The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Mystery and the Imagination Detailing the Adventures of the World's Most Famous Detective, Mr.

John Joseph Adams edits stories by various writers in THE IMPROBABLE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, packing in nearly thirty tales of mystery with Holmes as the key. Simon Vance and Anne Flosnik provide fine dual narrations here.

I liked these stories. For the most part, they were true to the Holmes spirit. And speaking of spirits, some of the stories had a supernatural slant, and some had a rational explanation. This is far more satisfactory to me than the selection of stories in some other collections, notably Gaslight Grotesque and Gaslight Grimoire, which were all stories that dipped into the woo. I like a good ghost story as well as anybody, but I more so like to be kept guessing. This anthology did that.

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, *however improbable,* must be the truth," declared Sherlock Holmes in The Sign of the Four. No doubt Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in his heyday, thought it improbable that 120 years after the appearance of the first Holmes story, people would still be writing adventures of the Great Detective, whether novel-length or less, but the fact--the truth, as Holmes would have said--is that Holmes is probably the most written-about and pastiched character or author in literature short of Shakespeare. (I count over 100 examples on just one list.) Despite its title, most of the adventures in this collection aren't all that improbable, and although quite a few were written by authors well-known in the fields of sf, fantasy, and horror (among them Stephen King, Tanith Lee, Vonda N. McIntyre, Michael Moorcock, and Neil Gaiman), most don't have any real elements of any of those genres: as is usually the case in such Holmesian gospel as The Hound of the Baskervilles: 150th Anniversary Edition (Signet Classics), what seems to the uninitiated to be a question of occult influence generally turns out to have a perfectly rational explanation (as Holmes says in one of the stories, "I have never yet met with a case which is not capable of a rational solution, however irrational it may appear at the outset," and for the most part these pieces continue that pattern). Some do cross Holmes with H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos Universe, and indeed in one of these the Great Old Ones prove to be, for the most part, benevolent; at least two take place in alternate universes; in two of them Queen Victoria's consort, Prince Albert, is still alive 20 or 30 years after the date of his death in our reality, and in two Prof. Moriarty is a "consulting detective" and Holmes his respected adversary; in one a young Arthur Doyle dies suspiciously; another, though otherwise prosaic enough, ends with a note suggestive of near immortality; and yet another posits a science-fictional explanation of the infamous Jack the Ripper murders of 1888. The dates range from the late '70's till after Holmes's retirement to Sussex, and the locales, though mostly in London, include Ireland, Louisiana, and Montreal. And as in many of his pastiches, Holmes interacts with or refers to a number of historic personages, including humorist Stephen Leacock, poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, biologist Thomas Henry Huxley, King Umberto of Italy, Oscar Wilde (who, notably, also appears in Nicholas Meyer's The West End Horror: A Posthumous Memoir of John H. Watson, M.D.), an unnamed but sufficiently described George Bernard Shaw (ditto), and C. L. Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), and fictional ones created by other authors, including Flaxman Low ("the first true psychic detective"), Max Carrados, Martin Hewitt, Paul Beck, Eugene Valmont, and Carnacki the Ghost-Finder. (There's also mention of a "crazy American, something-or-other Jones, who carried a bullwhip and fanci

There have been innumerable Sherlock Holmes theme compendiums out there, and most of them have been "one trick ponies" with 2 or 3 good stories in them combined with many lame and / or inept pieces padding things out. The talened anthologist Mr. Adams has cherry picked what would generally be considered the finest pieces from various themed anthologies and presented a uniformly excellent mix herein. Three caveats: first, not all stories necessarily feature SF, fantasy, or horror elements. Some stories start out with seemingly paranormal events that are eventually explained (a la "straight up" Conan Doyle... or Scooby Doo!)and some are "merely" conventional mysteries. All are credibly written, and the variety makes things reasonably interesting. Anthologies of entirely supernatural Holmesian themes can quickly grate on the reader (e.g. "Shadows Over Baker Street") and the Adams approach is a better solution. Second, though there is a brief "intro to Holmes" article kicking things off, if you are unfamiliar and / or hostile to Holmes and his typical literary appearances, this book will do little to enlighten you or change your mind. Adams suggests one can use this volume as an intro to Holmes, but realistically this would be a stretch. If you've never read Conan Doyle at all, start there first and then come here. Third, as with the original stories, you can't read these in big sequential chunks. Read one or two then come back a few days later and read some more. If you read them all back to back, you will find characters and details blurring into one big mess. Follow a course of moderation and you will enjoy this anthology more. Assuming you are not taking this book to a brief desert island stay, this should not be a problem for most. As with any anthology, you may personally loathe some stories (Valentine for me), feel others are too long (IMO the Baxter piece here) and may feel others are just right (for me Hambly, Gaiman, King). All in all, lots of great pieces here, few bombs, and admirable editorial discretion shown by Mr. Adams. If you like Holmes and would like to see him explore some new ground, I think you will enjoy this book very much. Novices to the Baker Street world and Holmes-ophobes need not apply.