Murder, My Dear Watson: New Tales of Sherlock Holmes [Paperback]

I went ahead and invested in this follow-up to last year's "Murder in Baker Street", hoping that the stories would be better. Well, they weren't. The tales are just flat and unexciting. What happened to the good stories some of these authors used to contribute to previous anthologies? Out of this batch, maybe two are worth reading. Other than that, I would recommend saving $$ and renting it from the library.

"Murder, My Dear Watson" is one of the annual anthologies published by Carrol & Graf in their `New Tales of Sherlock Holmes' series. Most of these anthologies contain a few attractive stories with mediocre to bad stuff being presented generously. Fortunately, this particular collection scores significant points in terms of stories that involve Holmes' (albeit apocryphal) singular tales with certain `matters of interest'. Now for a very brief description of these tales:

1. "The Adventure of the Dying Doctor" by Colin Bruce is a very humane story where Watson (surprise!) is the main character, with a cameo by James Moriarty and Mycroft Holmes.

2. "The Adventure of the Young British Soldier" by Bill Crider is another story where Watson and his erstwhile orderly Murray take centre-stage. Of course Holmes is there, sharp as ever, poetic as well.

3. "The Vale of the White Horse" by Sharyn McCrumb is a complex tale with hints of bizarre hereditary traits and the consequences. It was a brilliant story with depths that are rarely aimed at.

4. "The Adventure of the Mooning Sentry" by Jon L. Breen is a mediocre story about one of Holmes' post-retirement `missions'.

5. "The Adventure of the Rara Avis" by Carolyn Wheat is a rather sensationalistic attempt to develop the tantalizing hints left by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle regarding the affair of the Addleton-Barrow' into a story about the Maltese Falcon.

6. "The Adventure of the Agitated Actress" by Daniel Stashower is a brilliant story about white might have happened on the stage before William Gillette's play "Sherlock Holmes" opened in London.

7. "The Case of the Highland Hoax" by Anne Perry and Malachi Saxon is an improbable, wild and poor story set in the Scottish Highlands.

8. ""The Case of the Golden Monkeys" by Loren D. Estleman is an almost Wold-Newton story involving Sax Rohmer and his Fu-Manchu model.

9. "The Adventure of the Curious Canary" by Barry Day is a good retelling of "The Speckled Band".

10. "Before the Adventures" by Lenore Carroll is a brilliant story about what could have happened to Watson before the entry of Holmes in his life.

The non-fiction writings included in this book contain a plethora of information about the world of Sherlock Holmes and how a Sherlockian may enrich his knowledge in these matters. Overall, highly recommended.

Within the past three months I've read a dozen collections of Holmes pastiches, and found this to be the best. It includes several quotable "plums." Such plums were one of the key features of the original Holmes stories; they'd be a raisinless rice pudding without them. Here are a few:

P. 13: The best way to tell a lie effectively is to tell the truth badly.

P. 18: The moral, Watson, is that while life contains its hazards, it is the man who does not know how to calculate the risks who is in real danger.

P. 67: An amateur. Which means he is either a genius or a dilettante. There is no in-between in such cases.

P. 69: Swamp gas can only explain so much, sir, so much and no more.

P. 154-55: I saw the small twitch of irony catch the corner of his mouth. The next moment the face had regained its classically sculpted lines, something poised between Roman senator and an American Indian.

P. 161: He acted as though he expected to have the fatted calf killed daily on his behalf.