Sherlock Holmes: The American Years

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A compelling volume of original tales concerning Sherlock Holmes’ legendary time in America With an introduction by Leslie S. Klinger, editor and compiler of all three volumes of the Annotated Sherlock Holmes, this collection of ten original stories brings light to one of the least examined periods in the life of the great detective—his time in the former colonies, the United States. This Holmes is a youthful one—a young man not yet set upon his course in life and in his famous lodgings at 221B Baker Street. In Richard Lupoff ’s “Inga Sigerson Weds,” he’s come to America to represent the family at his sister’s wedding. In “My Silk Umbrella,” Mark Twain narrates his fateful encounter with Holmes at a baseball game in Hartford, Connecticut; Steve Hockensmith narrates the meeting of the young William Gillette and the object of his later, most famous turn upon the stage; and Peter Tremayne reveals the intersection of Holmes and the Irish in the 19th century American midwestern landscape. With further stories by Marta Randall, Rhys Bowen, Peter Beagle, and others, the legend, the mythology and even the history of the world’s greatest detective is further enhanced by these charming, clever and mystifying tales.From Publishers WeeklyThe 10 all-original tales in Edgar-finalist Kurland's lively third Sherlock Holmes anthology (after 2004's Sherlock Holmes: The Hidden Years) chronicle the exploits of the fledgling sleuth in America, before he settled in Baker Street. Richard A. Lupoff gets the volume off to a strong start with Inga Sigerson Weds, in which the adolescent Sherlock's cash-strapped parents send him and his jealous sister across the Atlantic to a distant cousin's New York City wedding. In Darryl Brock's witty My Silk Umbrella, Holmes encounters Mark Twain at a Hartford base ball match. The detective meets another Connecticut luminary, P.T. Barnum, in Michael Mallory's droll The Sacred White Elephant of Mandalay. Dr. Watson appears once, in a postscript to Gary Lovisi's improbable The American Adventure, in which the normally emotionless Holmes falls hard for a beautiful stage actress. Other contributors include Steve Hockensmith, Peter Tremayne, and Rhys Bowen. (Feb.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From BooklistNot to be confused with the recent Sherlock Holmes in America (2009), this is also a collection of short stories about the world’s first consulting detective, but these explore the life of the great sleuth before he met Dr. Watson, even before he became a consulting detective. Holmes is a young man, raw and inexperienced, eager to learn, and—let’s be blunt—annoyingly precocious (his sister, in particular, finds him “execrable” and a “bothersome stringbean”). The crimes range from the distinctly minor (a stolen umbrella, for example) to more typically serious (murder and robbery), but Holmes fans will enjoy seeing a younger, less-accomplished version of their hero in an unusual setting: America, roughly from 1875 to 1880. Fans will also enjoy the way the authors of these stories incorporate real people into their fictions: three of the stories, for example, are narrated by Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Edwin Booth (brother of John Wilkes). Consider this one a companion to the earlier Holmes-in-America anthology. --David Pitt