The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part II

Read The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part II Online

Authors: David Marcum

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Title page

The MX Book ofNew Sherlock Holmes Stories

Part II: 1890-1895

Edited by David Marcum

Publisher information

2015 digital version by Andrews UK Limited

www.andrewsuk.com

First edition published in 2015

The right of the individuals listed in the Copyright Information section to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.

All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without express prior written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted except with express prior written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damage.

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious or used fictitiously. Except for certain historical personages, any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and not of MX Publishing.

Published in the UK by MX Publishing

335 Princess Park Manor, Royal Drive,

London, N11 3GX

www
.mxpublishing.co.uk

Cover design by
www.staunch.com

All of the contributions in this collection are copyrighted by the authors listed below. Grateful acknowledgement is given to the authors and/or their agents for the kind permission to use their work within these volumes.

“The Riddle of the Rideau Rifles” Â©2007 by Peter Calamai, All Rights Reserved. Originally appeared in
Locked Up: Tales of Mystery and Mischance along Canada's Rideau Canal Waterway
. This version printed by permission of the author.

“The Adventure of the
Sleeping Cardinal
” Â©2015 by Jeremy Branton Holstein. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.

“Study and Natural Talent” and Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson photo illustrations on back cover and within the book Â©2015 by Roger Johnson. All Rights Reserved. First publication of essay, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.

“The Adventure of St. Nicholas the Elephant” Â©2000, 2015 by Christopher Redmond. All Rights Reserved. The original version of this story appeared at
www.sherlockian.net
. First book appearance original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.

Other parts

These additional adventures are contained inThe MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories

PART I: 1881-1889

Foreword - Leslie S. Klinger

Sherlock Holmes of London - A Verse in Four Fits - Michael Kurland

The Adventure of the Slipshod Charlady - John Hall

The Case of the Lichfield Murder - Hugh Ashton

The Kingdom of the Blind - Adrian Middleton

The Adventure of the Pawnbroker's Daughter - David Marcum

The Adventure of the Defenestrated Princess - Jayantika Ganguly

The Adventure of the Inn on the Marsh - Denis O. Smith

The Adventure of the Traveling Orchestra - Amy Thomas

The Haunting of Sherlock Holmes - Kevin David Barratt

Sherlock Holmes and the Allegro Mystery - Luke Benjamen Kuhns

The Deadly Soldier - Summer Perkins

The Case of the Vanishing Stars - Deanna Baran

The Song of the Mudlark - Shane Simmons

The Tale of the Forty Thieves - C.H. Dye

The Strange Missive of Germaine Wilkes - Mark Mower

The Case of the Vanished Killer - Derrick Belanger

The Adventure of the Aspen Papers - Daniel D. Victor

The Ululation of Wolves - Steve Mountain

The Case of the Vanishing Inn - Stephen Wade

The King of Diamonds - John Heywood

The Adventure of Urquhart Manse - Will Thomas

The Adventure of the Seventh Stain - Daniel McGachey

The Two Umbrellas - Martin Rosenstock

The Adventure of the Fateful Malady - Craig Janacek

... and PART III: 1896-1929

Foreword - David Stuart Davies

Two Sonnets - Bonnie MacBird

Harbinger of Death - Geri Schear

The Adventure of the Regular Passenger - Paul D. Gilbert

The Perfect Spy - Stuart Douglas

A Mistress - Missing
-
Lyn McConchie

Two Plus Two - Phil Growick

The Adventure of the Coptic Patriarch - SÃ©amus Duffy

The Royal Arsenal Affair - Leslie F.E. Coombs

The Adventure of the Sunken Parsley - Mark Alberstat

The Strange Case of the Violin Savant - GC Rosenquist

The Hopkins Brothers Affair - Iain McLaughlin and Claire Bartlett

The Disembodied Assassin - Andrew Lane

The Adventure of the Dark Tower - Peter K. Andersson

The Adventure of the Reluctant Corpse - Matthew J. Elliott

The Inspector of Graves - Jim French

The Adventure of the Parson's Son - Bob Byrne

The Adventure of the Botanist's Glove - James Lovegrove

A Most Diabolical Plot
-
Tim Symonds

The Opera Thief - Larry Millett

Blood Brothers - Kim Krisco

The Adventure of
The
White Bird
- C. Edward Davis

The Adventure of the Avaricious Bookkeeper - Joel and Carolyn Senter

Editor's Introduction: The Whole Art of Detection

by David Marcum

Part I:
The Great Watsonian Oversoul

According to Merriam-Webster, a
pastiche
is defined as a literary or artistic work that imitates the style of a previous work. Almost from the time that the first Sherlock Holmes stories began to appear in print, there were Holmes pastiches as well, side by side with the official sixty tales that are known as
The Canon
. Some from that period are more properly defined as parodies, but a few were written to sincerely portray additional adventures featuring Our Heroes, Holmes and Dr. John H. Watson,

I personally discovered pastiches at around the same time that I found the original Holmes stories, and began reading them just as eagerly as I did the material found in The Canon. In my mind, a well-written pastiche, set in the same correct time period as the originals, was as legitimate as anything written by the first - but definitely
not
the only! - of Watson's literary agents, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In the past, I've described the whole vast combination of Canon and pastiche as
The Great Holmes Tapestry
, with each providing an important thread to the whole, some brighter or thicker than others perhaps, but all contributing to the big picture. Perhaps another comparison would be to say that the union of Canon and pastiche forms a
rope
, with the Canonical adventures serving as the solid wire core, while all the threads and fibers of the additional pastiches bound around it provide greater substance and strength, with the two being indivisible.

I believe that pastiches have contributed immensely to the ever-increasing popularity of Holmes and Watson throughout the years. Additional cases and adventures only serve to feed the Sherlockian Fire, and ideally refocus interest back to the original narratives. There are some Sherlockian scholars who want nothing at all to do pastiches, and there are others who don't even want to classify all of the original sixty stories as being authentic, stating in various essays and books that this or that Canonical tale is spurious. I cannot agree with them.

In my essay, “In Praise of the Pastiche” (
The Baker Street Journal,
Vol. 62, No. 3, Autumn 2012), I argue that just sixty original stories relating incidents from Holmes's career are simply not enough. There must be more
about
the world's greatest consulting detective to justify that he
is
the world's greatest consulting detective, rather than just a few dozen “official” stories that leave too much unanswered. Pastiches fill in the gaps and cracks.

In “The Adventure of the Abbey Grange”, Holmes tells Watson that “... I propose to devote my declining years to the composition of a textbook, which shall focus the whole art of detection into one volume.” The vast amount of stories that make up the combination of both Canon and pastiche may not be - in fact, it certainly isn't! - what Holmes had in mind, but it is the closest we'll get to seeing and observing that overall tapestry of his life and work, the
Whole Art of Detection
.

Over the years, an incredible number of people have added to the body of work initially introduced by Watson's first literary agent. Sometimes, people discover lost manuscripts, usually written by Watson, but occasionally narrated by someone else - a Baker Street Irregular perhaps, or a client, or Mycroft Holmes, or a passing acquaintance, or maybe even by Sherlock Holmes himself. On a regular basis, an adventure is discovered in one of Watson's Tin Dispatch Boxes - and there must have been several of those to hold so many tales! These stories may be narrated in first person, or they may have a third-person omniscient viewpoint. No matter how they are found or transcribed, I believe that each of the “editors” of these later discovered adventures has tapped into what I like to call
The Great Watsonian Oversoul
.

When I was in high school, my award-winning English teacher, (who sadly never ever taught anything at all about the literary efforts of one Dr. John H. Watson, leaving that joyful task for me to capably take care of for myself,) introduced us to the concept of an “oversoul” - she was using it in relation to how it influenced some poet. Essentially - and I am no doubt remembering this somewhat incorrectly - the idea is that we are all tiny pieces of a greater entity, split off for a time from it, out here in the darkness and trapped in our own heads, before returning at some later point to the protection, warmth, goodness, and omnipotence of the greater whole. I, however, appropriated the idea to describe the overall source of the Holmesian narratives.

To my way of thinking, all of the traditional Canonically-based Sherlock Holmes stories are linked back eventually to this same basis of inspiration, no matter how the later “author” accesses it. Since the mid-1970's, I've read and collected literally thousands of adventures concerning the activities of Mr. Sherlock Holmes, and since the mid-1990's, I've been organizing all of them - both Canon and pastiche - into an extremely detailed day-by-day chronology, now covering hundreds of pages and literally thousands of narratives. Among the things that have become apparent to me over the years are: 1) There can
never
be enough good Holmes stories, relating the activities of the
true
,
correct
, and
traditional
Holmes of the Victorian and Edwardian eras; and, 2) The people who bring these stories to the public, no matter how they go about it, or whether they even realize it, are all somehow channeling Watson.

So one way or another, the spark of imagination that sets these narratives in motion originates in the
Great Watsonian Oversoul
. That's not to say that a lot of authorial/editorial blood, sweat, and tears doesn't go into all of these “discovered” stories, and these efforts should not be negated at all. These works don't simply appear as finished products - even the ones that are found essentially complete in Tin Dispatch Boxes. It takes a lot of work to first make contact with the Watsonian Oversoul, and then to transcribe what is being relayed in such a way that the public can understand and enjoy it. Sometimes the person relaying the story might misunderstand a fact or two along the way, leading to an odd discrepancy, or the “editor” channeling the tale may weave some little thing from his or her own agenda onto Watson's original intentions that isn't quite consistent with the big tapestry. But if the writer listening for that still small Watson voice within is sincere, the overall sense of the Sherlockian events that are being revealed within the story remains true.

Part II:
The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories

This collection of new Sherlock Holmes adventures came about by listening to that still small voice. One Saturday morning in late January 2015, I popped awake, several hours earlier than I had intended, having just had a full-fledged and vivid dream about a new Holmes anthology. Now, I've tapped into the Oversoul and “edited” a few of Watson's works myself, but I hadn't tried anything like this before. If I'd rolled over and gone back to sleep, the idea would probably have disappeared. But it had grabbed me by then, so I quietly got up and started making a wish list of “editors” of Watson's works that I already knew and admired, in order to see if they would be willing to go through the effort to come up with some more new adventures

I emailed Steve Emecz of MX Publishing, and he enthusiastically liked the idea. Early on, we agreed that the author royalties for the project would be used to support Undershaw, the home where Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was living when both
The Hound of the Baskervilles
, as well as some of the later Holmes adventures, were written. MX Publishing has supported this effort in the past, so this decision was an easy one.

The same morning that I had the idea, I began to email authors, and I immediately started receiving positive responses. I was then emboldened to start asking still more people, and quickly the whole thing escalated. I reached out to friends to help me track down some authors in England that could only be reached by the old-fashioned mail. People already participating suggested still more folks who might also want to tap into the Oversoul and contribute a story to the anthology. It quickly grew to the point where it obviously needed to be two volumes, and sometime after that, it became three. (If it hadn't been split into multiple books, the whole thing would have become so fat that the book spines would have cracked apart.) It was always important to me that this collection, although finally presented under three covers, be considered as
one unified anthology
. As such, it is the largest collection of new Sherlock Holmes stories assembled in the same place.

These volumes have contributors from around the world: the U.S. and Canada, all over Great Britain, India, New Zealand, and Sweden. There are a couple of British expatriates who were living in Asia at the time they made their contributions, and two American ex-pats in London and Kuwait as well. Early on, I let all of the participants know that, since we had contributors from all around the globe, the format and punctuation of the books would be uniformly consistent, but they could use either British or American spellings in their finished works. Therefore, if you see some stories with
color
and others with
colour
, for example, that's why.

The contributors to these anthologies come from a wide variety of backgrounds. Some are professional best-selling authors. Others, like me, write for fun, but have day jobs elsewhere. A few are noted fan-fiction authors, taking this opportunity to write for a wider and different kind of audience. (I've always felt that some of the best Holmes writing has appeared as fan-fiction, and that a great Holmes story doesn't have to be found in a published book.)

There are several here who are writing a Holmes story for the first time. In the case of a few of these, I specifically invited noted Sherlockians who have worked long and hard to promote the World of Holmes but haven't written a pastiche before, with the idea that someone - and I can't think of who - once said that every Sherlockian should write at least one pastiche in their lives. This was their chance, and they did a great job with it.

A number of our authors have not been previously associated with MX. Welcome to the MX family! I'm aware that a few of these authors have already caught the Holmes-adventure-writing bug and are working on additional stories for future MX books of their own. I can't wait to read them!

Early on, I decided to arrange the stories chronologically, extending from 1881, when Holmes and Watson first met, to 1929, the year of Watson's death. This allowed for a logical arrangement of the stories, covering the entire period of Holmes and Watson's friendship and professional partnership. I was greatly influenced by that wonderful volume edited by Mike Ashley,
The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures
(1997). He also arranged the stories within by date, and as a hard-core chronologist, I have a great appreciation for that method.

My conditions for participation in the project were very basic. First and most important, as the editor of this collection I was very firm that Holmes and Watson had to be treated with respect and sincerity, and as if all involved were playing that fine old Sherlockian tradition,
The Game.
For those unfamiliar with this idea, Holmes and Watson are treated as if they were living, breathing, historical figures, and as such they
cannot
be transplanted to other eras, or forced to do something that is completely ridiculous for the time period in which they existed, such as battling space aliens. The stories had to be set in the correct time periods, ideally from 1881 to 1929. There could be no parody, nothing where Holmes was being used as a vampire-fighting Van Helsing, and nothing where he was incorrectly modernized, as if he is some version of Doctor Who to be reincarnated as whatever version of hero the current generation needs him to be.

Additionally, the stories had to be approximately the same length as the original short stories, with no novellas, and no fragments, such as something along the lines of “The Return of the Field Bazaar” or “How Watson Learned Another Trick”. Also, I initially stated that the submitted tales all had to be narrated by Watson. However, there were a few that showed up in my email (t)in-box that stepped away from the Watsonian viewpoint - specifically, a case narrated by Wiggins, a couple by Professor Moriarty, one by a passing acquaintance of Holmes during The Great Hiatus, and two about the Professor told in third person. These provided valuable insight, they were set within the correct Holmesian world, and they were simply too good to miss.

Another goal that I set was to make use of completely new stories for the collection, in one format or another. With this in mind, I was
almost
completely successful... but not quite, if you wish to be technical about it. I must admit that, by way of a tiny bit of Watsonian Obfuscation, a few of the items herein have appeared in other locations or in other mediums, although they have never been published in this format before. One story was previously in a rather obscure local publication, and I believe that it is almost completely unknown to the larger audience, and might not be read by a lot of people otherwise. (In fact, with all my pastiche collecting, this was one that I didn't know about until it was submitted for this anthology.) A couple of the submissions have previously been on the internet for a short time, and two of the submissions are in the form of scripts that were previously used for radio broadcasts in the U.S. and the U.K. This their first appearance as text in book form.

As a side note, mentioning the scripts reminds me to acknowledge this volume's unintended but happy association with Imagination Theatre, which broadcasts traditional radio dramas weekly throughout the U.S., and has recently passed 1,000 broadcasts. As part of their rotating line-up, they feature a series of original tales,
The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
- as of this writing numbering 117 episodes - and they are also in the process of broadcasting adaptations of the original Holmes Canon as
The Classic Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
Currently, they are close to completing radio dramatizations of all sixty original Holmes stories featuring the same actors as Holmes and Watson throughout, John Patrick Lowrie and Lawrence Albert respectively, and with all adaptations by the same scriptwriter, Matthew J. Elliott. One of the scripts in this collection, never before in print, is by Imagination Theatre founder Jim French. A number of other Imagination Theatre writers besides Mr. French have contributed to this collection, including Matthew Elliott, Matthew Booth, John Hall, Daniel McGachey, Iain McLaughlin and Claire Bartlett, Jeremy Holstein, J.R. Campbell, and me (David Marcum) - that's a sizeable chunk our authors!

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