David Marcum plays The Game with deadly seriousness. He first discovered Sherlock Holmes in 1975, at the age of ten, when he received an abridged version of The Adventures during a trade. Since that time, David has collected literally thousands of traditional Holmes pastiches in the form of novels, short stories, radio and television episodes, movies and scripts, comics, fan-fiction, and unpublished manuscripts. He is the author of The Papers of Sherlock Holmes Vol.’s I and II (2011, 2013), Sherlock Holmes and A Quantity of Debt (2013, 2016), Sherlock Holmes - Tangled Skeins (2015, 2017), and The Papers of Solar Pons (2017). Additionally, he is the editor of the three-volume set Sherlock Holmes in Montague Street (2014, recasting Arthur Morrison’s Martin Hewitt stories as early Holmes adventures,), the two-volume collection of Great Hiatus stories, Holmes Away From Home (2016), Sherlock Holmes: Before Baker Street (2017), Imagination Theatre’s Sherlock Holmes (2017), a number of forthcoming volumes, and the ongoing collection, The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories (2015–), now at ten volumes, with two more in preparation as of this writing. He has contributed stories, essays, and scripts to The Baker Street Journal, The Strand Magazine, The Watsonian, Beyond Watson, Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, About Sixty, About Being a Sherlockian, The Solar Pons Gazette, Imagination Theater, The Proceedings of the Pondicherry Lodge, and The Gazette, the journal of the Nero Wolfe Wolfe Pack. He began his adult work life as a Federal Investigator for an obscure U.S. Government agency, before the organization was eliminated. He returned to school for a second degree, and is now a licensed Civil Engineer, living in Tennessee with his wife and son. He is a member of The Sherlock Holmes Society of London, The Nashville Scholars of the Three Pipe Problem (The Engineer’s Thumb”), The Occupants of the Full House, The Diogenes Club of Washington, D.C. (all Scions of The Baker Street Irregulars), The Sherlock Holmes Society of India (as a Patron), The John H. Watson Society (“Marker”), The Praed Street Irregulars (“The Obrisset Snuff Box”), The Solar Pons Society of London, and The Diogenes Club West (East Tennessee Annex), a curious and unofficial Scion of one. Since the age of nineteen, he has worn a deerstalker as his regular-and-only hat from autumn to spring. In 2013, he and his deerstalker were finally able make his first trip-of-a-lifetime Holmes Pilgrimage to England, with return Pilgrimages in 2015 and 2016, where you may have spotted him. If you ever run into him and his deerstalker out and about, feel free to say hello!
New Yorker Nicholas Meyer is the author of three Sherlock Holmes novels, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (forty weeks on the New York Times bestseller list), The West End Horror, and The Canary Trainer. His screen adaptation of The Seven-Per-Cent Solution was nominated for an Oscar. In addition, Meyer has written and/or directed Star Treks II, IV, and VI, as well as several other films and novels. He also directed The Day After, the most watched film for television ever broadcast. The Day After garnered one-hundred-million viewers in a single night and changed Ronald Reagan’s mind about a winnable nuclear war. He lives in Los Angeles and is currently working on Star Trek: Discovery.
Will Murray is the author of over seventy novels, including forty Destroyer novels and seven posthumous Doc Savage collaborations with Lester Dent, under the name Kenneth Robeson, for Bantam Books in the 1990’s. Since 2011, he has written fourteen additional Doc Savage adventures for Altus Press, two of which co-starred The Shadow, as well as a solo Pat Savage novel. His 2015 Tarzan novel, Return to Pal-Ul-Don, was followed by King Kong vs. Tarzan in 2016. Murray has written short stories featuring such classic characters as Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man, Ant-Man, the Hulk, Honey West, the Spider, the Avenger, the Green Hornet, the Phantom, and Cthulhu. A previous Murray Sherlock Holmes story appeared in Moonstone’s Sherlock Holmes: The Crossovers Casebook, and another is forthcoming in Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Was Not, involving H. P. Lovecraft’s Dr. Herbert West. Additionally, his “The Adventure of the Glassy Ghost” appeared in The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part VIII - Eliminate the Impossible: 1892–1905.
Sidney Paget (1860–1908), a few of whose illustrations are used within this anthology, was born in London, and like his two older brothers, became a famed illustrator and painter. He completed over three-hundred-and-fifty drawings for the Sherlock Holmes stories that were first published in The Strand magazine, defining Holmes’s image forever after in the public mind.
Robert Perret is a writer, librarian, and devout Sherlockian living on the Palouse. His Sherlockian publications include “The Canaries of Clee Hills Mine” in An Improbable Truth: The Paranormal Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, “For King and Country” in The Science of Deduction, and “How Hope Learned the Trick” in NonBinary Review. He considers himself to be a pan-Sherlockian and a one-man Scion out on the lonely moors of Idaho. Robert has recently authored a yet-unpublished scholarly article tentatively entitled “A Study in Scholarship: The Case of the Baker Street Journal’. More information is available at www.robertperret.com
Martin Rosenstock studied English, American, and German literature. In 2008, he received a Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara for looking into what happens when things go badly - as they do from time to time - for detectives in German-language literature. After job hopping around the colder latitudes of the U.S. for three years, he decided to return to warmer climes. In 2011, he took a job at Gulf University for Science and Technology in Kuwait, where he currently teaches. When not brooding over plot twists, he spends too much time and money traveling the Indian Ocean littoral. There is a novel somewhere there, he feels sure.
G. L. Schulze is a life-long resident of Michigan and a retired officer with the Michigan Department of Corrections. Gen enjoys gardening, walking, woodworking, wood burning, and beadwork, as well as reading and writing. She also enjoys spending time with her rescue dog, Java. She is the author of six books in her Young Detectives’ Mystery Series, as well as her first Sherlock Holmes novel, Gray Manor. A second Holmes novel, The Ring and The Box, A Sherlock Holmes Mystery of Ancient Egypt is slated for release in early spring. For further information about Gen’s books visit her Amazon link at https://www.amazon.com/Gen-Schulze/e/B00KTH36LO
Tim Symonds was born in London. He grew up in Somerset, Dorset, and Guernsey. After several years in East and Central Africa, he settled in California and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in Political Science from UCLA. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. He writes his novels in the woods and hidden valleys surrounding his home in the High Weald of East Sussex. Dr. Watson knew the untamed region well. In “The Adventure of Black Peter”, Watson wrote, “the Weald was once part of that great forest which for so long held the Saxon invaders at bay.” Tim’s novels are published by MX Publishing. His latest is titled Sherlock Holmes and the Nine Dragon Sigil. Previous novels include Sherlock Holmes and The Sword of Osman, Sherlock Holmes and the Mystery of Einstein’s Daughter, Sherlock Holmes and the Dead Boer at Scotney Castle, and Sherlock Holmes and the Case of The Bulgarian Codex.
Thaddeus Tuffentsamer is the author of the young adult series, F.A.R.T.S. The Federal Agency for Reconnaissance and Tactical Services, and the satirical self-help book, Are You SURE About That? Observations and Life Lessons from a High Functioning Sociopath. He resides in Goodyear, AZ, with his wife and youngest daughter. He has always been a fan of Sherlock Holmes, but his passion was reignited when his daughter took an interest in reading those wonderful adventures, for which they together now share a deep appreciation. He is not on social media - doesn’t know how - but loves to connect personally with his readers by email at [email protected] His books can be found on Amazon.
Peter Coe Verbica grew up on a commercial cattle ranch in Northern California, where he learned the value of a strong work ethic. He works for the Wealth Management Group of a global investment bank, and is an Adjunct Professor in the Economics Department at SJSU. He is the author of numerous books, including Left at the Gate and Other Poems, Hard-Won Cowboy Wisdom (Not Necessarily in Or
der of Importance), A Key to the Grove and Other Poems, and The Missing Tales of Sherlock Holmes (as Compiled by Peter Coe Verbica, JD). Mr. Verbica obtained a JD from Santa Clara University School of Law, an MS from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a BA in English from Santa Clara University. He is the co-inventor on a number of patents, has served as a Managing Member of three venture capital firms, and the CFO of one of the portfolio companies. He is an unabashed advocate of cowboy culture and enjoys creative writing, hiking, and tennis. He is married with four daughters. For more information, or to contact the author, please go to www.hardwoncowboywisdom.com.
Daniel D. Victor, a Ph.D. in American literature, is a retired high school English teacher who taught in the Los Angeles Unified School District for forty-six years. His doctoral dissertation on little-known American author, David Graham Phillips, led to the creation of Victor’s first Sherlock Holmes pastiche, The Seventh Bullet, in which Holmes investigates Phillips’ actual murder. Victor’s second novel, A Study in Synchronicity, is a two-stranded murder mystery, which features a Sherlock Holmes-like private eye. He currently writes the ongoing series Sherlock Holmes and the American Literati. Each novel introduces Holmes to a different American author who actually passed through London at the turn of the century. In The Final Page of Baker Street, Holmes meets Raymond Chandler; in The Baron of Brede Place, Stephen Crane; in Seventeen Minutes to Baker Street, Mark Twain; and The Outrage at the Diogenes Club, Jack London. Victor, who is also writing a novel about his early years as a teacher, lives with his wife in Los Angeles, California. They have two adult sons.
The following contributors appear in the companion volume
The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories
Part IX - 2018 Annual (1879–1895)
Deanna Baran lives in a remote part of Texas where cowboys may still be seen in their natural habitat. A librarian and former museum curator, she writes in between cups of tea, playing Go, and trading postcards with people around the world. This is her latest venture into the foggy streets of gaslit London.
S.F. Bennett was born and raised in London, studying History at Queen Mary and Westfield College, and Journalism at City University at the Postgraduate level, before moving to Devon in 2013. The author lectures on Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes, and 19th century detective fiction, and has had articles on various aspects from The Canon published in The Journal of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London and The Torr, the journal of The Poor Folk Upon The Moors, the Sherlock Holmes Society of the South West of England. Her first published novel is The Secret Diary of Mycroft Holmes: The Thoughts and Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes’s Elder Brother, 1880–1888 (2017).
Nick Cardillo has loved Sherlock Holmes ever since he was first introduced to the detective in The Great Illustrated Classics edition of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes at the age of six. His devotion to the Baker Street detective duo has only increased over the years, and Nick is thrilled to be taking these proper steps into the Sherlock Holmes Community. His first published story, “The Adventure of the Traveling Corpse”, appeared in The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories - Part VI: 2017 Annual, and his “The Haunting of Hamilton Gardens” was published in PART VIII - Eliminate the Impossible: 1892–1905. A devout fan of The Golden Age of Detective Fiction, Hammer Horror, and Doctor Who, Nick co-writes the Sherlockian blog, Back on Baker Street, which analyses over seventy years of Sherlock Holmes film and culture. He is a student at Susquehanna University.
Leslie Charteris was born in Singapore on May 12th, 1907. With his mother and brother, he moved to England in 1919 and attended Rossall School in Lancashire before moving on to Cambridge University to study law. His studies there came to a halt when a publisher accepted his first novel. His third one, entitled Meet the Tiger, was written when he was twenty years old and published in September 1928. It introduced the world to Simon Templar, aka The Saint. He continued to write about The Saint until 1983 when the last book, Salvage for The Saint, was published. The books, which have been translated into over thirty languages, number nearly a hundred and have sold over forty-million copies around the world. They’ve inspired, to date, fifteen feature films, three television series, ten radio series, and a comic strip that was written by Charteris and syndicated around the world for over a decade. He enjoyed travelling, but settled for long periods in Hollywood, Florida, and finally in Surrey, England. He was awarded the Cartier Diamond Dagger by the Crime Writers’ Association in 1992, in recognition of a lifetime of achievement. He died the following year.
Ian Dickerson was just nine years old when he discovered The Saint. Shortly after that, he discovered Sherlock Holmes. The Saint won, for a while anyway. He struck up a friendship with The Saint’s creator, Leslie Charteris and his family. With their permission, he spent six weeks studying the Leslie Charteris collection at Boston University and went on to write, direct, and produce documentaries on the making of The Saint and Return of The Saint, which have been released on DVD. He oversaw the recent reprints of almost fifty of the original Saint books in both the US and UK, and was a co-producer on the 2017 TV movie of The Saint. When he discovered that Charteris had written Sherlock Holmes stories as well - well, there was the excuse he needed to revisit The Canon. He’s consequently written and edited three books on Holmes’ radio adventures. For the sake of what little sanity he has, Ian has also written about a wide range of subjects, none of which come with a halo, including talking mashed potatoes, Lord Grade, and satellite links. Ian lives in Hampshire with his wife and two children. And an awful lot of books by Leslie Charteris. Not quite so many by Conan Doyle, though.
C.H. Dye first discovered Sherlock Holmes when she was eleven, in a collection that ended at the Reichenbach Falls. It was another six months before she discovered The Hound of the Baskervilles, and two weeks after that before a librarian handed her The Return. She has loved the stories ever since. She has written fan-fiction, and her first published pastiche, “The Tale of the Forty Thieves”, was included in The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories - Part I: 1881–1889. Her story “A Christmas Goose” was in The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories - Part V: Christmas Adventures, and “The Mysterious Mourner” in The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories - Part VIII: Eliminate the Impossible: 1892–1905
Sonia Fetherston BSI is a member of the illustrious Baker Street Irregulars. For almost thirty years, she’s been a frequent contributor to Sherlockian anthologies, including Calabash Press’s acclaimed Case Files series, and Wildside Press’s About series. Sonia’s byline often appears in the pages of The Baker Street Journal, The Journal of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London, Canadian Holmes, and the Sydney Passengers’ Log. Her work earned her the coveted Morley-Montgomery Award from the Baker Street Irregulars, and the Derek Murdoch Memorial Award from The Bootmakers of Toronto. Sonia is author of Prince of the Realm: The Most Irregular James Bliss Austin (BSI Press, 2014). She’s at work on another biography for the BSI, this time about Julian Wolff.
David Friend lives in Wales, UK, where he divides his time between watching old detective films and thinking about old detective films. He’s been scribbling out stories for twenty years and hopes, some day, to write something half-decent. Most of what he pens is set in a 1930’s world of non-stop adventure with debonair sleuths, kick-ass damsels, criminal masterminds, and narrow escapes, and he wishes he could live there. He’s currently working on a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories and a series based around The Strange Investigators, an eccentric team of private detectives out to solve the most peculiar and perplexing mysteries around. He thinks of it as P.G. Wodehouse crossed with Edgar Allen Poe, only not as good.
Stephen Gaspar is a writer of historical detective fiction. He has written two Sherlock Holmes books: The Canadian Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Cold-Hearted Murder. Some of his detectives are a Roman Tribune, a medieval monk, and a Templar knight. He was born and lives in Windsor, Ontario, Canada.
/> Denis Green was born in London, England in April 1905. He grew up mostly in London’s Savoy Theatre where his father, Richard Green, was a principal in many Gilbert and Sullivan productions, A Flying Officer with RAF until 1924, he then spent four years managing a tea estate in North India before making his stage debut in Hamlet with Leslie Howard in 1928. He made his first visit to America in 1931 and established a respectable stage career before appearing in films - including minor roles in the first two Rathbone and Bruce Holmes films - and developing a career in front of and behind the microphone during the golden age of radio. Green and Leslie Charteris met in 1938 and struck up a lifelong friendship. Always busy, be it on stage, radio, film or television, Green passed away at the age of fifty in New York.
James Moffett is a Masters graduate in Professional Writing, with a specialisation in novel and non-fiction writing. He also has an extensive background in media studies. James began developing a passion for writing when contributing to his University’s student magazine. His interest in the literary character of Sherlock Holmes was deep-rooted in his youth. He released his first publication of eight interconnected short stories titled The Trials of Sherlock Holmes in 2017, along with a contribution to The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories - Part VII: Eliminate The Impossible: 1880–1891, with a short story entitled “The Blank Photograph”.
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