“I read this just after David Ruffle’s first book on Holmes, and it has a similar structure – a main novella, followed by a series of short stories. It’s markedly different in some ways though, notably in the portrayal of Watson having improved somewhat and the plot of the title story being stronger. Ruffle’s Holmes is still a delight to read, with the author capturing him especially well, while the faithful Lestrade is pleasingly close to his established character. Ruffle’s Watson admits that it’s ‘more or less a chase’ with little actual detective work to be done, but taken for what it is, it’s an extremely enjoyable addition to the Holmes stories.”
David Ruffle’s debut novel Sherlock Holmes and The Lyme Regis Horror – Expanded 2nd Edition got a strong recommendation from The Bookbag (the Uk’s leading independent book reviews sit) and the sequel, out in a few weeks time, Sherlock Holmes and The Lyme Regis Legacy gets another big thumbs up. You can read the full review on The Bookbag Website.
Sherlock Holmes and The Lyme Regis Legacy is available to pre-order from all good bookstores worldwide including Amazon and soon in all eBook formats – a few pre-publication copies are available direct from the publishers at http://www.mxpublishing.com for the USA and http://www.mxpublishing.co.uk for UK and Europe.
“I started this book after an evening out, thinking I would just read a page or two to help me sleep… two hours later I’d read all of it. Margaret Park Bridges knows how to give a reader a good time. Each page beckons you hypnotically towards the next. It’s suspense filled, interesting, fun and, indeed funny to the point of farce on a couple of occasions.”
Four star reviews from independent bookstore review site The Bookbag are to be treasured as they don’t come around too often. My Dear Watson gets a great review – a few minor gripes – but overall “this is an excellent book with a driving plot and twists right through it like a stick of rock.”
Margaret Park Bridges book was originally published in Japanese a decade ago so it was lucky Sherlock Holmes fans in Japan who until now had been treated to the concept of Sherlock Holmes as a woman. You can read the full review on The Bookbag Website.
My Dear Watson is available from all good bookstores worldwide including Amazon USA, and in all good formats including Kindle, Nook, iBooks,
“Sherlock himself is captured very, very well. His genius, his impatience, and his arrogance mix together in just the right quantities for this to feel like a ‘canon’ story”.
Those among you that are authors and publishers will know The Bookbag is the UK’s leading independent book review site – and that they are thorough. There is a mix of excitement and trepidation when the email arrives to say a new book review is ready. Thankfully they give a glowing review of Sherlock Holmes and The Lyme Regis Horror 2nd Edition.
When author David Ruffle brought the book to us, he proposed adding another 100 pages to the already very popular 1st edition, and we’re very glad he did. There are several additional short stories – “…the best amongst them, while little more than vignettes, are absolutely wonderful. Henrietta’s Problem and Christmas at Baker Street are two of the sweetest pieces I can remember reading on Holmes and Watson, yet fit the established characters perfectly, while I absolutely loved the last line of Christmas with Holmes – superb.”
The review summary says it all – “An enjoyable novella is backed up by a series of extras, including some quite wonderful vignettes. High recommendation.”
Great timing as the sequel Sherlock Holmes and The Lyme Regis Legacy comes out next month.
The full review is available on The Bookbag website.
Sherlock Holmes and The Lyme Regis Horror is available from all good bookstores worldwide including in the USA Classic Specialities, Amazon, Barnes and Noble and in most electronic formats including Amazon Kindle.
Ross K Foad’s video book reviews are becoming legendary. Here he tackles the new book from Sherlockian heavyweights Philip K Jones and Bob Burr. Great review of The Punishment of Sherlock Holmes – he concludes that to get the most our of the book you need to be familiar with the canon. Presumably if you are reading this, you are.
The Punishment of Sherlock Holmes is available through all good bookstores including Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Classic Specialities.
Adoption and NLP expert Helen Oakwater’s new book, Bubble Wrapped Children, released this week, has generated a worldwide storm lifting the lid on a major crisis within adoption.
Reuters, The Times (in a front page article), The Sun, The Australian, The Daily Mail are among dozens of major media outlets that carried features on Thursday and Friday.
Helen also appeared on SKY News and ITV’s Daybreak interviews.
Here is the SKY News interview.
http://video.sky.com/embed/external/16143245
Below is an extract the article from Reuters.
Reuters – LONDON | Thu Jan 5, 2012.
“British youngsters adopted after abusive childhoods are at risk of fresh emotional turmoil as some birth parents turn to Facebook and other social networking sites to track them down, adoption agencies said on Thursday. The ease with which birth parents can use technology to get in touch with their children without warning and without following established safeguards has alarmed adoption agencies.
Families who have been contacted have described the experience as like being in a “slow motion car crash” leaving them “battered and bruised.” Some families have been torn apart. “Social networking sites have blown things open — you can’t keep things secret,” said Julia Feast, consultant at the British Association for Adoption and Fostering (BAAF), which campaigns for children in care.
“It really unsettles the whole family,” she told Reuters. “It’s like a bomb being thrown inside it and you don’t know how you are going to pull the pieces together again if children are not being prepared.”
Under British law, birth parents cannot access the adoption records of their children and usually, in the days before social networking, it was very difficult for them to make contact.
Since 2005, adopted adults and their birth relatives have had the legal right to ask for intermediary services from an approved agency to help them make contact with each other, but this can be turned down if there are concerns following an assessment.
It is not known how many birth parents are using social networking sites to get around this, but the BAAF said it was receiving “more and more cases.”
The full article is available on Reuters Website.
Bubble Wrapped Children is available from all good bookshops including Barnes and Noble USA and Amazon UK, and in most electronic formats including Amazon Kindle.
In the Winter 2011 edition of A Ghostly Company Newsletter, Helen Kemp joins in the praise for the new (including some classics) ghost story collection from Roger Johnson.
Roger Johnson is delighted with Paul Finch’s gratifyingly generous comments on one of his uncollected stories. You’ll find them, along with a perceptively positive review of Helen Grant’s ‘Grauer Hans’, at Paul Finch’s Blog Spurred by this, and by the apparently constant creativity of his contemporaries, Roger has finally gathered all his own better material together, including the complete ‘Tales from the Endeavour’ that were published a decade ago by Sarob, as A Ghostly Crew – now long out of print. In the Night – In the Dark: Tales of Ghosts and Less Welcome Visitors is published by MX Publishing.
I very much enjoyed (re-)reading the review copy, and I would be failing to show my gratitude if I did not urge anyone who does not have A Ghostly Crew to obtain In the Night at once. The stories from A Ghostly Crew are largely superb examples of Jamesiana, with terrible things happening to (moderately) harmless people in delightfully elegant prose.
I have tried to pick out my favourites from this section, but I might as well just list the Contents and be done with it. The other stories in this volume fall into a group I would call Lovecraft-related, and another I would call a mixed bag. I like the Lovecraft stories very much, and the mixed bag has some interesting items too, but there is no denying I would very much have liked to hear more from A Ghostly Crew! How about it, Roger?
In The Night, In The Dark is available through all good bookstores including Amazon UK,and Amazon USA,
Philip K Jones (aka The Ill Dressed Vagabond) is one of the USA’s leading Sherlock Holmes Reviewers. Here he reviews ‘Baker Street Beat’ by Dan Andriacco – a collection of Holmes items that the Sherlock Holmes Society of London describes as “it gives you the same sort of feeling as when you’re chatting over a drink with a knowledgeable fellow-Holmesian”.
“This is a collection of personal reminiscences, early fiction and literary commentary by a long-time Sherlockian. It contains a personal history of one man’s lifelong fascination with the Canon. It also presents glimpses of other Sherlockians, their personalities and foibles, their whimsies and their exploits. From my point of view, it provides the added benefit of listing the earlier publications of the items presented. This make their entry into the database of Sherlockian pastiches, parodies and related fiction all the easier for me.
The first two items are personal expositions of the author’s fascination with the world of Sherlock Holmes; a history of his Canonical reading and a description of a pilgrimage to the Reichenbach Falls. Both items are unique and are also typical of the commentaries of other devotees of the Canon. The general trend of the discussions actually describes the process many hobbyists go through in picking up a lifelong interest, especially a literary one.
There are two other items of literary commentary included. The first is a discussion of the mysteries of Doctor Thorndyke, created by R. Austin Freeman, and the influences of Sherlock Holmes evident in those tales. This is most interesting. I have collected and read the Thorndyke mysteries for years and I was aware of some of those influences, but the author’s depth of detail was most impressive. The final literary commentary discusses writing a Sherlockian pastiche, using articles by various Sherlockians and examples of effective and ineffective methods. I found myself torn on reading this segment, for I feel that the author has missed an important aspect of the Canon and I am in the process of writing an article of my own on this very subject. In any case, this item should give ‘newbies’ an idea of what depths experienced Sherlockians can plumb in their efforts to understand the fascination they have with Sherlock Holmes.
The author has included four of his own efforts at writing fiction in this collection. The first is an early pastiche, “The Peculiar Persecution of John Vincent Harden.” This is an interesting effort to relate one of the “Untold Tales,” those cited in the Canon, but never told by Watson. This was one of two such tales cited in “The Solitary Cyclist.” There have been at least ten other efforts to tell this tale, but then some of the “Untold Tales” have been written scores of times. The second tale, “The Adventure of the Amateur Players,” is a mystery surrounding the presentation of a play about “Sherlock Holmes” by an amateur acting group, many of whom are Sherlockian hobbyists.
The final two items presented are scripts for radio programs. The first, “The Wrong Cab,” stars a real life detective in a quasi-Sherlockian adventure with odd results. The second is “The Adventure of the Speckled Band” and it presents a Canonical tale in format for a radio broadcast. I am unfamiliar with the requirements of such compositions and cannot judge the effectiveness of these efforts.
This book concludes with a bibliography that includes all the sources mentioned in the various items. It is not exhaustive, but it does provide a useful starting point for persons new to the world of Sherlockian fixation. All in all, this is an interesting book with items worth re-reading. It gives a good picture of the progress of the Sherlockian affliction, but offers no real promise of a cure for the disease.”
Baker Street Beat is available through all good bookstores including Amazon USA, Barnes and Noble, Amazon UK, and in many formats including Amazon Kindle, Kobo Books and iTunes for the iPad.
“It’s a powerful subject, and Mr McMullen handles it well.”
The final edition of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London newsletter of 2011 reviews Kieran McMullen’s 2nd novel about the Easter uprising in Ireland – ‘Sherlock Holmes and The Irish Rebels’.
“Kieran McMullen has once more combined his expertise as a military historian and former soldier with his devotion to Sherlock Holmes, and he’s added a third element – his own heritage – in Sherlock Holmes and the Irish Rebels.
Two years into the Great War, Dr Watson is called away from his post with the Royal Army Medical Corps and instructed to join Holmes in Dublin, where, under the alias of Liam Altamont, he has infiltrated the Irish Volunteers, who, believing that ‘England’s extremity is Ireland’s opportunity’, are a rebellion against British rule.
As we know, the Easter Rising was crushed, saving Britain from war in the west as well as the east, but disgust at the speedy execution of the leading rebels only intensified the desire for Irish independence. It’s a powerful subject, and Mr McMullen handles it well. How would Arthur Conan Doyle have tackled it, I wonder?
Sherlock Holmes and The Irish Rebels is available from all good bookstores including Book Depository (free worldwide delivery), Amazon UK, and Amazon USA and electronic formats including Kindle UK and Kindle USA.
Watson’s Afghan Adventure is available from all good bookstores and on Amazon Kindle, Kobo Books, iBooks (iPad and iPhone) and other formats.
Kieran’s own blog is very popular – especially his series of articles on the different actors that have played Dr.Watson.
Ross Foad’s video book reviews seem to be getting better and better and this week he tackles Sherlock Holmes and the Lyme Regis Horror. The first edition was a bestseller with Holmes fans around the world – the new edition gains another 100 pages and some more short stories complementing the main Lyme Regis based novel. The review is the highest scoring one we’ve had.
Part 1
Part 2
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