The 10 all-original tales in Edgar-finalist Kurland’s lively third Sherlock Holmes anthology (after 2004’s Sherlock Holmes: The Hidden Years)
chronicle the exploits of the fledgling sleuth in America, before he settled in Baker Street. Richard A. Lupoff gets the volume off to a strong start with “Inga Sigerson Weds,” in which the adolescent Sherlock’s cash-strapped parents send him and his jealous sister across the Atlantic to a distant cousin’s New York City wedding. In Darryl Brock’s witty “My Silk Umbrella,” Holmes encounters Mark Twain at a Hartford “base ball match.” The detective meets another Connecticut luminary, P.T. Barnum, in Michael Mallory’s droll “The Sacred White Elephant of Mandalay.” Dr. Watson appears once, in a postscript to Gary Lovisi’s improbable “The American Adventure,” in which the normally emotionless Holmes falls hard for a beautiful stage actress. Other contributors include Steve Hockensmith, Peter Tremayne, and Rhys Bowen. (Feb.)
