The Secret Cases of Sherlock Holmes [Paperback]

Donald Serrell Thomas (Author), Donald Thomas (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 1999

The premise: Sherlock Holmes did not in fact retire in 1903 to a quiet life of beekeeping in Sussex, but instead worked covertly as the consulting detective in some of the Edwardian era's most baffling, actual cases. The result: A collection of tales that compellingly weds fiction to history, as Baker Street's famous resident and his cohort Dr. Watson investigate seven of the most celebrated mysteries in the annals of true crime, from the grisly murder of a prostitute to the alleged bigamy of King George V.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Readers of a Sherlock Holmes pastiche have every right to expect a reasonable iteration of Conan Doyle's original creation, a detective whose essential humanity is cloaked in aloofness and whose superior intellect serves a passion to expose crimes. Thomas, a biographer (of Lewis Carroll and others) and novelist (The Ripper Apprentice), instead offers a smug Holmes whose ramblings through a collection of stories based on true crimes at the beginning of this century lack both clarity and credibility. The best of these tales include "The Case of the Camden House Murder," in which Holmes, retained to prove the innocence of an artist charged with the Ripper-like murder of a prostitute, conducts a convincingly quirky investigation with solid examples of Holmesian deduction. In "The Case of the Blood Royal," Holmes defends Queen Victoria's grandson Prince George against blackmail at the hands of Charles Augustus Howell and Prof. Moriarty in what becomes the prequel to Doyle's "The Final Problem." The author describes his tales as historical events, "over which the shadow of the Great Detective is allowed to pass." Holmes's presence in these pages is as fleeting and intangible as that shadow.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

Thomas (Dancing in the Dark, 1993, etc.) drags the inimitable detective out of retirement still again to investigate seven mysteries closely based on historical fact, from the alleged bigamy of George V (a case that brings him to the attention of Professor Moriarty) to the theft of the Irish crown jewels from an impregnable strongroom. Holmes journeys with a grumbling Watson to Paris to vindicate Captain Dreyfus (embroiling himself in the death of French President Flix Faure), books passage to Yokohama for the second of two cases of arsenic poisoning, and allies himself with the pyrotechnical barrister Sir Edward Marshall Hall for two cases closer to home. Holmes's repeated defense of hopeless cases casts him as an unlikely Perry Mason, and the cases themselves--spacious and leisurely, unfolding over a period of months or years--do more justice to history than to Holmes. But dedicated Sherlockians will appreciate the novelty of the great detective's incursion into real-life crimes that don't involve Jack the Ripper. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub (July 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786706368
• ISBN-13: 978-0786706365
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,336,201 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Holmes in true criminal investigations, November 14, 2000

By 

"grrreg" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Secret Cases of Sherlock Holmes (Hardcover)

The premise behind this book is simple: a number of criminal cases around the turn of the nineteenth/twentieth centuries are presented to include the involvement of Sherlock Holmes. The cases are "secret" because of one reason or another, including the involvement of high profile clients.

While the idea is a good one - and has been used before with the several versions of Sherlock Holmes investigating the activities of Jack the Ripper - the execution is sometimes frustrating. The cases under investigations are resolved in history, and so the "solutions" would have come about without Holmes' involvement (although Donald Thomas writes is such a way as you wouldn't think so).

I think that, for me, the main frustration is that Holmes is rarely there for the end, having done his investigations and left it to his clients and/or the authorities to finish the matter. While it is plainly established in he original Sherlock Holmes stories and novels by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that Holmes often resolved cases and left the credit to the official police force, somehow these stories make this quite frustrating.

However, the way in which Holmes and the investigations themselves are written is certainly good fare for fans of the Great Detective, although you might want to have a case in which he plays an active role in the conclusion handy in case you feel the frustrations I did.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sherlock in 'real' time, September 24, 2005

By 

FrKurt Messick "FrKurt Messick" (Bloomington, IN USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Secret Cases of Sherlock Holmes (Paperback)

In this collection of new stories, author Donald Thomas has given tribute to Holmes and Watson in what has become a fairly traditional manner - by writing new stories of adventures involving the detective and his companion. There are several different styles of this kind of honour; some authors pick up on details from canonical stories (there are 56 short stories and four novels penned by Conan Doyle); some invent entirely new fictional stories; then there is a third style, in which the author grafts Holmes and Watson onto historical or nearly historical situations.

This last method was employed in film-making during World War II, when Holmes was engaged in fighting the Nazi powers on behalf of Britain. Thomas keeps the stories he has developed within the typical timeframe of Holmes' canonical life - late Victorian and Edwardian times.

In 'The Ghost in the Machine', the case turns on an error of forensic investigation. In fact, Conan Doyle himself was once enlisted to try to clear a man using Holmesian methodology - this combines a real-life case with another real-life application and overlays the fictional detective on top of it.

The other stories in the collection are similarly based on actual historical events - this a sort of a 'what if' collection, speculating what might have happened had Holmes and Watson been available to do their investigation.

The stories are engaging, but have more to do with presenting a history than with really creating a new Holmesian addition. The stories are reasonably well written, but lack the style of Conan Doyle to the extent that even a good photocopy lacks the authenticity of the original.

This book is a must for those who want to be widely read and kept up with the games that are afoot in the continuing development of Holmesian lore. Fans who come to read this without the expectation that these are canonical or of the same quality as the better of Conan Doyle's pieces will not be disappointed.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Mediocre, July 28, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Secret Cases of Sherlock Holmes (Hardcover)

The author attempts to place Holmes in a number of real life cases and scandals but fails to capture neither the essence of the Holmes character or Doyle's writing style. All in all a rather flat and dry read.