The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures
Read The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures Online
Authors: Mike Ashley
Mike Ashley is a full-time writer, editor and researcher with almost a hundred books to his credit. He has compiled over fifty Mammoth Books including
The Mammoth Book of Extreme Science Fiction
,
The Mammoth Book of Extreme Fantasy
and
The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries
. He has also written the biography of Algernon Blackwood, Starlight Man, and a comprehensive study
The Mammoth Book of King Arthur
. He lives in Kent with his wife and three cats and when he gets the time he likes to go for long walks.
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Constable & Robinson Ltd
3 The Lanchesters
162 Fulham Palace Road
London W6 9ER
www.constablerobinson.com
First published in the UK by Robinson Publishing, 1997
This revised and updated edition published by Robinson, an imprint of Constable & Robinson, 2009
Collection and editorial material © Mike Ashley 1997, 2009
All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication
Data is available from the British Library
UK ISBN 978-1-84529-926-2
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
First published in the United States in 2009 by Running Press Book Publishers All rights reserved under the Pan-American and International Copyright Conventions
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher
.
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Digit on the right indicates the number of this printing
US Library of Congress number: 2008942199
US ISBN 978 0 76243 626 2
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Contents
Foreword
by RICHARD LANCELYN GREEN
Introduction: The Life and Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
by MIKE ASHLEY
The Bothersome Business of the Dutch Nativity
DEREK WILSON
The Affray at the Kildare Street Club
PETER TREMAYNE
The Case of the Incumbent Invalid
CLAIRE GRIFFEN
The Adventure of Vittoria, the Circus Belle
EDWARD D. HOCH
The Darlington Substitution Scandal
DAVID STUART DAVIES
The Adventure of the Suspect Servant
BARBARA RODEN
The Adventure of the Amateur Mendicant Society
JOHN GREGORY BETANCOURT
The Adventure of the Silver Buckle
DENIS O. SMITH
The Case of the Sporting Squire
GUY N. SMITH
The Vanishing of the Atkinsons
ERIC BROWN
The Adventure of the Fallen Star
SIMON CLARK
The Adventure of the Dorset Street Lodger
MICHAEL MOORCOCK
The Mystery of the Addleton Curse
BARRIE ROBERTS
The Adventure of the Parisian Gentleman
ROBERT WEINBERG & LOIS H. GRESH
The Adventure of the Inertial Adjustor
STEPHEN BAXTER
The Adventure of the Touch of God
PETER CROWTHER
The Adventure of the Persecuted Painter
BASIL COPPER
The Adventure of the Suffering Ruler
H. R. F. KEATING
The Repulsive Story of the Red Leech
DAVID LANGFORD
The Adventure of the Grace Chalice
ROGER JOHNSON
The Adventure of the Faithful Retainer
AMY MYERS
The Case of the Suicidal Lawyer
MARTIN EDWARDS
The Legacy of Rachel Howells
MICHAEL DOYLE
The Adventure of the Bulgarian Diplomat
ZAKARIA ERZINÇLIOGLU
The Enigma of the Warwickshire Vortex
F. GWYNPLAINE MacINTYRE
The Case of the Last Battle
L. B. GREENWOOD
Appendix I: A Complete Chronology of Sherlock Holmes’s cases
Appendix II: The Tales of Sherlock Holmes
Foreword
Richard Lancelyn Green
One of the most famous opening paragraphs in a Sherlock Holmes story is that found in “Thor Bridge” (which was first published in the 1920s). Dr Watson says: “Somewhere in the vaults of the bank of Cox & Co., at Charing Cross, there is a travel-worn and battered tin dispatch-box with my name, John H. Watson, M.D., Late Indian Army, painted upon the lid. It is crammed with papers, nearly all of which are records of cases to illustrate the curious problems which Mr Sherlock Holmes had at various times to examine.” Readers had already been offered tantalizing details of many unrecorded cases in preceding stories, but this confirmed that he had a “long row of year-books which fill a shelf, and there are the dispatch cases filled with documents”. He rightly called it “a perfect quarry for the student, not only of crime, but of the social and official scandals of the late Victorian era”. It is into these that the authors represented in the present volume have dipped.
The influence of Sherlock Holmes made itself felt within months of the publication of the first short stories in the
Strand Magazine
. There was plagiarism which achieved its apogee with Sexton Blake who had rooms in Baker Street, and there were rivals who knew they could succeed only by being different. The “Golden Age” of detective fiction was littered with a strange array of private inquiry agents who were fat, blind, Belgian or of the opposite sex. Yet for all their attempts at being different, they never entirely escaped the shadow of Sherlock Holmes. As Scotland Yard had discovered, his longest shots invariably hit their mark, and even when he was outwitted, as he was by Irene Adler, his reputation was enhanced.
It is the art of a great writer to leave the reader anxious for more, and Dr Watson was such a writer. He often erred on the side of discretion, and he intrigued the reader because of his less than perfect grasp of detail. Where his knowledge failed he resorted to imagination and was not unduly concerned when this led to contradictions and inconsistencies within the text. He introduced colour and variety and irrelevance, which added to the myth and gave the reader a picture which was sharp in its essentials, but blurred at the edges.
