Shadows Over Baker Street [Hardcover]

Michael Reaves (Editor), John Pelan (Editor)

Book Description

Release date: September 30, 2003

Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes is among the most famous literary figures of all time. For more than a hundred years, his adventures have stood as imperishable monuments to the ability of human reason to penetrate every mystery, solve every puzzle, and punish every crime.

For nearly as long, the macabre tales of H. P. Lovecraft have haunted readers with their nightmarish glimpses into realms of cosmic chaos and undying evil. But what would happen if Conan Doyle’s peerless detective and his allies were to find themselves faced with mysteries whose solutions lay not only beyond the grasp of logic, but of sanity itself.

In this collection of all-new, all-original tales, twenty of today’s most cutting edge writers provide their answers to that burning question.

“A Study in Emerald” by Neil Gaiman: A gruesome murder exposes a plot against the Crown, a seditious conspiracy so cunningly wrought that only one man in all London could have planned it–and only one man can hope to stop it.

“A Case of Royal Blood” by Steven-Elliot Altman: Sherlock Holmes and H. G. Wells join forces to protect a princess stalked by a ghost–or perhaps something far worse than a ghost.

“Art in the Blood” by Brian Stableford: One man’s horrific affliction leads Sherlock Holmes to an ancient curse that threatens to awaken the crawling chaos slumbering in the blood of all humankind.

“The Curious Case of Miss Violet Stone” by Poppy Z. Brite and David Ferguson: A girl who has not eaten in more than three years teaches Holmes and Watson that sometimes the impossible cannot be eliminated.

“The Horror of the Many Faces” by Tim Lebbon: Dr. Watson witnesses a maniacal murder in London–and recognizes the villain as none other than his friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

With these and fourteen other dark tales of madness, horror, and deduction, a new and terrible game is afoot.

The terrifyingly surreal universe of horror master H. P. Lovecraft bleeds into the logical world of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s champion of rational deduction–in these brand-new stories by twenty of today’s top horror, mystery, fantasy, and science fiction writers, including:

• Steven-Elliot Altman
• Elizabeth Bear
• Poppy Z. Brite
• Simon Clark
• David Ferguson
• Paul Finch
• Neil Gaiman
• Barbara Hambly
• Caitlin R. Kiernan
• Tim Lebbon
• James Lowder
• Richard A. Lupoff
• F. Gwynplaine McIntyre
• John Pelan
• Steve Perry
• Michael Reaves
• Brian Stableford
• John P. Vourlis
• David Niall Wilson & Patricia Lee Macomber

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Arthur Conan Doyle and H.P. Lovecraft were masters of mood and suggestion, qualities in short supply in this anthology collecting 18 all-original tales in which Sherlock Holmes and other Doylean characters confront various Lovecraftian horrors. A few contributions amount to cinematic action-adventure stories better suited to Indiana Jones, while perhaps the most atmospheric entry, Caitlin R. Kiernan's "The Drowned Geologist," with its sly Dracula allusions, relates more closely to her novel Threshold than to the book's theme. The more successful tales tend to adhere to traditional Holmesian scenarios, such as those by the two editors: Pelan's "The Mystery of the Worm" puts a neat Lovecraftian twist on one of Dr. Watson's untold cases, while Reaves's "The Adventure of the Arab's Manuscript" makes imaginative use of an unexpurgated copy of the Necronomicon found in an Afghan cave. Just as good are Richard A. Lupoff's "The Adventure of the Voorish Sign" and Poppy Z. Brite and David Ferguson's "The Curious Case of Miss Violet Stone." F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre's "The Adventure of Exham Priory" takes the humor prize for an egotistical quip from the master detective, who alludes to the cosmic conclave of human and alien minds in HPL's "The Shadow Out of Time": "I was offered a chance to commune with intellects nearly the equal of my own."
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Here's a real treat for fans of Sherlock Holmes, H. P. Lovecraft, and everyone in between: 20 original stories by writers of horror and fantasy. Neil Gaiman is here, along with Barbara Hambly, Richard Lupoff, Brian Stableford, Poppy Z. Brite, and many more. The premise is engaging: What if the world of Holmes, the world's most logical and rational detective, intersected with the world of Lovecraft, where logic and rationality have little meaning? These are stories about strange beasts, men cursed to death, and the walking un-dead. Most feature a powerful narrative voice. One stars Irene Adler and takes place nearly a decade before the events recounted in the classic Conan Doyle story, "A Scandal in Bohemia." Another is narrated by H. G. Wells. Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock's brother, appears in one tale; still another has Dr. Watson becoming Holmes' client. The stories, set between 1881 and 1915, are uniformly excellent, and the book, authorized by the Doyle estate, is a welcome addition to the Holmes canon. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 464 pages
• Publisher: Del Rey; 1 edition (September 30, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345455282
• ISBN-13: 978-0345455284
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #190,059 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #7 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Horror > Anthologies

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Three stars does not mean unreadable. That's what 1 is for. December 29, 2003

By socrates17

Format:Hardcover

I can half heartedly reccomend this with serious caveats.

Problem one. It is really a one-trick pony. OK. You get it. Holmes vs. various mythos creatures. This looks great on paper but does not sustain a book. If you are really interested, however, and since many of the stories are entertaining and a couple actually thought provoking, then buy it and read no more than one story a month, maybe every 6 weeks. This isn't only because of the limitations of the idea, but also because all but two authors chose (generally successfully) to mimic Doyle's/"Watson's" writing style.

Problem two. A disproportionate number of stories are based on The Shadow over Innsmouth. One that isn't, "The Curious Case of Miss Violet Stone," is, as has been pointed out by a previous review, based on The Shadow out of Time. This is one of the two best stories in the book. A few stories seem headed off down that sidetrack created by August Derleth where there was a chance in fighting back and winning with Help from Outside. In HPL doom was eventually inevitable and there was no Help available.

"Death Did Not Become Him" is very tenuously mythos being more related to the story of the Golem and Cabbalistic mysticism with a pretty lane excuse given for the connection.

Most of The Uspeakable Old Ones are named in various chants and so forth, but few put in an appearance. In the original HPL the power of suggestion hightened the suspense. Here it is merely disappointing. Shub-Niggurath has a cameo and I think (based on precious little evidence) that Nyarlathotep has some off-stage schtick. Most disappointing, Chthlhu Himself is totally AWOL, replaced by innumerable aquatic hybrids.

"The Case of the Antiquaritan's Niece," is vaguely related to "The Dunwich Horror."

The best story is by Neil Gaiman. More or less connected to At the Mountains of Madness, it also reminded me of the wonderful Kim Newman's Anno Dracula books.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Hypergeometry? Why, it's elementary! November 12, 2005

By Alexander Scott VINE™ VOICE

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Many fans of the literature of H.P. Lovecraft wonder what his fiction would have been like if set in another era. Ramsey Campbell is perhaps the best representative of the '60s and '70s while John Tynes and his crew admirably adapt the core of Cthulhu to the 1990's. But what about the 1890's? Well, there is already a game afoot in that period and it is the inestimable Sherlock Holmes and his faithful companion and recorder Dr. John Watson. The 1890's of Sherlock Holmes brings to the table of the Lovecraftian corpus the very summit of the Enlightenment and Rationality to be broken on the jagged rocks of Madness and Otherworldliness. Before the humbling of the Great War, all the power and prestige of the West was to be found in London, as well as the darkness of poverty, suffering, and a bubbling social revolution, ripe to be exploited for the Mythos.

Some of the stories herein are mere supernatural detective tales. The Sherlock Holmes we know and love has never been beaten and can conquer even the eldritch and the horrific when armed with the Necronomicon. Here, the gnosticism of Abdul Al-Hazred is simply one more tool in the box of Holmes for fighting the forces of darkness. Rarer is the story where he must come to grips with something he can't explain, when his much vaunted intellect is vanquished by something too alien to be dealt with by mere humans. In a world of only rational numbers, the value of "pi" is insanity. I think only "The Horror of the many Faces" successfully pulls this off.

Not every one of these tales is about Sherlock Holmes. A few deal more or less exclusively with Dr. Watson, and one is even about Irene Adler. H.G. Wells makes a guest appearance, and "A Study in Emerald" has . . . well, the ending is too good to give any hints.

For anyone who enjoys both Lovecraft and Doyle, this is a great anthology. I think that the tone leans more towards the latter than the former, but it is better than much of the fiction published recently, and is perhaps as good as the anthology SHADOWS OVER INNSMOUTH edited by Stephen Jones.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars A Mixed Bag July 14, 2004

By Patrick J. Callahan

Format:Hardcover

I have to agree with other reviews printed here. The book is something of a mixed bag. Few of the stories are well balanced quality pieces of professional writing. Their strengths and limitations differ.

Some of the stories show a paucity of knowledge about Lovecraft's work. In such stories, only a few of the most general references are made to the Lovecraftean canon. Otherwise the stories just suggest the pursuit of a "nightstalker" figure similar to a sort of Jack the Ripper. To justify the story's inclusion in this collection, the author tosses in a couple of Lovecraft's character names or place names such as "Cthulhu" or "Innsmouth" into the story. Nothing is ever done with these references, mind. That would require too much effort.

Some stories work pretty well because the writer has worked with the material before and knows it well. I think that Richard Lupoff's story "The Voorish Sign" is one of the book's best. But Lupoff has written and published other Sherlock Holmes pastiches over the years. He has a track record, so to speak.

Some of the most intriguing and most enjoyable stories set a Lovecraftian stage beautifully, drawing us in, getting us really eager to move on to the denouement. Unfortunately, it is as though the writer at this point does not know what to do with the situation he/she has established, and just . . . stops. Such is "The Mystery of the Worm" by John Pelan.

A series of biographic sketches appear at the end of the book, profiling the authors of the various stories. Here one sees quite a range of experience. Some of the writers have published a number of books and stories, and seem to have done their share of "weird tales." Others have published very little professionally, and seem to be either beginner professionals or serious amateurs. This may partly explain the sense of unevenness one gets from the book.

If I could ask for one thing, it would be a more genuine knowledge of H.P. Lovecraft's writings by some of the authors. Most of the writers, not surprisingly, have a good sense for Holmes and Watson, since Arthur Conan Doyle's characters are well known through a myriad of books and movies, although even here there are disappointments. One of the weakest stories in the book, "The Drowned Geologist" by Caitlin Kiernan, is just a long letter supposedly written to Dr. Watson -- but we learn at the end of the story, it was never mailed. This story reveals virtually no serious detailed knowledge of either Doyle's OR Lovecraft's writing. In fact, the only evidence that Holmes and Watson are even involved in the story at all comes in the letter's salutation, "My dear Dr. Watson." One suspects the author congratulated herself that she could make a token gesture toward the editors' requirements while writing something else entirely.

I enjoyed the book despite its uneven quality. It is the kind of book that is very good to take on an airplane trip. Three or four of the stories are very good.