt to develop the tantalizing hints left by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle regarding the affair of the Addleton-Barrow' into a story about the Maltese Falcon.
6. "The Adventure of the Agitated Actress" by Daniel Stashower is a brilliant story about white might have happened on the stage before William Gillette's play "Sherlock Holmes" opened in London.
7. "The Case of the Highland Hoax" by Anne Perry and Malachi Saxon is an improbable, wild and poor story set in the Scottish Highlands.
8. ""The Case of the Golden Monkeys" by Loren D. Estleman is an almost Wold-Newton story involving Sax Rohmer and his Fu-Manchu model.
9. "The Adventure of the Curious Canary" by Barry Day is a good retelling of "The Speckled Band".
10. "Before the Adventures" by Lenore Carroll is a brilliant story about what could have happened to Watson before the entry of Holmes in his life.
The non-fiction writings included in this book contain a plethora of information about the world of Sherlock Holmes and how a Sherlockian may enrich his knowledge in these matters. Overall, highly recommended.

Within the past three months I've read a dozen collections of Holmes pastiches, and found this to be the best. It includes several quotable "plums." Such plums were one of the key features of the original Holmes stories; they'd be a raisinless rice pudding without them. Here are a few:

P. 13: The best way to tell a lie effectively is to tell the truth badly.

P. 18: The moral, Watson, is that while life contains its hazards, it is the man who does not know how to calculate the risks who is in real danger.

P. 67: An amateur. Which means he is either a genius or a dilettante. There is no in-between in such cases.

P. 69: Swamp gas can only explain so much, sir, so much and no more.

P. 154-55: I saw the small twitch of irony catch the corner of his mouth. The next moment the face had regained its classically sculpted lines, something poised between Roman senator and an American Indian.

P. 161: He acted as though he expected to have the fatted calf killed daily on his behalf.

An anthology of Holmes pastiches that again also has extras in the form of articles or essays at the end. One of which here looks at Sherlock Holmes on the internet - being written by someone who has constructed such a site, and a list of major books of interest to those interested in studying Sherlock Holmes at a decent level.

With a pretty decent overall story quailty, a worthwhile book for Holmes fans.

Murder My Dear Watson : 01 The Adventure of the Dying Doctor - Colin Bruce
Murder My Dear Watson : 02 The Adventure of the Young British Soldier - Bill Crider
Murder My Dear Watson : 03 The Vale of the White Horse - Sharyn McCrumb
Murder My Dear Watson : 04 The Adventure of the Mooning Sentry - Jon L. Breen
Murder My Dear Watson : 05 The Adventure of the Rara Avis - Carolyn Wheat
Murder My Dear Watson : 06 The Adventure of the Agitated Actress - Daniel Stashower
Murder My Dear Watson : 07 The Case of the Highland Hoax - Anne Perry and Malachi Saxon
Murder My Dear Watson : 08 The Riddle of the Golden Monkeys - Loren D. Estleman
Murder My Dear Watson : 09 The Adventure of the Curious Canary - Barry Day
Murder My Dear Watson : 10 Before the Adventures - Lenore Carroll


Moriarty has some comet predictions and life insurance dodges.

3 out of 5


Watson looks into helping an old army acquaintance who helped him.

3.5 out of 5


Hermaphrodite heredity case.

3 out of 5


The Birth of A Nation has Holmes involved at a screening, with a crazed killer on the loose.

3 out of 5


The brothers Holmes come across the Maltese Falcon.

4 out of 5


An early Holmes stage actor does some deduction.

3 out of 5


Holmes and Watson have a case of Killer Queen.

3.5 out of 5


Holmes and Watson meet Sax Rohmer, who has a problem of his own regarding the man upon whom he based Fu Manchu.

4 out of 5


A strange poisoning to look into.

3 out of 5


Watson's recovery after the war, and some literary insight and advice.

3.5 out of 5

I love Sherlock Holmes, and I love to explore Holmes pastiches, parodies, novels and essays. I was intrigued by this one, because I've read other anthologies and works by Stashower and Greenberg, so I thought I'd give this one a look too.

Wish I hadn't wasted my time. Very, very bad stories. They just weren't good. Slim plots that were easy to bust; poorly written and not in the Victorian style at all (I like pastiches that at least ATTEMPT to sound like Watson; 90 percent of these weren't even close); and Holmes and Watson were somewhat out of character (or not even in the piece, such as Stashower's short). One of the most annoying stories used exclamation points at the end of half the sentences. That drove me freakin' insane. Exclamation points are just uncalled for, and I don't imagine Holmes and Watson shouting constantly. Very bad. The only story I liked was Estleman's, but I knew I would because I've liked his other work.

I was also annoyed because most of these are not murder stories. They involve stolen brooches, riddles and, at its most boring, insurance swindles. Silly of me to think a book entitled "Murder, My Dear Watson," would kill off a few people.

The essays at the back don't offer much either. The one on "the head and the heart" is a decent read but is available in other collections. "Sherlock on the Internet" is woefully out of date; it's a 9-year-old essay, and the Internet has changed so much that nothing in the essay is really applicable. The author rants and raves about how cool listservs are. Talk about dating yourself. The third is just a list of other Holmes pastiches.

Pass on this one. I wish I had.

I enjoyed this anthology of new Sherlock Holmes stories. Most were well-written, if not earth-shattering.

I appreciated the chance, in "The Adventure of the Young British Soldier," to look at characters from Watson's past in Afganistan.

"The Adventure of Rara Avis" was a fun, fast-moving take on the Maltese Falcon.

In "The Riddle of the Golden Monkeys" an old Sherlock Holmes and Watson meet the young author of Dr. Fu-Manchu and help him solve a problem.

I enjoyed "The Highland Hoax." Although it was a bit confusing in bits, it had the adventurousness of a Holmes story. I'm not saying I believed all of it (I didn't, especially the conversation at the end that made Watson and Holmes sound quite disloyal to their royalty), but I had fun reading it.

"The Adventure of the Curious Canary" caused me some quibbles. I have owned canaries and I know they do not tame easily, or frequently fly to people's shoulders, or allow you to stroke them. This figured heavily in the story, and drew me out of it with a jerk and a "huh?"

"Before the Adventures" was a lot of fun, introducing "Budger," a lower-class prototype for Holmes. I really enjoyed how he arranged a seminal meeting in the story. The essays at the end were also enjoyable.

Overall, this book was a fun read, and well-done. None of the stories made me overly confused, or strained my credulity beyond the point where it could bounce back, and all were fun. I felt like the authors showed up and tried hard, and I would be glad to read more Holmes stories by them.

Ranging from the earliest days of Sherlock Holmes's career as a consulting detective (1882) to his retirement to beekeeping in Sussex (1917), these 10 original stories by mystery writers well known (Sharyn McCrumb, Loren D. Estleman, Anne Perry) and not so much (Carolyn Wheat, Lenore Carroll) have one thing in common: a careful faithfulness to the tone of Arthur Conan Doyle's Canon. Mostly narrated (as they should be) by Dr. Watson, they introduce characters ranging from a not-yet-notorious Prof. Moriarty to such historic figures as pioneer film director D. W. Griffith, actor William Gillette (who first enacted Holmes on the stage), and Sax Rohmer, creator of the villainous Dr. Fu Manchu. There's even a tale focusing on the Maltese Falcon which will, forty-odd years later, form the centerpiece of a bewildering case for yet another private detective. Despite the title, murder isn't always a feature of the cases here enumerated, and even when it is, it's handled tastefully, with proper late-Victorian discretion and delicacy. The book might have done just as well without the three factual essays that occupy the last quarter of it, but for those who enjoy well-done pastiches of The Great Detective, this collection should be quite satisfactory.

A treasure chest of short stories and interesting knowledge about Sherlock Holmes. Each perfectly packaged story is a thought evoking treat. This is a must read for those who can't get enough of Holmes and Watson.