The Resurrected Holmes: New Cases from the Notes of John H. Watson, M.D.

'Resurrected Holmes' is a somewhat convoluted idea well-executed. It is a collection of short Sherlock Holmes stories supposedly written by other well-known authors. In other words, the actual authors who wrote the stories had to write them in the style of the purported authors, who were supposedly endeavouring to write in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Watsonian voice.Now, that may or may not take your fancy. What is needs to be said is that, by and large, the stories in this volume are of an excellent quality, so even if the literary conceit that is the book's starting point fails to please you, the stories themselves should.For true Holmes completists, each story is one of the unchronicled stories referred to by Watson in his accounts of Holmes' investigations (with the exception of the final story, which reveals the truth behind 'The Adventure of the Second Stain').In some cases (for example, 'The Adventure of the Boulevard Assassin' and 'The Madness of Colonel Warburton', ascribed to Jack Kerouac and Dashiell Hammett respectively) the voice of the putative author occassionally overwhelms the Holmesian nature and may be a substantial distraction for those reading this book purely as a Sherlock Holmes collection.However, some of the stories are good enough to warrant the price of admission alone. I particularly enjoyed 'The Adventure of Ricoletti of the Club Foot (and his abominable wife)', notionally written by P.G. Wodehouse, in that it managed to be both a convincing Holes story while also being a comedy of manners that its putative author might well have appreciated.Marvin Kaye knows his Sherlock Holmes, and this volume plainly displays his (and the contributing authors) deep-felt love and admiration for the Holmesian canon. Recommended.

This book is split into 3 sections: Believable, Long Shot, and Other Detectives. (I know I messed up on the section names but that's the closest I can get.) Most of the stories are just plain good. There are a few truly awful ones like the one by "Jack Kerouac" and the wine merchant one, but then there are some that make up for bombs (the cripple parade and the giant rat of Sumatra.) Not for the purist Sherlockian but really fun for the rest of us. I would've given it 5 stars but I'm saving that rating for the best Sherlock Holmes book I read. (Still looking.)

Overall this is a pretty good collection. The concept of having authors try and write a story not only in the Watsonian style but also in the style of another author (such as Lovecraft, Hemingway, etc.) made for interesting reading. For the most part. Several stories were very good, most were good-to-mediocre, but a few were just plain bad. The "beat generation" rendition and the very strange rendering of "Vamberry the Wine Merchant" left a bad flavor. (Or is that "flavour"?) All in all, better than some. Not as good as others.

Fans of the Sherlock Holmes stories know that his biographer and friend, Dr. John H. Watson, had placed a battered tin box full of notes about the great detective's cases in the bank vault of Cox and Company of London. Thought destroyed by Nazi bombs during World War II, it turns out that the box had been sold upon WatsonÕs death to a collector, who hired a variety of writers to finish them. As in any anthology, the results are mixed. But John Betancourt amusingly revives H.G. Wells' socialist hectoring, while Paula Volsky's is chillingly effective in using H.P. Lovecraft's voice to tell the tale of the giant rat of Sumatra. Top prizes goes to Richard Lupoff, whose has Jack Kerouac speed-writing a Holmes story so well that it reads like a lost hallucination from "On the Road," and William DeAndrea for recreating Holmes as Mike Hammer in a deerstalker hat in "The Adventure of the Cripple Parade." Those who hunger for tales about the great detective -- with a difference -- may find themselves irresistibly drawn to "Resurrected Holmes." One wishes only for a sequel, this time featuring famous women writers.