Sherlock - Assorted authors **

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Even so, I had big hopes for this collection as it included stories by two of my favourite contemporary mystery writers – Horowitz and Janice Hallett (author of The Appeal and many more excellent novels). But, the ten new stories range from the mediocre to the downright disastrous with just the odd exception.

The Horowitz story, featuring sets of seven bizarre Christmas cards, was competent and atmospheric, but lacked the energetic engagement needed for a good Sherlock Holmes short story. Hallett was more adventurous, setting her story in 1981 with the detective represented by the HOLMES computer system. Keeping to her usual epistolary approach, the story consists of entries in the duty log of a British Transport Police constable, newly based at Baker Street station. It’s entertaining, but too quirky to work properly, especially as this version of HOLMES appears to be a generative AI and, as Hallett notes at the end, the actual HOLMES wasn’t developed until 1985.

I’ll limit the rest to the best, the worst and an oddity. For me, the best entry was Sarah Perry’s, which gave an excellent feel for the period and style, combined with the novelty of being written from Mrs Hudson’s viewpoint: it worked really well. Without doubt the worst was G. T. Karber’s. Not only was the much-visited idea of Holmes and Watson having romantic feelings for each other treated as if it was an original twist, the writing was amateurish. For example, here’s some words of wisdom from Holmes: ‘What these clues tell me is simple: that we need to investigate them to figure out what they mean.’

The oddity was Steve Cavanagh’s story. Full marks for featuring a really impressive twist – though he does then rub it in rather too heavily. But the premise features three titans of industry and their attempt to dominate, culminating in a challenge to Holmes. What’s really strange is the names of these individuals: Hans Bethe, Edward Teller and Enrico Fermi. Even if you aren’t a science writer, these names may well be familiar as three individuals who contributed to the development of nuclear weapons, from a totally different era to the story’s setting. It was impossible to get away from how odd this felt.

Overall, a disappointment. A couple of decent stories, while most of the rest fail on having intriguing plots, period inconsistency or simple readability. This surely wasn’t the best those involved in the collection could do.

You can buy Sherlock from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and Bookshop.org