A few years ago, I was browsing Reddit when I saw someone talking about good Sherlock Holmes pastiches. For the unaware, “pastiche” refers to a derivative work that tries to emulate the tone and feel of the original. There’s a whole bunch of Holmes ones out there and finding good ones can be a challenge. This user recommended, among other names, Denis O. Smith. I took note of that, and when I saw his collection, The Mammoth Book of the New Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes, at the library, I picked it up. Smith is a prolific writer of Holmes pastiche, with multiple collections to his name. I assume that this collection contains stories unpublished elsewhere, though I can’t be sure.
It is fair to note that Smith isn’t trying to write clever throwbacks to the Golden Age of Detection. He’s writing Sherlock Holmes pastiches. That means there’s less focus on clever mystery and more on interesting situations, nocturnal adventures, and sensational solutions. Smith does play fairer than Doyle in some ways. Usually there’s one part of the mystery that the reader can solve, such as the culprit’s identity or a code, but the rest of the solution comes from Holmes’s personal knowledge or investigations. So all of my complaints should be taken in that spirit. I judged these as mysteries because that’s my default, and I don’t want that to take away from Smith’s work here.
“The Adventure of the Black Owl” sees Holmes called upon for his expert opinion regarding the murder of Professor Arbuthnot, who was found stabbed to death in his study. Oddly, there was a black figurine of an owl on the scene. His professional rival, Dr. Zyss, was in the country and was supposed to meet up with him, but he canceled their meeting and has mysteriously vanished…though one woman claims to have seen him wander dazed into a church and then disappear! Not an impossible crime though.
This one is pretty fun. I suspect that most keen readers will at least suspect the identity of the killer. The most important clues are only obliquely mentioned by Sherlock, but there’s enough there for the reader. The ending is a little too cheery, too much “virtue rewarded” for me, but other than that I have no issues.
The titular club of “The Adventure of the XYZ Club” is a small group of university students led by Charles Churchfield, of the family of prestigious bankers. Charles’s idea of fun involves debauchery and the humiliation of his lesser, driving one of the members, Julian Ashby, to the edge of quitting. But that’s not what brings him to Holmes’s doorstep. Ashby says that he arrived at the Churchfield estate by boat late at night, crashing into a houseboat docked outside. He bumbled his way into the boathouse, lit a match to see…and caught a glimpse of a woman before being knocked out. When he came too, Charles tried to convince him that he just saw a picture of his sister that was being stored there before tripping and bumping his head, but he isn’t so sure. He’s right to be suspicious, as about a day later he’s calling on Holmes again, as the Chesterfield estate has burned to the ground with a body amidst the rubble. Holmes delivers much of the backstory behind the crime based on off-stage knowledge, but the key points of the mystery are fairly clued.
“The Adventure of the Velvet Mask” is one of the longer stories in the collection. This time, Holmes’s client is Isabel Ballantyne, the great actress. Her latest production, The Lavender Girl, has been besieged by multiple acts of sabotage. Some are just petty pranks, like one of the stars being locked in his dressing room, but others are more serious, such as the gas being switched off in the theater. One of the dressmakers came face to “face” with the culprit…seeing as he was wearing a blank piece of velvet as a mask. Even Watson encounters him in the dark corridors of the theater basement. Smith does a wonderful job of scene-setting here, really capturing the old theater the story is set in. He lacks Doyle’s knack for punchy description but is good at what he does. There is a good clue pointing to the culprit. But the sinister plot feels a little ill-thought out.
It’s a patient of Watson who brings a case in “The Adventure of the Old School Friend.” Alfred Hebert is a patient who recounts a series of odd events that have happened to him. One night, he found himself stranded in a train station where he had a chance encounter with Stephen Hollingsworth, a fellow student from his school days. The encounter is pleasant, but Hebert is in for a shock when he sees a newspaper article saying that Hollingsworth drowned a few days ago! Stephen is able to present a plausible explanation for that and begs Hebert to keep hold of a locked black bag who some shady figures are after. Bad enough, but there’s more to come. Hebert tells Watson that he was thinking on the matter in the night and was struck by a sudden realization: the man he’s been interacting absolutely cannot be Stephen Hollingsworth. When Hebert finds his way to Baker Street, it’s after he’s been badly beaten by some thugs looking for the bag. At this point, Holmes steps in and resolves it in short order. This is more of an “adventure” than a “mystery.”
The hook of “The Adventure of the Brown Box” is so good that it’s used on the blurb:“Is it really possible, do you suppose […] that a healthy and robust man may be so stricken with terror that he falls down dead?” Such is the fate of Victor Furnival, according to his niece anyway, who comes to Holmes, telling him that her uncle let out “the most dreadful cry of terror she has ever heard” upon opening a brown box he got in the mail. Her uncle isn’t the only victim of the box. Another man falls into a dead faint upon opening it, and Holmes arrives at the dead man’s house just in time to find that his sister has also perished. However, the solution is pulled right from the sensation pulps. I always find this solution creepy, and Smith has some genuine clues pointing to it, so it’s not all bad, but it might lack the needed “oomph” for some. The motive for the crimes is straight Doyle.
“The Adventure of The Tomb on the Hill” opens with Everard Dyson approaching Holmes about the theft of the titular painting. Kinda. You see, the painting was not only stolen but replaced with a near-identical copy. There are a couple of details that are different, most notably an inscription on the painted tomb, which is now totally different. When Holmes (and the reader) learns that the paintings used to belong to the brother of an infamous robber, whose last haul was never recovered and who was just released from prison, the truth becomes clear quite quickly. The reasoning for the switch is a bit handwavy; surely the culprit could have just thrown them in a fireplace. But the story is fun. You need some specialized knowledge to break the cipher, though a clever reader can figure out it’s supposed to work, and there’s a nice endgame twist to complicate the case.
“The Adventure of the Purple Hand” sees Holmes meeting with Mark Pringle about a series of small domestic mysteries. Pringle’s wife recently took on a new gardener and his wife and seems to have developed a very odd relationship with them. Pringle caught his wife embracing the gardener and laughing with the gardener’s wife. She refuses to fire the man even though there’s no actual gardening getting done. Pringle believes he overheard his wife and the gardener discussing his health and that “all our troubles will be at an end.” Not to mention the shady figure in the garden and the imprint of a six-fingered purple hand he’s been finding on his estate. This has probably the best hook in the collection, but the solution is Holmes going, “Check out all this cool stuff I learned off-page.” Which is a recurring problem in this collection: Don’t get me wrong, I like these stories, and I acknowledge that even Doyle would promise big things and then not deliver a fair-play mystery like we want. But there are a lot of stories here that have really interesting hooks but then don’t deliver with a resolution that matches up to the premise. Give Christie this premise and she would have made a minor masterpiece out of it.
“The North Walk Mystery” is set at the titular building, a place for solicitors. One rainy night, Sir Gilbert Cheshire’s body is found at his desk, his throat slashed. The place has a bloody history, and this is not the first violent death on the premises. Ten years ago, Sir John Hawkwood was bludgeoned on the doorstep, and his killer was never caught. This would normally just be a piece of morbid trivia, were it not for the fact that the dying Sir Gilbert uttered the words, “It was he…Sir John Hawkwood.” Now, Holmes knows better to believe in ghosts, though he’s just as skeptical of Inspector Stoddard’s theory that the culprit was just a prowler. Holmes does some good detection here, though again, there are no real clues pointing to the killer. And the dying message is pretty basic. But I accept that as the Doylean style.
“The Secret of Shoreswood Hall” is the other long story of the collection, and it’s a good one. Holmes is approach by a young woman, Amelia Davenoke, who wants to report the disappearance of her new husband, Edward. Edward has inherited the titular hall after the death of his father, who died suddenly while the couple was on their honeymoon. Edward rushed back to England, but when Amelia arrived, there was no trace of him. The servants tell her that he’s just in London on business, but she can find no trace of him. Not to mention that the hall is filled with strange noises at night, and Amelia has seen a figure creeping among the ruins of an old chapel. While all of these on their own could have innocent explanations, a seemingly innocuous letter from Edward tips Sherlock off that there’s something more sinister afoot.
This is a good story. “Holmes in a Gothic” is, I’m sure, very well-trodden ground in pastiches, but it works well here. There’s genuine mystery here, as well as a real sense of dread overhanging the story: “All at once I had an overpowering sensation of impending doom, an awful conviction that, do what we might, we could not protect Ameila Davenoke from the fate that awaited her.” While the mystery aspect isn’t very strong, it’s a good example of the sensation style of the original Holmes stories. The ending is also bleak, as Holmes falls short even while solving the mystery. This one justifies its length.
“The Adventure of the Minon Canon” is, fittingly, a minor story. A canon, Martin Zennor, approaches Holmes, begging for help. He stands accused of trying to steal a check from his cathedral, which was found in his coat pocket. The case against him is black, but Holmes thinks the truth lies in the game of musical chairs that the canons play with their coats. This is one of the fairer stories of the collection, as I suspect that you probably could figure it out if you sat down and plotted it out.
“The East Thirgby Mystery” is a mysterious unsolved crime. Watson recounts it to Holmes, explaining that a local eccentric and self-styled intellectual was found murdered on the road following a series of robberies in the district. Watson bemoans that no one knows the truth, but Holmes corrects him. One man does know: Sherlock Holmes. It turns out that Holmes vacationed in the area in childhood, and he recounts his experiences leading up to the murder. “Kid Holmes” has a lot of ways it can go wrong, but to Smith’s credit, the picture he draws is charming without being cloying or precious. Young Holmes is clever but not yet infallible. Some parts of the mystery aren’t used to their fullest—I think here of the “sinister stranger” lurking in the area—but the Holmes’s conclusions about what happened the night of the crime are solid and logical.
We end with “The Adventure of Juniper Cottage.” Holmes’s client this time is Sidney Potter, a clerk who has just inherited a cottage from his uncle, a military man. The cottage is pleasant and in a peaceful area but recently has received some unwelcome guests. Robbers have apparently been inside looking his and just recently Mr. Potter found his home invaded by an unknown man who was likely looking for something and might be stalking him even now. Holmes steps in and quickly finds what the robbers are searching for. This is a weak story to end on, with a pretty simple mystery, although there is a bit of code cracking that a clever reader can work out on their own.
I know I did a lot of griping about this book, but I did enjoy it. Like I said, these aren’t meant to be elaborate mysteries you can solve on your own. There’s some of that, but you’re mostly sitting back and watching Holmes at work. Smith lacks Doyle’s effortless command of language, but he does a very good job at emulating Victorian narratives. So, if you want classic, fair-play mysteries, I would look elsewhere. But if you want to lose yourself in Victorian gaslight and walk the streets with two of the greatest characters in all of mystery fiction, I would give this a shot. Sit in a nice chair in front of a fireplace and read a story a night. You’ll enjoy it. Recommended.
