So Painful A Scandal - A Facsimile of the Original Manuscript of "The Adventure of the Three Students" Edited, with an Introduction, by John Bergquist. The Baker Street Irregulars Manuscript Series, The Baker Street Irregulars in association with Houghton Library of the Harvard College Library 2009. 132 pp. $35.00

And so the Irregulars power on with their highly impressive series of reproductions, with expert commentary and analysis, of original Conan Doyle manuscripts. I declare an interest immediately, for I have a passing piece here, giving seventeen examples of shoddy writing and plotting in the tale. There is much to fascinate, starting immediately with the dust jacket, which reproduces an unused Frederic Dorr Steele illustration which he prepared as a possible Collier's cover: a most striking image of Holmes standing before - I think - a Cambridge college skyline. Richard Lancelyn Green was lucky enough to purchase it in 1984 and it now rests in the Portsmouth Collection. Andrew Malec writes up the Steele links with the story.

In archival mode, Randall Stock tells the detailed history of the manuscript, given originally by Conan Doyle for a Red Cross auction in 1917 (for seven guineas...don't!). Guy Marriott is scholarly in agreeing that "The Three Students" took place in Cambridge, while Oliver Nicholson raises Oxford possibilities in terms of St. Mary's Hall - now part of Oriel College. Michael Eckman travels pleasingly as a tourist to both great universities.

But the vital centre of this volume is, of course, the manuscript itself. Phillip Bergem makes a great job of annotation, with detailed comparisons between the Strand and Collier's versions of the text. It has to be said that there is not a huge amount to build on from Conan Doyle's own writing of the story, for the changes he made in his own script are limited in the extreme. As Editor John Bergquist comments in his Introduction: "He just put pen to paper and wrote, in a neat, legible handÉGiven the few corrections to be foundÉwe can speculate on whether what we are viewing might actually be a fair copy, written out after final correction of the actual manuscript." This is not a new idea, and in this instance Bergquist rejects it.

Randall Stock is the expert in such matters: go to his website www.bestofsherlock.com, and he will tell you of the thirty-three known surviving Sherlock manuscripts. Our Society has already co-published two, and there are - as yet unfinalised - plans to reproduce another. I can't have enough of such volumes.

NU

The Dragon Tattoo, The Rose of Africa, The Shadow of Evil by Tim Pigott-Smith. Hodder Children's Books 2008-9. Each £5.99 (pbk)

Yes, that's right. The prolific actor and reader of recorded classics has turned his hand to Holmes pastiches for children, published under the umbrella title "The Baker Street Mysteries". Earlier this year, Mr. Pigott-Smith made contact with me, expressing annoyance that his publishers weren't pushing these titles hard enough, and might the Society be able to help?

Always happy to oblige one of the very few actors to have played both Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, especially since the three books are delightful.

They are the adventures of Sam Wiggins (I trust you're there already), Potts, Edie and Titch - the Irregulars, of course. Billy Chizzell (the 221B pageboy) appears, as do Holmes, Watson, Moriarty, Lestrade and Irene Adler. Rousing yarns all, they are aimed at readers over the age of nine and make great introductions to the real thing. A bonus is the atmospheric illustrations by Chris Mould.

Another bonus was procuring Tim's autograph in my Aldwych Theatre programme, vintage 1974 (if you don't know, ask another, slightly older, Holmesian!)

NU

The Case of the Haunted Horrors by Anthony Read. Walker Books Ltd, 2009. 160 pp. £4.99 (pbk)

This, the sixth chronicle based on an unfairly forgotten BBCT television series, is aimed at a slightly younger readership than Tim Pigott-Smith's "Baker Street Mysteries". Anthony Read's Baker Street Irregulars are not the same young people as Mr Pigott-Smith's Irregulars. Billy the page-boy is definitely not one of their number, and in any case they prefer to call themselves the Baker Street Boys, even though three of them are girls! But the exploits of Arnold Wiggins, Beaver, Shiner, Queenie, Sparrow, Rosie and Gertie, are undeniably exciting, as a haunting at Madame Dupont's Waxworks uncovers a murder and entangles the youngsters with a group of Russian dissidents. I wish all Holmesian pastiche could be as honest, as knowledgeable, as enthusiastic and as well-written - in short, as good - as these children's books.

RJ

The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes edited by John Joseph Adams. Night Shade Books 2009. vi + 454 pp. $15.95

John Joseph Adams presents twenty-eight curious accounts by a remarkable array of authors. Amy Myers rubs shoulders with Michael Moorcock, Stephen King with Anne Perry, Edward D Hoch with Laurie R King, Tanith Lee with Peter Tremayne. The contributors seem to be drawn equally from the worlds of crime fiction and science-fantasy, so it's no real surprise to discover that the problems facing the great detective range from the rationally explicable to the frankly irrational. Sometimes, as Mr Adams says, you can't eliminate the impossible. What all these tales have in common is improbability, and we can't say we weren't warned. On a literary level, Anthony Burgess's "Murder to Music" and Neil Gaiman's "A Study in Emerald", completely different otherwise, are superb. It's a grand collection altogether. My only reservation is that half of these stories are reprinted from anthologies that are still easily available.

RJ

The Case Notes of Sherlock Holmes by Guy Adams. Andre Deutsch 2009. 63 pp plus inserts. £19.99

In the early 1980s Webb & Bower published Sherlock Holmes Murder Dossiers, compiled by Simon Goodenough to tell the cases of the first three long stories through cleverly designed "original" documents (and other items, such as Lucy Ferrier's wedding ring). The Case Notes of Sherlock Holmes claims to be a facsimile of Dr Watson's notes for The Hound and five short stories: "A Scandal in Bohemia", "The Red-Headed League", "The Boscombe Valley Mystery", "The Dancing Men" and "The Final Problem", but it falls far short of Mr Goodenough's work. It's understandable that Mr Adams has used computer fonts to represent handwriting, but only two or three of them are convincing, and some unrelated documents appear in the same purported hand. All the newspaper cuttings use the same modern typeface, and none of them looks like newsprint of the period. The supposed marriage certificate of Irene Adler and Godfrey Norton is the sort of document that would more probably certify "Highly Commended" at a village flower show. Abe Slaney's confession, taken by Inspector Martin of the Norfolk Constabulary, is recorded on an official Metropolitan Police form! Dr Mortimer's drawing of the Hound's footprints shows them to have been only two inches across, and someone has appended a note: "Smaller feet than anticipated"... (The point of that simply baffles me.) Such carelessness is sadly appropriate to the illiterate text ("Wilson - like I - had no knowledge of the league..." and "That last sentence beared up to rereading.") Not recommended.

RJ

The Sherlock Holmes Companion: An Elementary Guide by Daniel Smith. Aurum 2009. 192 pp. £20.00

Like others with similar titles, this book neatly summarises each of the sixty stories - without giving away the endings. But it also contains well-researched and well-written profiles of Conan Doyle, Holmes, Watson, Mrs Hudson, Scotland Yard, Joseph Bell, Professor Moriarty, The Strand Magazine and Sidney Paget. There are good essays too on Holmes as a scientific detective, Holmes's pleasures, the literary lineage, women in Holmes's life, Holmes's politics, Holmes's legacy, and Holmes on stage screen and radio. Plus (a real bonus, this) interviews with Roger Llewellyn, Philip Franks, Douglas Wilmer, Caleb Carr, David Burke, Bert Coules, Catherine Cooke, and Edward Hardwicke. The Sherlock Holmes Companion is exceptionally well illustrated. The inevitable sprinkling of Pagets and Steeles is leavened with depictions by other artists, old and new, book jackets, posters, period pictures of places and people, photos of the contributors, and more, including one of Eric Conklin's beautiful Sherlock Holmes Mystery paintings. It's a book I'm happy to recommend.

RJ

Dust and Shadow: An Account of the Ripper Killings by Dr John H Watson by Lyndsay Faye. Simon & Schuster 2009. x + 325 pp. $25.00

Lyndsay Faye knows the Holmesian Canon and the Whitechapel murders of 1888 disturbingly well. Dust and Shadow is the first such novel that I can recall in which just about every detail is accurate. Rather boldly, the author gives us a very broad hint as to the murderer's identity right at the beginning, so that we can watch the clues as they arise and see how Holmes deals with them. The numerous historical characters are presented very fairly, and they are all people who actually had a connection with the crimes or their investigation. No members of the royal family, no distinguished surgeons, no psychics. All the dramatis personae are memorable, a result, perhaps, of Ms Faye's theatrical training, and everyone behaves in character. The identity of the killer is perfectly plausible, as is the reason for his success in evading suspicion. His name is fictitious, but he is based on an actual person - though, of course, it's impossible now to know just what the real man was like. Lyndsay Faye captures the flavour of Dr Watson's style very acceptably, and she gives us the real Holmes and Watson, and the real squalid violent Whitechapel of 1888. She gives us atmosphere, excitement, suspense and terror. And she makes us think.

RJ

The Curious Case of 221B: The Secret Notebooks of John H Watson, MD by Partha Basu. HarperCollins Publishers India 2009. viii + 279 pp. 299 rupees

This isn't, of course, the first attempt to provide alternative versions of Holmes's investigations, but it is one of the most interesting. In "The Invisible Client" we learn how Watson was persuaded to alter a single important fact in the published account. In "Blunder in Bohemia" the principals informed him, but not Holmes, of the truth only after his account had appeared in print. In "The Tale of the Sad Cyclist" Holmes and Watson learned the truth long after publication, and forced one party to make reparation to another. Apart from "The Missing Courier", an admitted work of fiction, purporting to tell the story of Mr James Phillimore, these tales are all refreshingly bold, presenting a notably fallible Holmes and an intelligent, spirited Watson. I cheered when I read his unspoken response to Holmes's accusation of incompetence in the Lady Frances Carfax case: "It was I who tracked Lady Frances; it was I who discovered the Shlessingers, and their hold on her and the fact that they spirited her away to London. I did not raise any alarm with the Shlessingers or with Lady Frances because they had already left the Continent when I happened onto their trail. You, on the other hand, ignored my accurate deduction that the three were in London and not in Montpellier where you landed up in your ludicrous disguise..."

But The Curious Case of 221B is far from being a mere debunking of the great detective. The last story, "Judgement at the Abbey Grange", sees him investigating a notorious racially motivated miscarriage of justice. The book has its flaws. Dr Watson's name is frequently given as James, for no evident reason, certain names are consistently mis-spelled, and there are several anachronistic expressions. But I can't improve on a comment in The Asian Age: Partha Basu's book is "blasphemously and deliciously audacious".

RJ

England's Secret Weapon: The Wartime Films of Sherlock Holmes by Amanda J Field. Middlesex University Press 2009. xi + 250 pp. £11.99

In 1992 my 48-page chapbook, "Ready When You Are, Mr Rathbone": A Review of the Universal Holmes Films, was published by the Northern Musgraves. Brief as it is, for years it was the only substantial study of the twelve Sherlock Holmes pictures that Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce made for Universal. Amanda Field's book is very much more substantial. By examining them in the context of the time in which they were made, she shows us that the Universal films were considerably more than the poor relations of the two cinematic aristocrats that Fox had made in 1939. Her work as a volunteer with the Lancelyn Green Bequest at Portsmouth gave her access to an extraordinary amount of primary material - scripts, contracts, correspondence with the Conan Doyle brothers - and she has dug far deeper than any previous Holmes scholar among various archives in Los Angeles. Thanks to Ms Field, we can appreciate how cunningly Rathbone and Bruce are linked to their origin in Victorian England, which American audiences in 1942 saw as a bastion of democracy. She charts the less than straightforward development of the series, from blatant propaganda through gothic murder mystery to the introduction of the femme fatale. Despite the book's title, The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes are dealt with in some detail, though The House of Fear, Pursuit to Algiers and Terror by Night receive little attention. England's Secret Weapon is a splendid achievement, one of those books that force you to look anew at a subject that had, perhaps, become too familiar.

RJ

Oscar Wilde and the Dead Man's Smile by Gyles Brandreth. John Murray 2009. 384 pp. £16.99

From a prologue in the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud's we are taken back eight years, to Oscar Wilde's tour of the United States in 1882, where he is saved from robbery or worse by a sharp-shooting gambler. On the voyage back to Europe he falls in with the great actor-manager Edmond La Grange and agrees to assist him in translating Hamlet for production at the Theatre La Grange in Paris. In that city, Wilde meets his Boswell for the first time, in the person of Robert Sherard, who takes on the role of La Grange's dresser, and witnesses both the triumphant production of Shakespeare's tragedy and the disintegration of the company. La Grange's children, his Hamlet and Ophelia, die suddenly and spectacularly. Finally La Grange himself is killed in his dressing room. In an epilogue, again at Madame Tussaud's, Wilde and Sherard discuss the case with Arthur Conan Doyle, and the truth emerges at last - as does the macabre significance of the book's title. Oscar Wilde and the Dead Man's Smile is an exceptionally good detective story and a fascinating historical novel. Paris in 1883, little more than a decade since the Prussian siege, is a mixture of beauty and decadence, high art and deep cruelty - a Jekyll-and-Hyde city that becomes a major character, as alive as Sarah Bernhardt, James Russell Lowell, John Tussaud and the rest.

RJ