Murder in Baker Street

Murder in Baker Street
edited by Greenberg, Lellenberg & Stashower
(2003)

I've been having a bit of a Sherlockian craze over the last few months and, having reread the Canon, I've moved onto the non-Canon. (Some of this I can blame of Kelly Hale, whose non-Canon Holmes novel I read a couple of years ago and which is finally getting published.)

This is a collection of short stories featuring Holmes and Watson by modern crime writers. There's nothing very wrong, just the occassional jarring Americanism or a not-quite-right Watson voice, but they do seem to lack a certain something. It's not that I am wedded to the Canon - I thoroughly enjoyed the recent Rupert Everett non-Canon adventure on the BBC - but the devilish detail doesn't work in most of these. Some suffered from what we in the Doctor Who trade would call the HGWells effect: let's get our famous fictional character to meet a famous author/person of the time and the historical one will be inspired by him! Thus Holmes is brought into a case, involving mysterious marks on someone's neck and Mittel European servants getting all superstitious, by one Abraham Stoker.

The best was, I thought, A Hansom for Holmes which put aside Watson as a narrator in favour of a cabman who gets entangled in a case. This had the lively narration you want from Holmes, without trying to mimic ACD's style.

Ah well, it passed the time until the New Annotated... arrived.