A Study in Sherlock: Stories Inspired by the Holmes Canon

King (The Beekeeper’s Apprentice and 10 other Mary Russell novels) and Klinger (The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes) have not stuck to the usual suspects for this stellar anthology of 16 new short stories that pay homage to the great detective. Perhaps the highlight is S.J. Rozan’s “The Men with the Twisted Lips,” a particularly clever alternate take on a canonical Holmes story. Phillip and Jerry Margolin provide a fair-play whodunit centering on the purported discovery of evidence of a Holmes story written exclusively for Queen Victoria in “The Adventure of the Purloined Paget.” Colin Cotterill takes a humorous approach in his illustrated selection, “The Mysterious Case of the Unwritten Short Story,” while Charles Todd’s “The Case That Holmes Lost” convincingly recreates Doyle himself, grappling with a lawsuit aimed at his most famous creation. Other contributors include Lee Child, Neil Gaiman, Laura Lippman, Margaret Maron, and Jacqueline Winspear. (Nov.)