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The game's
afoot! Popular and acclaimed writer of Holmes stories Denis
O Smith has had several of his tales and novellas published
in a Mammoth collection. Wisely, Smith has chosen the period
between Holmes' meeting up with Watson up until his date with
the Reichenbach Falls to set his stories. These are, as the
back cover says, stories of the sort loved by true fans”.
I've read a fair number of Holmes pastiches and these are
among the best. Mr Smith does the longer length of story better
than the shorter variety and some of the shorter efforts start
well but do not achieve their full potential in the pages
allotted to them. What he does manage to do expertly is something
that many other writers miss, the sense of the bizarre that
suffuses almost all the Conan Doyle stories. A man goes home
only to find nobody there knows him, a weird old house hides
a terrifying secret, a man on a train is not what he seems
and a pool of water holds the clue to a murder. Then there
is the very gothic tale of two children and a wicked uncle,
missing papers and the secret of a tile bearing a smiling
face. The tone of the narration is a good imitation of that
in the original stories, and both protagonists are also close
to their creator's intentions. I think my own favorite was
The Adventure of the Richmond Recluse as it evokes
that sense of terror in the face of the strange and unexpected
that Conan Doyle managed so well. All together a very enjoyable
collection and I hope not the last to appear.
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