Customer Reviews:
Magisterial.......2006-08-19
Poor Richard Lancelyn Green! I knew his name through the scandal headlines that surrounded his death two years back, a suicide which he tried to stage as a murder, hoping or so it seems to cast a sinister light on the family of Conan Doyle and their auction of period Holmes memorabilia at Christie's which he, RLG, thought should have been disposed of elsewhere. And laboring in the shadow of his far better known father Roger Lancelyn Green, it can't have been easy. In any case it's great that at least one of his anthologies, THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, will keep his name alive in a positive way.
I don't understand why he changed the names of stories while presenting them here. Why bother retitling Adrian Conan Doyle's story "The Red Widow"? Is his own title, "The Adventure of Ainsworth Castle," any more thrilling? Surely it's misleading to present the famous story by Arthur Whittaker, "The Case Of The Man Who Was Wanted" under a title like "The Adventure of the Sheffield Banker." Please! Whittaker's tale isn't very good, but it has the historic distinction of having been mistaken for an actual Sherlock Holmes story (for it was found among Conan Doyle's papers) and published under the Master's name by misguided scholars in 1948. SC Roberts also has his title changed. I guess Lancelyn Green wanted them all to be called "The Adventure of . . ." and felt no compunction about renaming these old chestnuts where they didn't fit the bill. A small point, but one perhaps illustrative of the sometimes magisterial nature of the man's character.
Otherwise you couldn't ask for a more interesting smapling of Holmes pastiche. The Stuart Palmer story is good, and an unexpected choice considering that its companion, "The Remarkable Worm" is far better known. "The Adventure of the Trained Cormorant," formerly known as plain "Holmes in Scotland," is a splendid reconstruction of one of the cases mysteriously alluded to by Watson in one of the canonical tales. Maybe I'm the only fan in the world who's not blown away by D O Smith, and I'll try reading more of Smith's work to catch the vibe, but I was less than overwhelmed by reading the tedious "Adventure of the Purple Hand," which seems padded out to twice its optimum length. However, many fans whose opinions I respect swear by Smith and I'll read some more before I put that baby to bed. Take it all and all, a fine anthology and a nice way to remember poor old Richard Lancelyn Green.
The Best of the Holmes Pastiche Collections.......2001-04-25
Richard Lancelyn Green has examined nearly a century's worth of Holmesian pastiches and collected some of the very best in this book. Stories date from 1920 through the 1980's.
Many pastiches try to parody or reinvent the originals, but theses stories affectionately recapture the flavor and tone of the canon.
A good collection........2000-08-12
In this volume Richard Lancelyn Green has assembled some of the best of the noncanonical Holmes short stories as of 1986. I personally think _The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes_ by Adrian Conan Doyle and John Dickson Carr is a slightly better collection overall, but this one comes close.
Adrian Conan Doyle is represented here as well, the adventure of "Arnsworth Castle" being simply a republication of "The Red Widow" from _Exploits_. (I disagree with the reviewer who thought the story was a "complete failure," but I also disagree with anthologist Green that it is the strongest of the younger Doyle's Holmes pastiches.)
The highlight of the collection is undoubtedly Denis O. Smith's "The Purple Hand." This is the first of Smith's Holmes tales (of which another -- "The Silver Buckle" -- appears in _The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures_); in general they are among the best pastiches in the short-story genre. (Smith has published them in three volumes under the title _The Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes_.)
Other high points include "The Tired Captain" and "The Green Empress," based on two unrecorded cases mentioned by Watson in the first paragraph of "The Naval Treaty." The latter of the two cases requires a brief explanation.
"The Green Empress" is the new title of the tale mentioned in a review below under the name "The Second Stain." Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, of course, wrote a story of that title as well, but the version he published does not seem to match the description in "The Naval Treaty." There is also a reference to the "affair of the second stain" in the opening paragraph of "The Yellow Face" (which the Bantam/Doubleday version for some reason emends so that it refers instead to the "adventure of the Musgrave Ritual"). Some Sherlockians claim this remark refers to yet a third case, though I do not happen to know the foundation of this claim. At any rate there would thus appear to have been at least two and perhaps three Holmes cases catalogued by Watson under the same name.
F.P. Cellie's tale fills in the details of the one mentioned in "The Naval Treaty." In 1967 it won a contest in South Africa under its original title of "The Second Stain," and its title has been altered for publication in the present volume. End of explanation.
Another highlight: this volume is the only one currently in print -- so far as I know -- in which Vincent Starrett's classic "The Unique _Hamlet_" is collected. In my own view this pastiche is somewhat overrated (being among other things ludicrously easy to solve), but at any rate it's a good one to have; at least it was one of the first, having been privately published in 1920.
And another point which may be of interest to Amazon shoppers: the larger and more recent collection _The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures_, edited by Michael Ashley (and with a foreword by Green), does not include _any_ overlap with the present volume. Owners of one may therefore feel safe in purchasing the other.
huge fun - highly recommended.......1999-04-27
I've just finished this and am amazed by how much I enjoyed it - I'd bought it expecting to hate it but not so. It's very patchy but no more so than Conan Doyle's original stories, and the only really terrible bit is one effort by his son Adrian which is a complete failure, although a very involved thing about Scotland (which left me wondering, why couldn't he have just put the brooch in his pocket? - you'll know what I mean when you've read it) tries the patience rather. Best are the 'Purple Hand' and 'Second Stain' stories, both of which the man himself would have been very proud of, but all are honourable additions to the mythos, hugely enjoyable and very sensitive to the much-loved originals.
Better than most of the Casebook of Sherlock Holmes.......1999-04-12
This book compiles what is pretty much the cream of Sherlockian pastiche since the art form began. I really enjoyed this collection, although many of the stories appear in other anthologies. I'd happily ditch "Mazarin Stone" or "Three Gables" from the Canon and replace them with a couple of these. (But why does Amazon refer to the anthologist as a "photographer"? Let alone ACD!)
Customer Reviews:
Yes! You will like this book!.......2007-10-09
I will be succinct in this review.
If you ever wanted to see Holmes in a different setting, being Holmes around a different circle of acquaintenances, living in a different city, different country, different living quarters, working with a different, yet, oft times clueless police department, but STILL solving perplexing crimes...then the ALIAS SIMON HAWKES (The Adventure of the Dead Rabbit Society, The Adventure of the New York Ripper, and Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in New York) series is for you! These three works are excellent and I suggest that every Sherlock Holmes fan buy and read all three!
Please don't let this be the last!.......2003-11-18
The character of Simon Hawkes (Sherlock in disguise in New York) is great! I have often felt that other stories of the so-called "lost years" ignored one crucial fact: Holmes could change his name, his looks, etc. but you could never take the detective out of the man. As he often said, his work was his life. This author needs to write more in the same style as his previous books. Both get five Sherlock Stars from me!
CLever and Original.......2003-06-06
These are well written tales that are sure to be enjoyed by anyone who likes a good story and mystery but which will prove, I think, to be especially tantalizing to the real mystery affectionado. As most mystery lovers know, Edgar Allan Poe originated the "locked room" mystery with his "Murders in the Rue Morgue". Since then the "locked room mystery" (in which the victim's body is found in a locked room with seemingly no possible way out for a killer) has been a staple of the mystery genre. "The Sign of Four" by A. Conan Doyle, the Holmes novella, was also a locked room mystery.
What makes two stories in this collection so good is that they are very clever variations on the locked room mystery. There is originality here which is pleasant to see in a genre so much written in that one might think no further originality is possible. Yet here it is. "The Adventure of the Magic Alibi", a novella, turns the locked room story around and has the murder victim's body found outside the locked room while it is the killer who is inside the locked room with seemingly no way out.
So certain are the witnesses there on the night of the murder that the killer must have been in the locked room that the police are unable to arrest the killer even though the victim has written the murderer's name in blood before dying! And these witnesses are absolutely positive the killer was in the room with them despite never having actually seen him at the time! An impossibility! Well, not quite. That very "impossible" plot is pulled off nicely here.
The second variation on the locked room mystery is "The Adventure of the Glass Room" which is (unless someone discovers another) the first and only "locked room within a locked room" mystery. Here the victim(s) are found inside not one locked room but two! What is impressive about this story, besides the cleverness of the plot, is the fact that the existence of a glass room inside another room is so well explained that it seems rational under the circumstances. Very often clever "puzzle" plots outdo themselves by seeming totally unrealistic (as with a few mysteries by the great John Dickson Carr)but that is not the case with this story, which is grounded in a sense of 1893 reality.
The tale entitled "The Adventure of the Art Forger" is as much a suspense tale as a mystery and has its own kind of "tongue in cheek" connection with A. Conan Doyle's "The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb". Sherlockians will appreciate the deduction made here as it harkens back to Doyle's own Holmes story. As with Doyle's story, the deduction is a simple one if the reader is paying attention.
Then there is "The Adventure of the Talking Ghost", a nice tale of murder and seances. Here is a serial killer plot that could have been expanded into its own novel if the author chose to do so.This story ends the book nicely with a suggestion by the author that Sherlock Holmes is about to leave his hiding place of New York City (remember that Sherlock is running from the revenge of Moriarty's gang) and "become Sherlock Holmes again. " That is, return to England, to his home. As we Sherlockians know, Holmes did reappear quite dramatically causing his friend Watson to faint dead away for the first and only time in his life while, at the same time, causing Holmes' fans to applaud with joy...Very nice job here indeed.--Behind the Curtain Review
A great disappointment.......2003-06-04
The stories in this collection are among the weakest Sherlock Holmes pastiches this reviewer has ever encountered. (And I am guilty of reading a lot of them.)
To begin with, the character known as Simon Hawkes bears not the slightest resemblance to the real Sherlock Holmes. In truth the central character is so totally devoid of personality that he resembles no one at all.
The writer has relieved himself of any obligation to imitate the prose style of Watson by casting the stories in the third person. Also a presumed American accent might account for other oddities. Unfortunately the author's prose style is almost as drab as his characters are lifeless. In addition the author has fallen into the trap into which writers of historical stories often stumble - namely the tendency fill the story with irrelevant historical detail. For example, did we really need three paragraphs of background on the New York Elevated Railway in order to get Holmes (or whoever) into a train ?
Finally in regard to plotting, we will consider the first story, essentially a novella. The author apparently considers this to be an ingenious locked room story. Alas, the solution is so obvious that anyone beyond a complete novice will see it even as the events unfold, making the rest of the endeavor a truly tedious exercise.
Perhaps the overall result could be given two stars, but I see no reason to encourage, in this overcrowded field of pastiche writers, someone who cannot write well, who cannot create real characters and who has no ability in plotting.
Ingenious Mystery Tales.......2003-02-28
As discovered in Carraher's previous Simon Hawkes novel, "The Adventure of the Dead Rabbits Society", Sherlock Holmes, fearful that Professor Moriarty's surviving gang members will hunt him down to take his life, has crossed the Atlantic Ocean to the new Continent. There he has taken up residence in New York City, residing at a males-only club called "The Dead Rabbits Society", living under the alias of Simon Hawkes.
"Alias Simon Hawkes" brings us four more of Holmes' adventures in New York City, and they are unique crimes to say the least. These are ingenious murder mysteries.
With `The Adventure of the Glass Room", we are offered the first "locked room WITHIN a locked room" mystery ever written. It is certain to become a classic in the mystery genre.
Alwyn Pritchett has had built in his parlor a room with walls and ceiling of glass, the purpose of which is to forbid the trickery of any psychic he hires to help him contact his deceased wife. He has been fooled before by false psychics and is taking this amazing step of building a room with glass walls to hold the next séance in which he partakes, to assure there will be no further tricks.
A psychic agrees to perform the séance under the conditions he has set forth. Together they enter his parlor and then enter the glass room. The sole glass door is bolted shut from the inside. The other members of Pritchett's family then leave the parlor after which the parlor doors are also locked by the butler. The two, Pritchett and the psychic, are therefore sitting inside a room, bolted shut from the inside, that is also inside another locked room.
Minutes later two shots ring out and there, to the horror of all, is Pritchett and the psychic are found dead, both shot through the head, an apparent murder/suicide. What else could it be, for they are found dead with the door to the glass room still bolted from the inside. The murder weapon on the floor at Pritchett's feet. The doors to the parlor too reminded locked until the shots were heard and the butler came running with the key to open them. It must be that Pritchett shot the psychic and then killed himself, determine the police. There CANNOT be any other possibility.
Yet there is another possibility. Both Pritchett and the psychic were in fact brutally murdered and it is left to Hawkes/Holmes to unravel the shrewd and cunning manner in which the double murder was executed.
"The Adventure of the Magic Alibi" is the longest of the mysteries. At over 100 pages it is a novella. It tells of an inventive plan of murder, in which the killer, planning the deed down to the smallest detail, has devised a means by which he can persuade twenty-one good citizens to swear to the police that they knew where he was at the time of the murder, and so prove him innocent of the crime, even though not one of those witnesses actually saw him at the time. They continue to swear to his innocence even though his victim has written his very name in her own blood just before dying, declaring him to be her killer! The alibi is so strong that the police cannot arrest him. Impossible but true! It is left to Holmes to solve the mystery, to break the ingenious "magic" alibi, and bring the killer to appropriate justice.
In "The Adventure of the Captive Forger" we have the story of William Lancaster, an art appraiser who is hired by the mysterious Charles Buonocore to come to his house in the faraway and isolated countryside of the Bronx to judge the authenticity of some drawings he is thinking of purchasing. Lancaster agrees to go and arrives at the lonely house, deep in the countryside, late at night. He finishes his appraisal too late to return home that night and so sleeps over. He is awakened in the dead of night to the sound of screams and a scuffle outside his bedroom door. Investigating, he sees Buonocore fighting with a beautiful and very frightened young woman. Any chance he has of assisting the woman is taken from him as he is hit on the head from behind and knocked out. When he wakes up he is back at the train station far from the farmhouse in which he was sleeping.
Lancaster is certain the young woman is in trouble and is being held by Buonocore against her will, but he has no idea how to return to the house to rescue her, the last leg of his journey being made in a long carriage ride along dark trails with the window curtains down.
He tells Simon Hawkes of his dilemma. The woman is in very serious trouble. He wants to help her but he cannot, not knowing how to once again find the house. It is up to Hawkes to discover the location and so help rescue the "damsel in distress".
In the last of the tales, "The Adventure of the Taking Ghost", a wealthy tycoon, Joseph Julius Carter, and two friends go to a séance and there are startled to hear the voice of his deceased daughter coming forth from the psychic's mouth. What his daughter declares is as startling as hearing her speak. She tells the audience that her death was not an accident and that she was in fact murdered! The psychic cannot say more after making that pronouncement and tells Carter he will have to come back another time to hear his daughter say more.
Carter returns, but not to listen to more talk from beyond, rather to kill the psychic to silence the accusations of his own dead daughter! The unusual motive is to silence a ghost! However, the psychic is able to defend her self and ends up shooting Carter dead.
A clear case of self defense. Or is it? Did Carter kill his own daughter and so desire to silence her accusing voice from the other side of the grave? Only Hawkes can see through the mystery and the lies to reveal the truth.
These are four inventive tales that mystery lovers everywhere are sure to enjoy immensely and that Sherlock Holmes fans must have.
Average customer rating:
- Much Ado About Nothing - Sherlock Holmes On Qualudes
- Not Quite So Elementary...
- Boredom Abounds
- The Game's Afoot!
- A little disappointed
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The Italian Secretary: A Further Adventure of Sherlock Holmes
Caleb Carr
Manufacturer: Carroll & Graf
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ASIN: 0786715480 |
Amazon.com
Although Sherlock Holmes categorically dismissed, in "The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire," supernatural explanations for corporeal crimes ("This Agency stands flat-footed upon the ground, and there it must remain. ... No ghosts need apply"), one of the most popular among Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Holmes tales is The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902), in which the fate of a Devonshire family supposedly hangs on the savage appetites of an apparitional beast. More than a century later, in The Italian Secretary, Caleb Carr again presents the hawk-faced consulting detective with a yarn woven of paranormal plot threads, the mystery this time rooted in the fatal 16th-century stabbing of David Rizzio, a music teacher and confidant to Mary, Queen of Scots.
For Holmes and his affable annalist, Dr. John Watson, this spirited escapade begins sometime in the late 19th century with their receipt, in London, of an encrypted telegram from Sherlock's eccentric elder brother, Mycroft, "a senior but anonymous government official." It summons them to Edinburgh, Scotland, where architect Sir Alistair Sinclair and his foreman, Dennis McKay, have been slain in the midst of rehabilitating the medieval west tower of the Royal Palace of Holyrood--the very wing where Queen Mary had lived, and where Rizzio had met his brutal, politically motivated end. Mycroft fears these murders portend new threats against Britain's present monarch--the elderly Queen Victoria, who infrequently lodges at the palace--by a known assassin, perhaps in nefarious league with the German Kaiser. En route north, Holmes and Watson are menaced aboard their train by a red-bearded bomb thrower (supposedly a rabid Scots nationalist), only to discover that still greater dangers await them, and others, at Holyroodhouse. The plaintive drone of a weeping woman, cruelly punctured and shattered corpses, a pool of blood "that never dries," and a disembodied Italian voice with unexpected musical tastes all imply the wrath of wraiths behind recent atrocities. But Holmes and Watson deduce that greed, rather than ghosts, may be to blame.
Carr, who earned renown with his historical mysteries, The Alienist (1994) and The Angel of Darkness (1997), apparently intended The Italian Secretary to be a short story; however, he couldn't stop writing. The result is a fleet-footed, atmospherically gothic, and often amusing Holmes tale (with an exposition scene in Watson's bed chamber that's truly priceless), but one that makes scant attempt to enhance our understanding of Conan Doyle's characters--a less ambitious undertaking, in that respect, than Mitch Cullin's concurrently published A Slight Trick of the Mind. And while Carr displays a gift here for adopting another author's literary techniques, it is really his own style and series players that his fans are waiting to see more of in the future. --J. Kingston Pierce
Book Description
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are summoned to the aid of Queen Victoria in Scotland by a telegram from Holmes’ brother, Mycroft, a royal advisor. Rushed northward on a royal train—and nearly murdered themselves en route—the pair are soon joined by Mycroft, and learn of the brutal killings of two of the Queen’s servants, a renowned architect and his foreman, both of whom had been working on the renovation of the famous and forbidding Royal Palace of Holyrood, in Edinburgh.
Mycroft has enlisted his brother to help solve the murders that may be key elements of a much more elaborate and pernicious plot on the Queen’s life. But the circumstances of the two victims’ deaths also call to Holmes’ mind the terrible murder—in Holyrood—of “The Italian Secretary,” David Rizzio. Only Rizzio, a music teacher and confidante of Mary, Queen of Scots, was murdered three centuries ago. Holmes proceeds to alarm Watson with the announcement that the Italian Secretary’s vengeful spirit may have taken the lives of the two men as punishment for disturbing the scene of his assassination.
Critically acclaimed, bestselling author Caleb Carr’s brilliant new offering takes the Conan Doyle tradition to remarkable new heights with this spellbinding tale.
Customer Reviews:
Much Ado About Nothing - Sherlock Holmes On Qualudes.......2007-09-30
Having been a fan of Carr since his voracious 19th century thriller The Alienist, I was expecting alot more out of The Italian Secretary than I got. Carr had been chosen by the Arthur Conan Doyle Estate to continue on with the Sherlock Holmes mythos and this seemed like a marriage made in heaven. What The Italian Secretary reads like is not homage but tired copycat prose. It feels like Carr just picked up a copy of The Complete Sherlock Holmes, read it, and wrote The Italian Secretary. Not once did it grab me like any of Conan Doyle's Holmes mysteries. Not once. This is an exercise in cliches, and that's about it. Where The Alienist and The Angel Of Darkness were complete and tight, The Italian Secretary seems to have been hurriedly slapped together. There is no real mystery here. The entire situation is solved well before the end of the book. Maybe the Conan Doyle Estate should have picked Mark Frost (The List Of 7, The 6 Messiahs) to do Holmes, for his books were far more entertaining.
Not Quite So Elementary..........2007-06-12
It can be a daunting task to write a new adventure for one of the literary world's most beloved detectives of all time. The author is certain to open himself up to criticism and to be told that he is no Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. But the undertakers of this project knew that much to begin with, and since this work (and the others, all originally intended as short stories) was commissioned by the Conan Doyle Estate, the criticism of the novel should not be based upon the author not 'living up' to the standards of Conan Doyle. That was not the point - the point was to create a new adventure for a literary hero in the same vein, and Caleb Carr, who is a masterful storyteller of historical mysteries, has done a commendable job.
"The Italian Secretary" is a mystery set within Holyroodhouse, the legendary palace of Mary, Queen of Scots, situated in Edinburgh, Scotland. The title comes from a story that had circulated through the ages, of an Italain secretary who influenced the queen and was violently killed within her private chambers in an effort to send a message to the Catholic ruler within a Protestant nation. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson find themselves drawn into this other-worldly mystery at Holyroodhouse through Holmes' brother, Mycroft, an agent and protector of Queen Victoria, with whom he shares a close and confidential relationship. When two young Scotsmen are found murdered within the castle grounds, rumors fast fly that it is the spirit of the Italian secretary seeking revenge for his hundred-years-old murder. Yet Watson and Holmes know that a supernatural explanation cannot be behind the truth, and set out to uncover the real murderous happenings in the royal palace, an adventure that finds them risking their own lives, and questioning their belief in the supernatural.
While some criticisms of this book may naturally be founded in the fact that Conan Doyle did not like using the supernatural in detective stories; but perhaps the most popular of the Holmes' stories, "The Hound of the Baskervilles", involves the supernatural to a great length (and a debunking of that in the end). This same concept is applied to "The Italian Secretary" with aplomb and ease. Caleb Carr naturally captures the relationship and repartee between Watson and Holmes; the pacing and subtle twists of the mystery are in keeping with Conan Doyle's style, as are the revelations of clues that only Sherlock Holmes can perceive. Caleb Carr has certainly ascertained his place in the literary world with "The Alienist" series and further adds to his merit with "The Italian Secretary". Since it seems to be the mode in today's literature to take famous literary characters and create new stories for them, sometimes with disastrous effect, it is a joy to read an imagining from an author who is worthy of breathing new life into such a beloved character.
Boredom Abounds.......2007-04-19
I've never read a Sherlock Holmes novel so if the excercise of this book was to get as close to the original as possible yet provide a new adventure for the old slueth and his fans, then I have no idea if the author accomplished his mission. But if I were reading this for pure entertainment, as I was, then I'd have to say that this book was a real yawner. The best thing to say about it was that it was relatively short. I just don't see Sherlock having any relevance in todays world. His deductive reasoning, his thinking process and jumps of reasoning are talked out with his sidekick Watson, and seem like self-fulfilled prophesies. He deduces it so it must be true. I'd like to see him be so wrong that the result is somebody close to him bites the bullet.
The Game's Afoot!.......2007-04-02
I enjoyed Caleb Carr's The Italian Secretary. Any Holmes fan big or small can appreciate the effort put forth by Mr. Carr in this enjoyable novel penned as a "further adventure of Sherlock Holmes" The story takes place in the ghost infested Holyroodhouse which was the castle of the ill fated Mary Queen of Scots. A cryptic message from Mycroft Holmes protrayed here in a rather unpleasant light as the bigger less able brother of Sherlock sends Dr. Watson and Mr Holmes hurtling towards Edninburgh.
What Carr has done well is imitate the chatty descriptiveness of Dr. Watson's writing with a fairly well done plot that is mildly suspenseful. It is filled with historical data and interesting history of the surroundings. What is less impressive to me is the portrayal of Holmes who doesn't really get to shine with his detective skills and deductions. He is rather in the background to Watson's verbose prose and thoughts. All in all though, it is a good work with an enjoyable plot with a little supernatural drama thorwn in for good measure. Well done!
A little disappointed.......2007-03-17
I've read Caleb Carr before and the book pulled you in with the mystery and Sherlock Holmes. This book did not keep my interest as much as it should. It was engaging but very predictable.
Customer Reviews:
best.......1999-02-22
bes
best.......1999-02-22
bes
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