The Ripper Legacy!

The Ripper Legacy  by David Stuart Davies from Titan Books offers up a competent Holmes pastiche which tears into the vintage conspiracy theory that the Jack the Ripper murders were actually an elaborate hoax by the British government to cover up an illicit affair by a royal and that there might even have been a bastard heir to the throne. Holmes and Watson take on a case of a kidnapped young boy and quickly find themselves up against a dangerous gang of very murderous criminals.

But to be honest, I had a difficult time getting going on this one. It did its job and and I was diverted, but unusual with a Davies Holmes story, I never really got fired up about the proceedings. It all seemed a bit too remote and cool for my taste, despite some decidedly pulp action. Maybe it's that the mystery isn't all that mysterious and the revelations are pretty easy to see coming. This tale never shocked me, though I did find myself mildly entertained.

For those who like Mycroft, there's plenty of him here, maybe a bit too much actually as his aloof nature seems a bit undermined and his tendency to stay at rest seems at times forgotten. There are plenty of villains, some very well drawn, but maybe there are too many as some of them seem to get forgotten as the story unfolds.

I have to give this one a recommendation but with a mild caveat that I didn't find it up to the standards of previous Davies efforts, which I've enjoyed mightily.

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The Devil's Promise!

The Devil's Promise is a new Sherlock Holmes adventure by David Stuart Davies, a name I've come to rely upon for rollicking good pastiches of the Great Detective, and this one does not disappoint.

This time we have an older Holmes and Watson, facing the imminent arrival of a new century who get drawn into a web of intrigue battling a coven of devoted Satanists led the foul Blackwood clan. Again I must be careful not to reveal too much, but suffice it to say there are twists and turns and jumps which create a proper mystery.

Some of this story is told from the novel perspective of Holmes himself though reliably the bulk of the narrative is related from the trusty viewpoint of Dr. John Watson. We have a Holmes here who is not at the height of his powers, limited by the rigors of age and without the sure-handed confidence youth brings. But he is Sherlock Holmes nonetheless.

One off note in this yarn is the reliance on Watson's physical skills which get called into play more than seems convincing. Fisticuffs and gun play are necessary to the story, but in this one perhaps are used a tad much.

But overall, this is another compelling mystery by Davies, and gets a high recommendation from me.

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The Scroll Of The Dead!

The Scroll of the Dead by David Stuart Davies is a rock-solid Sherlock Holmes adventure which takes the detective and his companion Watson from the friendly confines of 221 B Baker Street to remote island haunts in pursuit of an ancient Egyptian secret which some believe can bring men back from the grave.

Davies does an especially excellent job in this one of creating an adversary worthy of Sherlock's time and energy. It's too bad that Sebastian Melmoth is not canon as he is most certainly worthy of inclusion. This one has more than its share of action as the pursuit of the secret and the villains take Sherlock to parts unknown.

This is a real rip-snorter!

Highly recommended.

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The Tangled Skein!

David Stuart Davies can be counted on to create a satisfying Sherlock Holmes adventure and this one proves out nicely. The Tangled Skein is the story of Holmes defying the supernatural schemes of Bram Stoker's monster vampire Dracula is a rousing yarn filled with monstrous encounters and plenty of derring-do.

Unlike the Loren Estleman version of the dramatic encounter, this one puts Sherlock and Watson front and center in the struggle against the designs of the Transylvanian demon, and forgoes attempting to graft too much from the Stoker novel. Freed of that obligation, the story here can take twists and turns which are truly unexpected.

In fact if anything, this is story is sequel to the Arthur Conan Doyle masterpiece The Hound of the Baskervilles. I'll say very little so as not to spoil a wonderful mystery, but the classic tale of a false supernatural menace on the moors gives way to a true one in this story which...ahem...catches you by the throat and doesn't let go.

Davies is so steeped in his Sherlockian lore that he doesn't feel the need to prove himself and allows it to blend into the background of the story, giving the whole a feel of a truly lost adventure. 

I give this one a hearty recommendation.

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The Veiled Detective!

The fascinating Sherlock Holmes pastiche The Veiled Detective purports to be no less than a secret origin of sorts for the great detective. What you think you might know about Holmes and his biographer Watson is undone by the details of this sprawling saga which rumbles through the whole of the career of Arthur Conan Doyle's creation.

It's a hard book to discuss without giving away secrets, but suffice it to say it presents many of the most famous moments in the career from a very different perspective and adds some real spice to tales which are all too familiar to fans of Sherlock Holmes. Moriarty is at the heart of the web which spins an absorbing story of intrigue, of deceit, and of nobility.

David Stuart Davies is clearly a man who knows his Sherlockian lore and brings that knowledge forward to great effect. His storytelling is lean and compelling and the story licks along at a delightful pace. Meet old friends, confront old enemies, and see the world of 221 B Baker Street from a completely new perspective.

Highly recommended.

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Return From The Dead!

I like a good mummy story. And Return from the Dead, a collection from Wordsworth Publishers edited by David Stuart Davies, offers up a heaping helping of some truly classic mummy tales.

The collection features five different and distinctive mummy stories.

The lead piece which takes up the overwhelming portion of the collection is Bram Stoker's The Jewel in the Seven Stars. I've traditionally really liked this story, in many ways better than Dracula, though I've altered that opinion recently. The early parts of the tale have a riveting tension as mysterious events unfold in a the mansion of a mysterious Egyptologist who has been found in a trance by his equally mysterious daughter. The tale is told from the perspective of a young lawyer who of course is in love with the daughter and gets drawn deeper and deeper into a rather complex mystery concerning an ancient Egyptian queen and her rather peculiar cat. The story apparently had an original ending deemed too dreary for repeated publication and Stoker reportedly rewrote the denoument on his deathbed to give the tale a bit more of an upbeat send off. I don't think I've ever seen the original ending which is supplied here alongside the revised version, and I find the original compelling myself though quite stark.

Jane Webb Loudon's The Mummy is an old science fiction novel which showcases an Egypt of the future but concerns a mummy from the distant past. The tone of this story is oddball to say the least, but then we only get an extract from the 1827 novel. Based on this extract, I can let the complete tale alone for now.

Edgar Allan Poe is aboard with his story "Some Words with a Mummy". Sadly I didn't care for it. I have to be in a particular mood for Poe and I just wasn't in this instance. I find him rather dense if I'm not really up to unraveling his prose.

More compelling were two stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. These classics, which I've read before were really entertaining this time out.

"The Ring of Thoth" is the story which reportedly inspired the classic Universal movie starring Boris Karloff. I've long found The Mummy a more complete atmospheric horror than the much more famous Frankenstein. This story does indeed weave a tale about an eternal love and the perversions of nature which forms a core quite similar to that which motivates the famous horror classic. The descriptions of long-weathered skin and reptilian eyes immediately evoked the classic Karloff look.

"Lot 249" is much more of a thriller, offering up a brisk tale of a strange man and the mummy he keeps in his apartment which might be a bit more mobile than such long dead things are supposed to be. This one has got some very tasty horror scenes, some genuinely scary stuff.

All in all a very entertaining collection, and well worth the small price of admission.

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Tales Of Three Bad Rats!

Ever since it was first mentioned in "The Adventure of the Suxxex Vampire", the unrecorded adventure of Sherlock Holmes confronting the menace of the "Giant Rat of Sumatra" has fired the imaginations of readers and as it turns out writers alike. The mysterious creature has been confronted by The Hardy Boys, Doctor Who, and even Doyle's own Professor Challenger. This untold tale of Sherlock Holmes and his stalwart companion Watson has been revealed several times. The only real detail that remains consistent is just how the Matilda Briggs, a ship and not a woman as we are told  fits into the saga. The rest is for Sherlockian pastiche artists to whim about and reveal. I just finished a trio of these tales.

The first one I read was a sleek 1992 Sherlock adventure by David Stuart Davies title The Shadow of the Rat.  Davies is a Sherlock expert and there's a lot of the detail and mythology we expect in this fast-paced story of how a plague descends on London and the empire is held hostage. The rat of this story is menacing and large. The villains are proper Sherlockian baddies who hold the interest keenly.

In Richard Boyer's 1978 variation on this story The Giant Rat of Sumatra, the Rat is something else again, a seeming mammoth monster. Boyer too is a sophisticated storyteller and remains true to the nature of a true Sherlock Holmes story, offering up a story which whipsaws back and forth across London and other points as Holmes and Watson battle against mysterious and bizarre kidnappers. I can't say the payoff in this tale is as strong as the tale by Davies, but the set up is outstanding, and kept me on my toes the whole way.

The third encounter with the mysterious Sumatran Rat comes in Fred Saberhagen's 1978 novel The Holmes-Dracula File, part of his Dracula series. The rats again are the source of plague here, and the ultimate villain in this one came to me as a complete surprise. The storytelling in this one is offbeat alternating between a typical narrative from Watson's perspective as we expect Holmes stories to be and a narrative told from the point of view of Bram Stoker's infamous Count. It sets up a sometimes confusing back and forth but makes for a stirring ending.

The sundry Sumatran Rats revealed in these stories are at once similar and distinctive, all menacing and all successfully plundering that bit of our psyches which find the ubiquitous creatures repulsive and even frightening.

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