Sherlock Holmes: The Red Tower/Mark A. Latham/288 pages (European Setting/Author's last name ends in "M"/Color name in title

     Dr. Watson is away on holiday visiting an acquaintance, James

Crain.  Watson has recently lost his wife, Mary, and Crain is under the influence of a medium who claims she can channel both Crain's mother and Watson's wife.  Watson is skeptical but the séance was very convincing and then a ghostly Mary appears to Watson in his room and two people are dead.  Time to call Sherlock!
     Sherlock Holmes makes his appearance around page 130 and takes the rest of the book to methodically de-bunk the charlatans and prove the guilt or innocence of each of the characters.
     Fans of Arthur Conan Doyle will not be disappointed in this 2018 addition to the Sherlock Holmes library

House of Silk / Anthony Horowitz 294 p.

Anthony Horowitz captures the essence of the Sherlock Holmes genre.  Dr. Watson is back with Sherlock Holmes at 221 B Baker Street while Mary Watson is off to care for an ailing child.  A fine arts dealer, Edmund Carstairs, comes to Holmes for help-- a strange man with a flat hat is stalking him very publicly.  Carstairs relates that man is a ring leader for a Boston crime gang who's ire he provoked when he attempted to get the culprits who stole his four valuable landscape paintings.  The murder investigation of the Boston criminal drags the pair deeper into intrigue.

House of Silk / Anthony Horowitz 294 p.

Slight Trick of the Mind / Mitch Cullin 253 p.

Slight Trick of the Mind / Mitch Cullin 253 p.

World War II has ended.  Sherlock Holmes is living out his retirement in a remote Sussex farmhouse.  He is experiencing the typical infirmities that a ninety-three-year-old experiences, difficulty moving around, forgetfulness, and cognitive decline.  He has just returned from a long trip to Japan, a place he had wanted to visit.  There he discovers his host is a Holmes aficionado.  He has a secret hidden agenda with Holmes.  He wants to know about his father who sought Holmes advice ever so long ago.

While gone he leaves his apiary in the care of his housekeeper's young son Roger.  Roger is a most respectful, patient young boy.  His care of the bees is exceptional.  However, he does enter Holmes' attic retreat where he reads an unfinished work about Mrs. Keller.  He checks back hoping to read the end of the case.

Readers expecting to see Holmes deductive powers at work may be disappointed.   This is more a look at the person of Holmes.

Study in Sherlock / 336 p.

Today's authors, Lee Child, Neil Gaiman, Charles Todd, and many others, write stories that are inspired by Sherlock Holmes stories.  In each you see the influence of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, while each makes the story their own.

Sherlock Files: The 100-Year Old Secret / Tracy Barrett 157 p.

Xena and Xander Holmes believe they will be bored living in London-- until they discover that they are related to Sherlock Holmes. Life is much more exciting when they get his unsolved casebook.  Using 100-year old clues, they begin investigating his case of the missing painting.  Using interviews, following leads, and using logic to put 2 and 2 together, they find the long lost painting.

Sherlockian / Graham Moore 589 p.

Literary researcher Harold White reaches nirvana when he is inducted into the Baker Street Irregulars, the preeminent Sherlockian group in the United States. Arthur Conan Doyle scholar Alex Cale is coming to the Baker Street Irregulars convention with the long lost Doyle diary-- only to be murdered in his hotel room. Doyle's great-grandson hires White to solve the murder and trace the diary, which is missing from Cale's hotel room. Chapters alternative between White's probing in the present and Doyle's own account of his serial murder investigation with his friend Bram Stoker in 1900. A good yarn utilizing much from the Holmes stories useful for readers of Sherlock Holmes.


Anthony Award Nominee