A Detective's Life: Sherlock Holmes - Martin Rosenstock (Ed.) ****

There's quite an industry involved in producing new Sherlock Holmes stories, some excellent, others less-so. I was recently somewhat disappointed by a Holmesian Christmas novel, but reflecting that I've always preferred Doyle's short stories to his full length Holmes cases, I gave this collection of 12 stories a go, and was generally impressed. The approach is to primarily cover the early days and last days of the Holmes-Watson duo, effectively filling in gaps, which works well.

Inevitably with each story written by a different writer there is some variation in the skill with which they match 'Dr Watson's' writing style in the originals - some get it spot on, others feel a little out of place. This is more notable in the early-set stories, as by the end we've reached the 1920s and it wouldn't be surprising if Watson had adopted a slightly more modern approach to his storytelling. I was surprised how much consistency there felt to be between the stories, apart from one that seemed to suggest Watson had gone through more wives than a Hollywood star.

It's difficult to pick out any individual outstanding stories - they rather merge, but in a pleasant way. Perhaps the oddest is Cavan Scott's The Wild Man of Olmolungring which, set it Tibet, is a very strange mix of the Edwardian style 'adventure in the wild' story with a Holmes-related twist verging on Scooby Doo. There was one story, The Elementary Problem by Philip Purser-Hallard where I was able to work out the solution to the puzzle Holmes was facing from the title alone - I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing, but made me feel suitably smug. All-in-all, we got indirect connections to well-known Holmes canon events and characters in a way that was comfortable, familiar and enjoyable.

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