The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
John Joseph Adams, editor
Night Shade Books
Fiction, Anthology/Horror/Mystery/Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: A family's curse takes the form of a white fox... an inventor's experiments with gravity lead to his suspicious demise... a famous author witnesses
lights in the sky... Literature's most popular detective Sherlock Holmes and his faithful chronicler and sidekick John Watson return in new tales penned by prominent authors, several of which blur the boundaries between improbable and impossible.
REVIEW: Sherlock Holmes is one of the most invoked names in fiction, for good or ill. For the most part, the authors collected here do well by the name, though
the stories themselves are a
mixed bag; once again, novelists don't always make the best short story authors. Some tales wandered, but only a few seemed ultimately pointless, with two reading more like fanfic exercises and one an outright clunker so out of character (and out
of sync with the other entries) that it seems like an insult than an homage. As for the "improbable" label, I found it misleading. While some stories did indeed
incorporate supernatural or sci-fi elements, most had perfectly mundane explanations, which my improbable-loving self found a trifle disappointing. On the whole, it's not a bad collection, adding some interesting new adventures to the great detective's archives.
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