Good Old Index the Sherlock Holmes Handbook

Review: Good Old Index: the Sherlock Holmes Handbook is actually a very idiosyncratic dictionary or encyclopaedia. Mr Ross gives a minimum of information in his entries ('chianti: Sholto offers SIGN'; 'Holborn: restaurant STUD'), but he shows evidence of a pawky sense of humour ('cross-dresser: Adler, who dons her "walking clothes" to pose as a male youth SCAN'). However, his complaint that Holmes's reference to a sawn-off shotgun as a 'truncated fowling-piece' is ponderous suggests that the humour isn't strong.

He gives a little information that previous lexicographers missed, though his notion that Blackheath was Watson's public school is plain wrong. The publisher's claim that 'This volume fills a unique void in the literature on Doyle and his famous detective' hardly stands up. It's better presented than Orlando Park's Sherlock Holmes Encyclopedia and has fewer errors than Matthew Bunson's Sherlock Holmes Encyclopedia, but none of them can hold a candle to Jack Tracy's Encyclopaedia Sherlockiana. The British distributors are Boydell & Brewer Ltd, PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF. (*Mr Ross's book is not to be confused with Good Old Index by William Goodrich or A Sherlock Holmes Handbook by Christopher Redmond.*)

Reviewed by: Roger Johnson, [District Messenger 168, 1997]