Further Associates of Sherlock Holmes

Mann’s second anthology focusing on supporting figures in the Sherlock Holmes canon surpasses in creativity the successful first volume, 2016’s Associates of Sherlock Holmes. Not only are obscure characters, such as Effie Munro of “The Yellow Face,” brought center stage, but the 14 contributors combine that prominence with appropriate plots that give the characters depth. Stephen Henry impresses with “The Last Visitor,” in which the oft-pastiched Professor Moriarty provides his perspective on a murder case that became a duel between him and Holmes. In the creepy “Sherlock Holmes and the Beast of Bodmin,” Jonathan Green makes the moors a setting for possible supernatural terror when he places Sir Henry Baskerville in the midst of another investigation into a legend. And in “The Dockland Murders,” Dan Watters offers a different socioeconomic perspective on Victorian London in a story that presents the head of the Irregulars, Wiggins, as an astute sleuth who tackles a murder connected with the London Dock Strike of 1889. Sherlockians will hope for a third such volume. (Aug.)