Murder, My Dear Watson: New Tales of Sherlock Holmes

Review: In contrast to several of Greenberg's earlier anthologies (Sherlock Holmes through Time and Space, Holmes for the Holidays, More Holmes for the Holidays and Villains Victorious), this collection seems to have no particular theme. It consists of ten stories, three articles and a forward by one of the co-editors, Jon Lellenberg.

The stories seem to range all over in subject matter. Colin Bruce pursued his love for probability theory and science in The Adventure of the Dying Detective by mixing Moriarty's schemes and Halley's comet. Bill Crider wrote a chilling tale recalling Watson's faithful orderly, Murray in The Adventure of the Dying Doctor and Sharon McCrumb investigated the very real basis of some tales of changelings in The Vale of the White Horse.

The entertainment industry provided the basis for three of the stories. Jon Breen brought the silent film era into sharp focus with D. W. Griffith's visit to wartime England in The Adventure of the Mooning Sentry. Carolyn Wheat combined two uncollected cases, The Addleton Tragedy and The Singular Contents of an Ancient British Barrow with another great mystery tale in The Adventure of the Rara Avis. Daniel Stashower capped the entertainment group with a charming mystery about the first English presentation of Gillette's play in The Adventure of the Agitated Actress.

Anne Perry and Malachi Saxon provided a "prequel" to The Final Problem in The Case of the Highland Hoax and Loren Estleman presented us with an interesting portrait of author Sax Rohmer in The Riddle of the Golden Monkeys along with a truly tricky solution to a mystery that readers should spot but probably will miss. Barry Day produced his usual excellent impression of a canonical tale in The Adventure of the Curious Canary. The final tale, Lenore Carroll's Before the Adventures, is ingenious and plausible, but hard to accept for true devotees of the Canon.

Philip A. Shreffler produced an excellent analysis of the mechanics of the Canon in his article, Holmes and Watson, the Head and the Heart and Christopher Redmond provided a neat and useful summary of current Internet sources in Sherlock Holmes on the Internet. The article, A Sherlockian Library, by Jon Lellenberg and Daniel Stashower was interesting but didn't encourage me to rush out and acquire some new books.

On the whole, I found the collection interesting and I enjoyed most of the individual stories and articles, but it was an unsatisfying experience. The tales did not fit well together and the overall impression was dark and gloomy. Perhaps the contrast between Stashower's light Adventure of the Agitated Actress and the other tales incresed the heavy impression of the collection.

Reviewed by: Philip K. Jones, 2003