Beginning sometime before WWI, British schoolboys waited for the next weekly issue of various "Boys' periodicals" such as THE MAGNET and THE GEM, in hopes it would contain the latest adventures of Billy Bunter and the Famous Five at Greyfriars School. New Bunter books were being issued 50 years later, as copies in my collection indicate, and as far as I know they are still coming out nearly a century later. As Val Andrews says in his dedication of the present volume, Frank Richards' "incredible output of brilliant School stories gave many a working-class boy a public-school education." Indeed!

In the present volume, set circa 1912, Watson gets his retired friend Holmes to tackle a seemingly minor mystery. The manuscript of a history of Greyfriars School has vanished. Is it genuine theft, a prank, or the work of a malicious student... or the tip of something far more serious? We learn that Watson himself was educated at Greyfriars (!), and all the beloved Richards characters, Bunter, the Famous Five, the evil-tempered Mr Quelch, and the vile bully Horace Coker [no relation, I hope, to your own humble scribe, whose meek and saintly aspect is justly famed!], make brief walk-on appearances.

The mystery is soon solved (the book barely runs 100 pages), and the main attraction here is nostalgic. If you're a Bunter fan, or have always wondered who the heck he is, you might give this one a try.

It's been so long since I read the previous Holmes pastiches by John Hall that about all I can remember is that they were a notch above the usual. Here we backslide a bit, firmly into the middle rank.

The eccentric Lord Hammerford has left a strange will which basically requires his two prospective heirs to engage in a kind of scavenger hunt, the end goal being a hidden box containing Lord Hammerford's wealth, converted into gems. But Hammerford dies about 15 years prematurely for the actions required by the will to favor both heirs equally, and Holmes is called in on behalf of the one of the heirs Hammerford's early death severely handicaps. Meanwhile at least two(?) gangs of criminals are after the hidden gems as well.

Various pastiche authors handle stretching Holmes out to novel length by having the criminals act in incredibly stupid fashion, and others handle the stretch by having Holmes himself behave in incredibly stupid fashion. The present work tends to the latter, rather than the former, solution. Even Watson out-thinks Holmes here, more than a couple of times.

In any case, the plot calls for action more than ratiocination, with several wild carriage chases through crowded London byways, and a royal battle with a gang of kidnappers, in which even Billy the pageboy gets to take a hand. You may or may not enjoy it all. I have mixed feelings about it myself. But at 137 pages, you are not going to waste a lot of your time, whatever your final judgement.

If you're looking for a baffling mystery within the literary form of the Holmes pastiche, this won't be your oyster. The main aim of author Andrews here is an evocation of the legendary department store Gammages, at the turn of the last century. Here it is in thin disguise as A. W. Forrage, Ltd., e.g. "Forrages." As in a number of Andrews' recent Holmes novels, a number of real, historical characters appear, including magicians Stanley Collins and Wil Goldston... can you spot the others?

The plot, to the extent that there is one, is a thinly veiled excuse to have Holmes and Watson wander around Gammages and marvel at the diversity of offerings of this wonderous store. You'll probably (correctly) identify not only the villain, but also his motives, after a few dozen pages. Andrews adds a couple of mild snappers at the end, but at 126 pages it's not just the plot that's thin.

Gammages is the focus, not Holmes and Watson. Keep this in mind as you read and you won't be too disappointed.

Here's the first paperback edition of a Holmes and Watson pastiche from 1994, and a very nice one it is, too. Roberts gets the Conan Doyle style, and the dialogue of Holmes and Watson, dead-on in a way American authors don't seem to be able to manage. [His dialogue for American characters is notably less successful, however!]

It's 1906 and a retired Holmes and vacationing Watson are dragged into investigation of two mysterious railway accidents--- the accidents, and many characters Holmes and Watson meet in the course of their investigation are actual and historical, by the way. However, the investigation incredibly drags on for seven long years(!), before the maniac responsible is brought to justice.

During the course of the investigation Mycroft and a close relative of The Woman play key roles. And the events of "His Last Bow" actually occur within the confines of this novel.

For my taste, Holmes here comes across as a bit slow on the uptake, but after all he's been retired for quite a while, and there are semi-plausible Reasons why he is unable to devote his full energies to the case.

I've lost track of the number of pastiches I have read in the past 10 years, but this one ranks quite high among that group. Recommended.

Frank Thomas, Sherlockian bridge player and novelist, missed his calling. He should have been a poet. This 1980 novel (published by Pinnacle Books) is wordy and rivals Poe in descriptive verbosity. Unlike Poe a good portion of the narrative contributes nothing to the mood or plot. And Conan Doyle never used five lines to say that it was raining hard!

The story begins quickly when a dreadfully wounded man is brought to the door of 221B with the words "They found it" on his dying lips. The cryptic message turnes out not to be for Sherlock Holmes but his brother Mycroft. Political intrigue ensues and leads Holmes and Watson across three continents and involves two major religions. The sacred sword of the title is Mohammad's battle sword whose possession threatens to trigger a jihad.

A disturbing trait of Thomas's is that he portrays Watson as a Nigelian buffoon. Sherlock Holmes would never tolerate such idiocy and there is no way Watson could have been such a talented raconteur if he was.

This book is a sequel to THE GOLDEN BIRD, Thomas's first foray into novel-length pastiches. That book should be read first as there are many references to it, though the reader won't get lost without having done so.

This is the fifth pastiche I have seen by Barry Day, and it has the merits and defects of the previous four. Good points: without slavishly imitating the Doylean style, and also without the direct quotations that lesser writers tend to lean upon, he still manages to get the Holmes/Watson dialogue in a more than acceptable facsimile of the originals.

Bad points: Here we have two plots that really have nothing to do with one another. A maniac is methodically killing one by one the seven members of a long-forgotten collegiate club. But wait, there's more: the high priestess of a mystical Cobra Cult in an Asian never-never land is on the track of a long-lost sacred book, which is believed to be in the possession of one unknown member of the club. The identity of the maniac is obvious both to the reader and to Holmes about 1/4 of the way through the book, but he is inexplicably allowed to run around loose for the remainder of the book until enough pages have been chalked up that it is ok to have him killed off. (By the way, about half way through the book he is shot and wounded by Watson, but nothing is ever made of this, and the next time he shows up he seems to be in fine fettle.) As for the Cobra Cult, it never really has anything whatsoever to do with anything that transpires, except in providing the lovely high priestess for Watson to describe repeatedly, and admire--- recovery of the sacred book turns out to be a non-issue.

The killer has no real motive for his murders (he is said to be "insane" every once in a while as if this explains everything) other than perhaps festering envy of his more successful fellow-students (who include Mycroft). Holmes has no real excuse for letting the villain run around loose, other than to fill out 187 pages and get us to novel, as opposed to short story, length. You may find it difficult, as well, to find an excuse to read this particular pastiche. If you have read previous Day pastiches, you'll pretty much know what to expect. I got through it, but without noticable enthusiasm.

This short tale is deceptively complex, holding the reader'sattention to the very end. Mystery fans will find it a true brainteaser, full of plot twists, eccentric characters, and of course, Sherlock Holme's flawless detecting skills. An old friend beckons Sherlock Holmes to East Quantock in the West Country in England to investigate a horseback riding accident involving Andrew Hewitt, his niece's fiancé. The youngest son of Colonel Lawrence Hewitt, Andrew is the family black sheep, the only son uninterested in making money or joining the military. Andrew is set to marry Jane, the Colonel's niece. Inexplicable mishaps have befallen Andrew throughout his entire life, whenever he dared defy the Colonel's plans. Now, it appears that the stirrup on Andrew's saddle was cut, causing him to tumble from his horse while hunting with his father and two brothers. Oddly, no trace of the stirrup's remnants can be found at the accident scene. Coincidentally, Jane has received an anonymous note trying to scare her off the marriage and back to London. Jane engages Holmes and Watson to find out: Who is trying to kill Andrew? Who is trying to prevent their marriage? Why would anyone go to this trouble? What is really at stake? Step by step, Holmes' uncanny powers of deduction unravel the mishap. In getting to the bottom of Andrew's fall, Holmes and Watson encounter a far more intriguing mystery: What caused the disappearance of family matriarch Bess Hewitt three years ago? Each character has a different theory. Sons Ned and Laurence feel she abandoned the family to be with a secret lover; Andrew fears that she is dead, probably murdered. Meanwhile, Colonel Hewitt's apparent stoicism about his wife's disappearance makes him a prime suspect. Who done it? Colonel Hewitt, the cold and forbidding husband? Laurence, the materialistic eldest son? Ned, the manipulative middle son? Andrew, the seemingly naive youngest son? Or, someone else? The reader, like the Hewitt family, remains in the dark until the very end. Not so, Sherlock Holmes, who pieces together innocuous details to reveal the killer and prevent the nefarious assailant from killing again. Suddenly, Holmes's superior powers of deductive reasoning make this puzzle seem "very elementary" after all.

This tale of Sherlock Holmes investigating the disappearance of some bonds, prior to their issue, in the vaults of the Bank of England and in high society is an odd mixture.

On the one hand, the mystery is well constructed and its investigation, including the slow piecing together of disparate pieces of information to create a sensible whole is excellent.

On the other, the story is related in such a clinical and passionless fashion that it fails to excite the interest of the reader, if appealing to the intellect.

Probably on par with some of the lower-average Holmes stories from the pen of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Here we have 5 Holmes pastiches, clocking in at a total of 174 pages, a bit more substantial than the usual Breese Holmes volumes. First, the good features: the stories are fairly well told, and there is a lot of authentic-seeming local color--- cricket in 1896, Aussies vs. medical students; Sligo in Ireland, with a walkon by W. B. Yeats; the tourist charms of Glastonbury; Osea near Maldon, in Essex.

Holmes and Watson are... well... ok, but a lot of the dialogue lacks a period sound. The plots are not always up to snuff, either. For example "The Strange Affair at Glastonbury" is quite literally a pastiche, awkwardly combining elements of "The Redheaded League" and "The Musgrave Ritual." The author also has an annoying stylistic defect, which appears in Watson's narrative and in all the dialogue, no matter who is speaking: broken sentences.

Did the timid Harold Norman really witness a murder at Tandridge Hall, even though Sir George Simon and his staff stoutly deny it? Did Stamford die in the attempt to steal a priceless painting of Lord Sheffield's--- or did he die while attempting to stop the the thief? Why is an Irish doctor continually waylaid and assaulted, when he carries nothing of value and has no enemies? Why is Glastonbury beset by strange pranks each of which must have taken all night to perpetrate? Can Holmes solve a possible murder with the only clue being the voice of the victim as recorded on an early Edison phonograph? In the majority of these cases, I think you'll enjoy finding out.

Definitely not my favorite Sherlock Holmes Book, but none-the-less quite good. Sherlock Holmes' power of observation and rationality are awe-inspiring. In this story he also reveals a love of books and how he things he has read come back to him in a somewhat chaotic fashion. (foreshadowing semantic networks? )