Author Archives: mxpublishing

Mark Sohn’s The Absentee Detective: Tales of Conspiracy, Connivance, and Intrigue is a 2018 collection of four short stories. These are The Detective Who Wasn’t, The Detective Who Wasn’t There, The Unlikely Detective, and The Tinseltown Detective. All the stories are of a sufficient length to develop their complex plots and provide a very satisfying read.

The first story, The Detective Who Wasn’t, features, not Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, but Mortimer Knight and Baxter Belmont, two actors who play those respective parts on stage. The story begins when ‘Holmes’ is approached by a young boy who believes the two men are the real Holmes and Watson. He wants them to investigate why his beloved collie suddenly bit him and his mother. Thus begins a serpentine tale that stretches over British countryside and history, with nods to Charles II and Nazi spies.

I realise this story…

What a magical mystery tour of a novel. A lot of the time I found myself as bemused as poor Dr Watson as what exactly was going on and who all these mad characters were, between maharajahs, femmes fatales, midget monocle manufacturers, doppelgangers, an aesthete who makes soup brewed from a mammoth’s femur… the list goes on and on.

Oh, and a couple of real people have walk-on parts, including Frederick William Burton, Irish-born artist and director of the National Gallery (dubbed William Frederick in the book – a mistake or part of the overall hall of mirrors effect?). Irish people will know him as the painter of the ineffable ‘Meeting on the Turret Stairs’, held in the National Gallery of Ireland and in 2012 voted Ireland’s favourite painting [see below]. Even Queen Victoria turns up in the book and is revealed as a good chum of our…

If you have to be sick, as I was last week, you should at least be comforted by lashings of hot tea, a snuggly blanket, and a book that transports you from the bleaugh of your circumstances to somewhere far more engaging. 221B Baker Street, for instance. Enter The Last Confessions of Sherlock Holmes by Kieran Lyne.

I love Holmes pastiches that are faithful to the canon. I’m not a fan of Holmes the Basset Hound, or Holmes the Spaceman, so I was delighted to receive a review copy of this terrific book from MX Publishing. I should specify that the novel involves a retelling of some original Conan Doyle tales, but does take some liberties that purists may tut at.

Here’s the tale in a nutshell:

In the dawn of 1891 Sherlock Holmes is locked in a deadly game of wits with the sinister Professor James Moriarty, but events…

The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax

Wait, didn’t we just do this story? There’s the bearded man pursuing the young damsel. He’s forgotten his bicycle this time, and she’s maybe not so young, but … And he turns out to be a good guy, not the villain – except some commentators ask, What kind of good guy is this? More like a stalker. And Holmes and Watson leave him alone with the chloroformed damsel – stop.

So is this a rewrite of The Solitary Cyclist? In some ways. There’s the “savage” bearded guy who isn’t really a villain (just a stalker, ha ha). And then the really threatening guy, Dr. Shlessinger, this story’s version of Roaring Jack Woodley. Except Roaring Jack was, well, roaring, and Dr. Shlessinger is studying the Biblical Midianites. (Descendants of Abraham, by the way…

Sherlock Holmes and the Menacing Metropolis is a 2015 book by Allan Mitchell. I hesitate to call it a novel, though it is certainly book length, and it tells a story. The reason for my hesitation is the entire tale is told in verse. Rhyming couplets, no less. For instance:

With their frivilous banter put deftly aside,

Holmes and Watson, together, then had to decide

On a firm plan of action based only on fact

With no spurious rumours allowed to distract.

This story is a traditional Sherlock Holmes tale, told in an unusual way. The characters are all recognisable and well-described. The mystery, too, is worthy of Conan Doyle. Once you adjust to the rhymes, it’s a fine read.

A tale told in verse may some people appall, but as someone once said, you can’t please ’em all…

Sorry. Don’t know what I was thinking. It’s catching, this…

To celebrate the release of her novel Barefoot on Baker Street, Charlotte Anne Walters undertook to read and review a different Sherlock Holmes every day until she had read all 56. She posted her witty and insightful comments on her blog each day, and assigned every story points out of ten.

All of her essays have been collected and produced in book format by MX Publishing. All royalties have been donated by Ms Walters to the Undershaw Preservation Trust, which oversees Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s former home.

I received a copy of the 56 Stories collection from MX (link in the book title below) and have been happily reading Charlotte Walters’ comments — not every day, alas, I lack that sort of patience — but in great big handfuls, like a greedy child getting stuck in to the Cadbury’s Roses.

Sherlock Holmes fans are a mixed bunch. We all…

Dead Ringers, the latest collection by Robert Perret, consists of eleven stories which previously appeared separately in other anthologies or reviews, including some of the earlier MX books of New Sherlock Holmes stories.

The plots are pleasingly preposterous and often quite lurid, some revisiting familiar tales from the canon, such as A Study in Scarlet or The Copper Beeches. Others tread new ground. The Bogus Laundry Affair takes the reader into the sinister underworld of London, while The Adventure of the Pharaoh’s Tablet, toys with the occult. The longest story and the final one in the book, For King and Country, starts in the First World War, with Watson at the Somme discovering a mysterious roomful of corpses neatly seated round a table. With more plot twists than a corkscrew, and a side trip to Turkey, the story ends in post-war France and a well-deserved retirement…

When I first picked up Teresa Wimmer’s Sherlock Holmes and the Missing Helmets I assumed it was a traditional Holmes novel in the style of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Discovering the story was set in 2012 and is not about Holmes and Watson so much as Sherlock and John gave me pause. Though not for long.

I love the ‘Sherlock’ series that was created by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, but I have never read a novel based on the series. Once I got over my initial shock, I found the story a lot of fun.

The premise is this: John and his girlfriend Lisa decide to go on a skiing holiday. However, because he’s BORED (said in the best Benedict Cumberbatch voice), Sherlock decides to go with them. Once they arrive at their skiing school they discover that there has been a series of serious ‘accidents’ over the previous…