The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes

The rivals of Sherlock Holmes? What rivals? Few readers today realize that the eminent Sherlock Holmes had considerable competition in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Detective stories were amazing popular and magazines competed avidly for new works. Authors like Max Pemberton, Arthur Morrison, Guy Boothby, Baroness Orczy, and R. Austin Freeman experimented with this new genre, creating a wide range of amateur detectives, some that were passionately dedicated to justice, while others were little more than rogues. Sir Hugh Greene, director-general of the BBC in the 1960s (and brother of Graham Greene), wrote the introduction and selected the thirteen early detective stories comprising The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes (Penguin Books, 1971). Greene chose stories in which the detectives have identifiable, or nearly identifiable addresses in the London of their day, thereby giving them something of the reality that surrounds No. 221b Baker Street. The best of the authors, Arthur Morrison, Clifford Ashdown, and R. Austin Freeman, compare quite favorably with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and it is unfortunate that their works are so seldom encountered. Even the lesser stories in this collection make good reading, and should appeal to fans of Holmes and Watson. The thirteen stories: The Ripening Rubies (Max Pemberton), The Case of Laker, Absconded and The Affair of the Avalanche Bicycle and Tyre Co. Ltd (Arthur Morrison), The Duchess of Wiltshire's Diamonds (Guy Boothby), The Assyrian Rejuvenator and The Submarine Boat (Clifford Ashdown), Madame Sara (L. Meade and R. Eustace), The Secret of the Fox Hunter (W. Le Queux), The Mysterious Death on the Underground Railway and The Woman in the Big Hat (Baroness Orczy), The Moabite Cipher (R. Austin Freeman), The Horse of the Invisible (W. Hope Hodgson) and The Game Played in the Dark (Ernest Bramah). Caution: Be careful when ordering Hugh Greene's book. A very different collection, Rivals of Sherlock Holmes (edited by Alan K. Russell, Castle Books, 1978), has nearly the same title. And, Russell's second volume, formally titled Rivals of Sherlock Holmes Two (1979), is even more confusing as the modified title on the dust jacket is The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes 2.

This book is a compilation of detective stories published during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While Hugh Greene, the editor of this book, refers to the detectives featured in this group of Victorian and Edwardian stories as rivals of Sherlock Holmes, not all rate as such. While Dr. Thorndyke, Martin Hewitt, and to a lesser extent the Old man in the Corner are worthy of comparision to the legendary sleuth of Baker Street, others such as Romney Pringle and Dorrington are decidedly inferior. Although not all coming to a standard demanded by the title, none of the detectives in this volume deserve oblivion. In editing this book, Hugh Greene has helped prevent these detectives from slipping into the London fogs forever.