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“This excellent book is the eagerly awaited third and final volume in Alistair Duncan’s study of the life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It deals with the last twentythree years of the great author’s life from the year of his second marriage to Jean Leckie until his death in 1930. These years saw his move to Windlesham, the birth of three children, more literary success, the discovery of a new faith, the final stories of Sherlock Holmes and, of course, the First World War.

This meticulously researched book gives us an impartial account of Conan Doyle’s life in a chronological format. Mr Duncan has succeeded, as David Stuart Davies notes in his Foreword, in opening “that secret door to Conan Doyle’s personal life through his admirable and exhaustive research into both the author’s private and public activities. We are given a detailed blow by blow, virtually day by day, account of the doings of Arthur.” Conan Doyle, in his later years, was preoccupied with his belief in Spiritualism, an interest which prompted ridicule from scientific and religious communities. Mr Duncan deals sensitively with this issue; he presents the facts and allows the reader to form their own opinions. The book is enhanced by the inclusion of extracts from the papers of Conan Doyle’s daughter Mary, by kind permission of Mrs Georgina Doyle, and photographs from the latter’s private collection. Also included are photographs from the private collection of Brian Pugh, Curator of The Conan Doyle (Crowborough) Establishment. No Better Place is a relaxed and absorbing read which, as Georgina Doyle notes “is a triumph of research and is a worthy contribution to the biographical material on Conan Doyle’s complex character.” High praise indeed — and well deserved!”

No Better Place is available from all good bookstores including The Strand Magazine,  Amazon USA, Amazon UK, Waterstones UK and for free shipping worldwide Book Depository .

“There are a lot of Sherlock Holmes books written for kids. This really excellent volume does it in a way that hasn’t been done before.

Many of the Holmes stories for children feature numerous variations of the Great Detective’s legendary assistants, The Baker Street Irregulars. These include: The fine MacDougall Twins stories by Derrick and Brian Belanger, “The Baker Street Boys” adventures – related both in books and TV episodes – by Anthony Read and Brian Ball; “The Raven League” stories by Alex Simmons; the Robert Newman books, the Tim Piggott-Smith trilogy, the Tracy Mack books, and various graphic novels, among many others. Other books for children feature Sherlock Holmes himself as the main character when he is not yet quite grown, and still learning his craft. Included in these are the truly excellent “Young Sherlock Holmes” series by Andrew Lane, and “The Boy Sherlock Holmes” series by Shane Peacock, (about which I have some serious reservations.) There are a few times that girls who assist the Great Detective are featured, such as “The Little Girl and Mister Holmes” by Richard L. Kellogg, the “Enola Holmes” stories by Nancy Springer, (although I personally think that those are actually about Holmes’s cousin instead of his sister, since Holmes didn’t have a sister,) and the Mary Russell series by Laurie R. King. (The Mary Russell books are not actually for children, but the series starts when Mary Russell is still a child when she first meets Holmes, and continues through a number of other books wherein she has delusions that she ends ups married to the much-older Holmes, who was sixty when they meet, while she is still a young teenager.)

In Elizabeth Varadan’s “Imogene and the Case of the Missing Pearls”, new ground is explored. Imogene isn’t an Irregular, although she meets one along the way, and the Holmes that she encounters isn’t another child – he’s a grown man, although one is not sure how old he is while reading this, as the year of this tale isn’t specified. What makes this story different from so many others is that, as it’s told from Imogene’s perspective, it takes place entirely within the confines of a normal and well-ordered girl’s life in the late Victorian era.

Imogene hasn’t been orphaned or left to live on the street. She hasn’t been kidnapped or lost, making her way through a terrifying and dark London and relying on the kindness of Irregulars to awaken her street-smarts. Her parents haven’t come to ruin, turning her out of everything that she’s known. She’s a normal girl of her times, spending her days in the company of her governess, whom she doesn’t much like, and the back-stairs servants who are sometimes more of a family to her than her own busy parents. When Imogene’s mother’s pearls vanish, Holmes and Watson are called in to find them. Imogene begins to look for clues in order to help, and her specific knowledge of the regular workings of the household and the incidents that contradict what is normal aid her in spotting the clues needed to assist Our Heroes toward the solution of the case.

I really enjoyed this book, and shouldn’t have taken so long to get around to reading it. I’ve read and collected literally thousands of traditional Holmes pastiches in the last forty years, since I was a ten-year old, the same age as Imogene in this story, and this adventure can stand proudly with all the others that I’ve read and enjoyed. Although written for children, this doesn’t necessarily feel or look like a children’s book. It’s a really handsomely produced volume, and my only advice for the next book in the series – and I hope it is a series – would be to put Holmes’s name somewhere in the title so that people that might not know otherwise will realize that he’s there.”

Reviewed by David Marcum

Imogene and The Case of The Missing Pearls is available from all good bookstores including The Strand Magazine, Amazon USA, Amazon UK, Waterstones UK, and for free shipping worldwide Book Depository. In ebook format it is in Kindle, Kobo, Nook and Apple iBooks (iPad/iPhone).