Review of "In the Company of Sherlock Holmes: Stories Inspired by the Holmes Cannon," edited by Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger

 Review of

In the Company of Sherlock Holmes: Stories Inspired by the Holmes Cannon, edited by Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger, ISBN 9781605989174

Four out of five stars

Some of the coattails are long and thin

 While there is a connection between the classic Sherlock Holmes canon and these stories, some of the connections are thin and not easy to discern. The context of the individual stories varies widely, my favorite involves a small vessel that is one of the many that evacuated British and other Allied troops from Dunkirk. It was a tense moment of desperation for the British Empire in its battle against the German Reich. That tenseness and general heroism comes through in this story.

Another story in the top tier is called “The Adventure of the Laughing Fisherman.” The premise here is that a man with skills in deducing the particulars of a crime that rival those of Sherlock Holmes decides that he does not want to be another Holmes, but another Moriarty. The story ends with him recruiting the first member of what is going to be a very powerful and ruthless criminal enterprise.

 Like all collections of stories, some are better than others, sometimes in quality and other times as a consequence of personal taste. However, even those that are the weakest are still strong and worthy of inclusion in a collection where each is somehow linked to the great Holmes and his assistant Dr. Watson.

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