The Book of Extraordinary New Sherlock Holmes Stories: The Best New Original Stories of the Genre

The good far outweighs the bad among the 15 Sherlock Holmes pastiches in this solid anthology from Jakubowski (Invisible Blood), mostly featuring authors new to the genre. Lavie Tidhar provides a tantalizing puzzle in “The Adventure of the Milford Silkworms,” in which a female client appeals for help understanding the connection between an assault on a botanist and goats acting oddly. Bev Vincent’s “Bloody Sunday” posits a clever plot behind one of the most notorious real-life riots of the Victorian era. Ashley Lister’s atmospheric “The Case of the Cursed Angel Tears” asks Holmes to unravel a series of seemingly supernatural deaths connected to a valuable jewel. Another standout is Matthew Booth’s “The Lancelot Connection,” which involves a stolen newly discovered Shakespeare play and murder. The stories with science fiction or fantasy elements fall short, and in general the contributors tend to be stronger on plotting than on recreating Watson’s narrative voice. Fans of MX Publishing’s New Sherlock Holmes Stories series will want to check this out. (Nov.)