Book Review: More Holmes for the Holiday edited by Martin H. Greenberg & co.

[technomom]

Originally published at Enemy of Entropy. You can comment here or there.


More Holmes for the Hol­i­days by Mar­tin H. Green­berg

My rat­ing: 3 of 5 stars

Mar­tin H. Green­berg and com­pany have pro­vided a fine col­lec­tion of Sher­lock­ian hol­i­day sto­ries that fit in quite well with the tra­di­tional set.

“The Christ­mas Gift” by Anne Perry is a nice lit­tle piece about a stolen Stradi­var­ius and a cou­ple who want to marry against the wishes of the young lady’s father. There is an excel­lent red her­ring, one of the few in this anthology.

In “The Four Wise Men” by Peter Lovesey, Wat­son must answer a call to duty from his for­mer com­mand­ing offi­cer in the Army, in order to help guard a medieval trea­sure in a Christ­mas pageant. The game is soon afoot, and Sherlock’s pow­ers of obser­va­tion are as keen as ever.

Bar­bara Paul’s “Eleemosy­nary, My Dear Wat­son” gives Holmes a jewel theft and a kid­nap­ping to solve, which he does in his inim­itable way. One clue seemed slightly too obvi­ous to me, but it may not to other readers.

In “The Adven­ture of the Great­est Gift” by Loren D. Estle­man, Holmes receives a wax cylin­der con­tain­ing a record­ing of a song pop­u­lar in Amer­ica. He takes it as a warn­ing of a crime which could lead to war between Britain and France, and of course he leaps into action. This is Mycroft Holmes’ only appear­ance in the volume.

There’s plenty of mis­di­rec­tion in “The Case of the Rajah’s Emer­ald” by Car­olyn Wheat. Some­how, though, I sus­pected one of the great rev­e­la­tions in this one from the begin­ning, but I couldn’t tell you exactly why. It didn’t ruin the story for me, and there was still a sur­prise at the end.

On the other hand, Edward D. Hoch’s “The Christ­mas Con­spir­acy” man­aged to take me com­pletely unawares. I couldn’t fathom why the crime would be com­mit­ted or by whom, despite hav­ing a major clue dropped by one char­ac­ter. Very well done!

“The Music of Christ­mas” by L.B. Green­wood telegraphed the iden­tity of the crim­i­nal from the start, but was well worth read­ing. One of the char­ac­ters also tugged at the heartstrings.

Bill Crider’s “The Adven­ture of the Christ­mas Bear” is largely mem­o­rable because of the appear­ance of Oscar Wilde as a character.

“The Adven­ture of the Naturalist’s Stock Pin” by Jon L. Breen gives us Charles Dar­win as Holmes’ client. The mys­tery is less Sher­lock­ian than some of the oth­ers, but I didn’t mind read­ing it.

Daniel Stashower’s “The Adven­ture of the Sec­ond Vio­let” was an inter­est­ing twist on a well-​​known Christ­mas story. I can­not say more with­out spoil­ing it, but he has a nice touch.

“The Human Mys­tery” by Tanith Lee is as dark as I expect from her, and was a depress­ing end­ing to the col­lec­tion. It was, how­ever, very well-​​written.

The anthol­ogy left me hun­gry for more Holmes, and wish­ing that I weren’t between sea­sons of BBC’s Sher­lock or that I had another col­lec­tion of sto­ries on hand. That’s the sign of a suc­cess, I think.

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