Chapter the First After my reconciliation with my brothers in the summer of 1889, I spent August quite happily with Reginald Collie, visiting Ferndell, my childhood home in the country. Moreover, after returning to London and my very safe albeit somewhat Spartan room at the Professional Women’s Club, I purchased a delightful new dress, apricot…
Who are the real Baker Street Irregulars? Are they a gang of street kids who worked for Sherlock Holmes, appearing in only three stories but nevertheless spawning at least three major TV shows in the last 30 years; or are they the US’s first and most famous Sherlockian society? Or are they actually Winston Churchill’s…
Sherlock Holmes and the Beast of the Stapletons by James Lovegrove is a continuation of the story of Sherlock Holmes and The Hound of the Baskervilles, as five years later, another monstrous creature stalks across Dartmoor, leading the detective to believe that Stapleton may not have perished in the Great Grimpen Mire after all and…
“But to begin at the beginning…” said Corporal Benjamin Grier. “If you wouldn’t mind,” said Holmes. Sitting back, the American commenced his narrative. “I was owed several weeks’ leave by the army, and got it into my head that I should visit with my old pal Henry all the way across the Atlantic. I was…
Sherlock Holmes was, is, and likely will remain a solid fuel source for the entertainment industry, and the very latest offering is the Netflix film Enola Holmes, based on the Edgar Award-nominated YA series by Nancy Springer. Millie Bobby Brown, who launched her career playing Eleven on Stranger Things, dives into the part of Sherlock…
Goodness knows how many writers have had their ideas dashed by that comment, which is unfortunate because literally everything has already been written about. Don’t believe me? Well then, let me give you a few bestselling examples, beginning with Lee Child’s Jack Reacher stories. Read the novel Shane (published in 1946) or watch the movies…
January 1905: Holmes and Watson are summoned by Holmes’ brother Mycroft to undertake a clandestine investigation. An agent of the British Secret Service has been found floating in the Thames, carrying a manuscript smuggled into England at the cost of her life. The pages purport to be the minutes of a meeting of a secret…
My thriller, The Escape Room, set in an elevator, is a 21st-century twist to the locked-room mystery genre of crime novels. The locked-room mystery novel developed in the late 19th century and the early 20th century when readers were invited to solve the murder mystery using clues in the story, and they’ve been popular ever…
In The Red Ribbon by H. B. Lyle, Captain Vernon Kell’s fledgling secret intelligence service faces being shut down before it has even begun its job of saving the British Empire from German and Russian spies. The spring of 1910 was a turbulent time in England. King Edward VII died on May 6 and George,…
I do love a book with a house in it. When I write one, I draw a floor plan with cupboards, light switches and door hinges marked. When I read one, well, I draw a floor plan with cupboards, light switches . . . and I’m not alone. A quick search online yields the Waltons’…
