Book Review: In the Company of Sherlock Holmes
Book Review: In the Company of Sherlock Holmes
Eds. Leslie Klinger and Laurie R. King
Leslie Klinger and Laurie R. King follow up on the success of A Study in Sherlock with another collection of short stories with ties to the Great Detective. I say “with ties to”, because some are closer to the Canon than others. What they all have in common is fabulous authors. Let’s run them in order of appearance:
Michael Connelly gives us a contemporary police procedural-style short with neat nods to Holmes and Doyle. Sara Paretsky’s fun pastiche featuring Amelia Butterworth from Anna Katherine Green’s Ebenezer Gryce novels was enough to make me wish for an entire volume of lady-focused pastiches. Michael Sims contributes a whimsical retelling of Silver Blaze from the horse’s mouth, or should I say, point of view. Andrew Grant brings The Hound of the Baskervilles into the Facebook age. Jeffery Deaver’s story about a modern-day fan is well-constructed with a great twist and one of my personal favourites of the collection. Laura Caldwell’s odd, claustrophobic tale of love in the world of journalism adds a sad note that neatly leads us into John Lescroart’s “Dunkirk”, an interesting take on an ageing Holmes during World War 2. Leah Moore and John Reppion contributed a fun, high-speed Holmes cartoon whose only fault it is that it’s over much too soon. Cornelia Funke gives us an insight into a possible troubled past for Holmes through the eyes of a young boy. Denise Hamilton gives us a version of a computerised Holmes and a very neat twist, while Michael Dirda blends the worlds of Watson and Doyle with great panache and to splendid effect. Harlan Ellison’s hypnotic story revolves around the “butterfly effect” and is one of those that is even better on the reread. Nancy Holder smashes the fourth wall in a virtuoso horror story, and finally, Leslie Klinger’s “The Closing” mixes Holmes cases with a modern story that exits with a bang and brings us, finally, to Gahan Wilson’s one-page story of how he met Sherlock Holmes.
The general feeling I have about this collection is that individual authors had a lot of free rein to be creative with Holmes in ways that suited them. I also felt that the decision to permit alternative formats added to the collection. The quality of the stories is decent across the board, but the inclusion of a wide range of styles and genres comes at the price of a unifying link between the stories, which makes them sit rather oddly next to each. It also means that some readers will enjoy some parts of the collection more than others purely due to personal taste.
It also has to be said that not every story has Holmes in it or is even Victorian, and some stories’ ties to the Canon are tenuous at best – I did not mind this but I feel it’s something you need to know before you start reading. It’s probable that this has prompted a few negative reviews, which is understandable, as it’s all a question of expectations. If you are looking for a collection of pastiche shorts, then this is probably not the book for you. But if you’re somewhere on the Venn diagram of liking crime fiction, short stories, and Sherlock Holmes, I’d encourage you to give it a look.
In the Company of Sherlock Holmes is available from all good bookshops including but not limited to: Amazon UK, Amazon US, Waterstones UK. You can also buy it in several ebook formats: Kobo, Kindle, and Apple iBooks (iPad/iPhone).
Ardy is thirtysomething. Librarian. Transplanted German. Anglophile. Lover of tea and scones (and, yes, jam. I also own ridiculous jumpers).
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