Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN num: 9780786706365
ISBN number: 0786706368
Label: Carroll & Graf Publishing houses
Manufacturer: Carroll & Graf Publishing houses
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 343
Printing Date: July 01, 1999
Publishing house: Carroll & Graf Publishing houses
Sale Popularity Level: 840739
Studio: Carroll & Graf Publishing houses
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Brief Book Summary:
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.
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Rated by buyers 
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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.
Rated by buyers 
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There are at bottom two sorts of Sherlock Holmes short story, and they appeal to different sorts of reader.
The very first is born of the endeavor to create what Sir Arthur's son Adrian Conan Doyle called "stories of the old vintage." Of these, I personally think the younger Doyle's work with John Dickson Carr (in _The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes_) is probably the best, and some of the other really good ones are collected in Richard Lancelyn Green's _The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes_. Arguably the finest current practitioner of the art is Denis O. Smith. At any rate, this book is not of that sort.
The second is more or less typified by Ian Charnock's recent publication (in _The Elementary Cases of Shelock Holmes_) of several stories alleged to spring from the pen of Stamford, who had known Holmes as a young man and in fact introduced him to Watson. These are cases of primarily historical interest, moderate entertainment value, and debatable authenticity, wherein both the historical interest and the entertainment value depend heavily on maintaining the appearance of authenticity. A single false note, even one which might have been forgivable in the other sort of work or even explained away as a literary embellishment, can bring the whole thing crashing down.
This book is of that sort. The stories themselves are better than those in Charnock's collection, but the reader looking solely for cries of "The game's afoot!" and adventures that recapture Doyle's magic will be disappointed.
The conceit of the present volume is that there were certain cases which it would have been imprudent to publish during the lifetimes of Holmes, Watson, and others, and yet which Watson believed it worthwhile to set down for posterity. There are seven stories in this collection, all of them historical cases in which (this volume asserts) Holmes played a part not recorded by history but here described by Watson in documents written up and sealed in his old age.
As a result, there are two difficulties for the reader seeking a transport of pure entertainment. First, the denouements are lacking; and second, the stories have few of the romantic "literary" flourishes Watson used in order to embellish and fictionalize his published accounts of Holmes's cases.
These features would be excusable and even welcome if the manuscript in question were authentic. Unfortunately, however, there seem to me to be grave doubts on that score.
One reason is the character and history of Professor James Moriarty, who appears in one tale which purports to be the true history of the adventures of the Final Problem, the Empty House, and Charles Augustus Milverton.
In the published version of "The Final Problem," Moriarty is presented as having made his international reputation at the age of twenty-one with a treatise on the binomial theorem. I have always taken this to be a product of Watson's fancy, as the binomial theorem was well known and understood long before Moriarty's time; it is hard to imagine what he could have had to say about it that would have garnered him such international fame.
Yet in the present volume, Moriarty is not only credited again with this treatise (when there is no reason to add any embellishments) but also given credit for being the very first man in two centuries to prove Fermat's Last Theorem as well as the very first in a century to prove Goldbach's Conjecture. This is historical and mathematical nonsense -- historical, because had Moriarty proven either of these famous conjectures he would have been the first, not the second, to do so; and mathematical, because once a theorem is proven, it is proven. (Sometimes mathematicians discover alternative proofs by shorter routes or different methods. But if this is what Holmes had meant, he would presumably have said so; Watson presents him here as possessing mathematical expertise and familiarity with its literature.)
Even more serious is that the end of this tale involves Watson in speculation that Holmes may have committed a dire act that, frankly, seems altogether out of character: the cold-blooded murder of a blackmailer threatening the reputation of the Crown. Granted, Holmes sometimes played fast and loose with the law in a good cause; granted, he sometimes went very far out on a limb in protection of queen/king and country. But this seems wrong.
(It might also be argued that I am illicitly judging the "real" Holmes using the "fictionalized" Holmes as a standard -- that, indeed, Watson remade Holmes to some extent as a literary character, and did so in part by suppressing this act. I am unmoved; I shall believe this only on much stronger evidence than is presented here. And the authenticity of this manuscript is, after all, the very point at issue.)
Moreover, I have another party on my side: Donald Thomas himself, in a short afterword, credits himself as the ... Read More
Rated by buyers -
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.
Rated by buyers -
At very first I thought this book would be intriguing, unfortunatly it was not a page turner, I almost had to force myself to finish the book. And the author had the gall to insinuate that Holmes' would murder to solve a case. Not really worth reading.
Rated by buyers 
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Yet another of too many Holmes pastiches that, instead of trying to expand Holmes' universe or capture the spirit of the character, does no more than force the character to fit the demands of predetermined plots. In one story, Thomas even goes so far as to suggest (with little subtlety) that Holmes is as cold-blooded a murderer as his nemesis, Moriarty.
A total waste of time.
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