Book – Shadows of Sherlock Holmes

Book – Shadows of Sherlock Holmes

Author: multiple, see list

Score: 6/10
Year: 1998

Publisher: Wordsworth 

ISBN 9781853267444

Pages  [VII-XXI]- 357

Language: English

"Shadows of..." is the 7th book in my Wordsworth Sherlock Holmes Box set. The previous 6 are all Arthur Conan Doyle's original Sherlock Holmes stories, and this present "Shadows" is a collection of 19 stories, published between 1844 and 1928, involving detectives, criminal agents and investigations, written by other authors, including an anonymous one. 


This volume chosen stories and introduction are all made by David Stuart Davies. 

I read stories 1-6 from 20 to 29th December 2019, took a break to read Tolkien's Lost Road and resumed with story 7 on 18th January 2020, ending today, 4th of February . 

The title for this collection is apt : despite a few beautiful phrases here and there, and a couple excellent stories, they remain all bellow Doyle's quality, in my opinion. 
Overall, the book is a slow burner - as I was able to read 1 or 2 stories at a time, and,  the book didn't feel compelling to read as much and fast as possible, but was rather, as my wife would call it, 'put-down-able'. 

Most are set in London, with very few noticeable exceptions that I'll mark with ** in the table of contents. Some aren't mentioned directly. 

There are only 2 known women authors, 1 anonymous and 15 men wrote the other 16 stories! 

A small table of content : 
VII-XXI Introduction, including on p. XVII-XXI The Authors and their detectives

Then, follows the stories, authors, their page numbers and their original publication dates as much as I could find:

1. 1.     The purloined letter, Edgar Allan Poe (December 1844), ** 
2. 17.   The biter bit, Wilkie Collins (1858?)
3. 42.   The stolen cigar-case, Brett Harte (1900?),  
4. 51.   A princess's vengeance,  C.L. Pirkis,  (May 1883 in magazine, 1884 in collection), 
5. 67.   The absent-minded coterie, Robert Barr, (1906),
6. 100. The Swedish match, Anton Chekhov, (1884),** 
7. 119, The secrets of the Black Brotherhood, Dick Donovan, ( pseudonym of Joyce Emmerson Preston Muddock), (almost sure it was 1892), 
8. 137, The episode of the diamond links, Grant Allen, (1896) 
9. 152, A clever capture, Guy Clifford, (1895) 
10. 168, Nine points of the law, E.W. Hornbug, (1898 or 99, contradictory info)
11. 181, The stir outside the Cafe Royal, Clarence Rook, (1898)  
12. 186, The Duchess of Wiltshire's diamonds, Guy Boothby, (1897),
13. 208, The problem of the dressing room A, Jacques Furtrelle, (1907),** 
14. 221, The Hundred-thousand-dollar robbery, Hesketh Prichard, (1913), **  
15. 235, The Surrey cattle-maiming mystery, Herbert Jenkins, (1921), 
16. 254, The ghost at Massingam mansions, Ernest Bramah, (1923), 
17. 278, Sexton-Blake and the time-killer, anonymous, (1924)
18. 324, One possessed, E.W. Hornbug, (1914), 
19. 340, The great pearl mystery, Baroness Orczy, (1928),

* The first story sees an unnamed narrator, discussing with a famous Parisian amateur detective, C. Auguste Dupin, some of his cases. They are joined by the prefect of police, known as G. The prefect submits a case of a letter which was stolen from the boudoir of an unnamed woman, and has been baffled as to finding it, despite being sure of the culprit- an unscrupulous Minister D. 

Although I understand the social context of compromising letters in that period (1844, first published in a magazine), I found this story to lack the fineness of story-telling and coming too fast to the result, with circuitous logic as to how the case was solved. A bit meh, for me. 

* The second story, The biter bit, set in London, in an indiscolded year 18--, is told in a format of letters sent between Chief Inspector Theakstone, his subotdinate and an arrogant recruit, Matthew Sharpin, investigating the theft of 200 pounds. It is, at times, quite humourous in the exchanges between them, but also denotes some misogyny ("dangerous women"), inherent to the period. As far as I can find, the story is from 1858. 

* Brett Harte's stolen cigar-case for the third story is supposed to be one of the best Sherlock Holmes parodies. Hemlock Jones is a private detective. His personality traits are very much like Sherlock Holmes- genius, cold, methodical, loving disguises. His narration and friend is a medical doctor... The case involves the cigar-case that has been stolen from Heemlock himself. However,  the accusation of who done it was too unbelievable and Hemlock's refusals to listen equally unrealistic. Finally, the author forgot who was whom! During the accusation, the author, instead of making Hemlock address the culprit by name or by a "you" accuses... Hemlock in the dialogue, as if the receiving end was indeed Hemlock... is it a big oops, for such a short story, or is it on purpose ? I cannot tell, but I didn't like this story. 

* The fourth story sees a woman detective, Loveday Brooke. The case, given to her by Mr Dyer, concerns the disappearance a Lucie Cunier. Here, the story unfolds in a natural progression of the detective's questions and subsequent actions to find the answers to this mystery- and the reasoning steps she gives at the end are logical, contrary to the case told by Brett, in the third story. Of note, C.L. Pirkin's stories were published only a short time after Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. 

* A well-hidden crime in the fifth story, The absent-minded coterie is narrated a few years after the events, by Eugène Valmont, a Frenchman living in London, to whom Scotland Yard Inspector Hale had brought a case in November 1896.  The story is fluid and quite well written, with notes of humour in the respective gives between the two friends, the Frenchman, and the Englishman. Since Valmont announces the culprits walked scottfree, despite proofs, the story shows the limits of the Law in certain cases and builds to the climax of how these culprits could elude their punishement in a very original way.

Side note: Barr references back to Poe's Purloined letter, the first story in this book, and to Kipling's Bedalia Herodsfoot. 

* I found the sixth story, The Swedish match, by Anton Chekhov, rather confusing, because of the dialogues shift far too rapidly between many characters, all of whom are Russian, with names that I struggled to memorize whilst reading. The case starts on the morning of October 6th, 1885, when Psyekov, extremely agitated and trembling, enters the office of Police of the 2nd division of S. District (in an unnamed city), to announce the murder of his employer, Mark Ivanovitch Klyauzov, whom no one has seen coming out from his rooms for a week. The investigation leads to startling results, with a good amount of humur, but also, as I said, a tad difficult to follow. 

* The secrets of the Black Brotherhood sees Dick Donovan, private detective, taking the case brought to him by Harold Welldom Kingsley, convinced that his fiance, Miss Artois, is innoncent of the theft charges she is facing. The story follows the clues, jumps forward to the arrest, and then, the detective explains the reasoning and actions he took, thus breaking the linearity of the story. I feel that this seventh story lacks some finess in story telling, but an ok one. 

* Moving on to the 8th story, The episode of the diamond links. There is no named detective ; only 2 couples travelling to Lucerne on vacation, befriending others also staying there, and a crime of theft. The story is full of humour, fluid and fast to read, and continues stories told elsewhere, by the same author - as my impression was confirmed in reading the presentation of this story. 

* Guy Clifford's A clever capture is narrated by Halton, the friend of Mr Graceman, the detective who helped Inspector Layman, of Scotland Yard, to solve a series of burglary crimes which had confounded him and his team for some weeks, in this late September of unknown year. This 9th story shows similarities to Sherlock, in the detective who prefers to help but not take credit ; his chemical experiments ; and that his friend narrates the cases. 

* Hornbug became Doyle's brother-in-law and under his influence, created Mr Raffles, presented in this 10th story, Nine points of the law. Raffles is like a darker Sherlock, but also different as he does show emotion and a certain greed. Indeed, in this adventure, into which he drags his friend and narrator, Bunny, in hope to gain a great deal of money, based on an advertisement  he saw in the Daily Telegraph. The case involves a stolen piece of art, and an eccentric client who wants it back, in a rather funny story, from start to end. 

* Rook's stir outside the Cafe Royal is the 11th and shortest story in this collection; it features a first woman who helps to unravel a series of crimes, but isn't to be commended as a feminist piece ; indeed, it describes her in a sexist way, and gives her a stereotypical scene of 'hysterics' ; the story itself has moments of fineness in wording, but seems, sadly, far too short to be appreciated as a case of investigative fiction - I may further explain this in a separate entry, as I have specific qualms about this story. 

* The Duchess of Wiltshire's diamonds are coveted by a mysterious person,  but detective Klimo, said (in the story) to be as great as Lecoq or Sherlock Holmes himself, solves the case in this atypical tale, the 12th story in this collection, narrated by an unknown person, and written by Guy Boothby. 

* Professor Van Dusen, residing in Boston, who selects his intellectual interests and scientific careers has very definite views on human mental capacities and how they should be employed ; after a dare, he becomes known as The Thinking Machine. One day, a newspaper reported, Hutchinson Hatch, comes to ask of him to use his tremendous mental capacities to solve the case of the mysterious disappearance ('in closed room') of stage actress, Miss Wallack, vanished in between Acts, in a theater in Springfield. This is The problem of the dressing room, the 13th story, involving the usual period description of women and a suspect who might be a hypnotist, using physiognomy (that  practice of assessing a person's character or personality from their outer appearance—especially the face), very popular in that periods literature, as even Doyle had used it. 

* A bank employee becomes the sole, logical suspect in The Hundred-thousand-dollar robbery, when November Joe (silly name imo) is asked to investigate the case by the bank manager, Mr Harris, in this rather boring and disjointed 14th story, where sequences of events don't really make any proper sense. This case takes place in Quebec, Canada. 

* I skipped the 15th story due to its content, pertaining to cattle-maiming ,and went straight to the 16th story, where the detective, Mr Carlyle, takes his friend, Mr Carrados, to investigate The ghost at Massingam mansions, in a story that start off well and with humor, but also became somewhat boring as the tale progressed. Furthermore, there is a confusing portion about Mr Carrados being both blind, and able to read. (without a Braille machine ?).

* Sexton-Blake and the time-killer is the longest and 17th story in this collection. The title announces both the detective name and the case, which he and his assistant, Tinker, as they embark upon. The story starts with a direct node to Doyle's Hound of the Baskervilles, and weaves around it an adventurous series of events for an ever expanding investigation,  which sends the heroes on a long adventure, facing riff-raf, danger. It so appears that Sexton-Blake had been created by Harry Blyth as Sherlock Holmes' office boy, with a first story in 1893, before countless of authors, known and unknown, would add cases and exploits, such as this one. The end case is pure fiction - I looked it up - but it's a rather original and funny end, fitting with the rest of the story's tone. 

* Hornung's One possessed is my second most hated story in this collection- its 18th- as he uses really fancy words which would fit so well an Henry James novel, where pace in storytelling has always engaged me, whereas here, these extravagant words are misused in the most stagnate of stories! Furthermore, the detective is never thus labeled ; he is a "crime doctor" and bares the horrible name of Dr Dollar! 
The case is brought by Lieutenant-General Dysone, who fears that his wife has gone mad ever since her gardener committed suicide ; Dr Dollar visits them in the countryside and his discovery is limited to 19th century knowledge, and on top of that, in a stretched fashion!  Very disappointing, as Hornung's other story Nine points of the law was so amusing (see above, in 10th) 

* The 19th and last story, The great pearl mystery, by Baroness Orczy is the second to be written by a woman (unless the anonymous one wasn't a man, which I doubt due to the language used in it). Here, the tale of a theft and murder mystery is told by Muggins, who assists his chief,  Patrick Mulligan, referred to in this story with his nickname, Skin O' my Tooth, who is an Irish lawyer who plays detective (information garnered from the introduction on pages XXI). This story is well paced and told, with a few humorous notes and a twist.