The Wild Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Volume Four - Will Murray

The fourth volume in Will Murray’s continuing series THE WILD ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES returns, for the most part, to more traditional yarns featuring the esteemed detective and his friend and colleague Dr. Watson. The previous volume presented stories with a supernatural and/or science fictional angle, but there are only two such in this collection.

Murray, of course, has nailed the style of Arthur Conan Doyle’s original tales, or at least it seems so to me although I’m no real expert on the subject. I really enjoyed every story in this volume, but here are a few favorites:

In “The Improbable Misadventure of the Blackish Bottle”, Holmes discovers an unexpected murder weapon hidden in his own quarters at 221B Baker Street. This ties in with Arthur Conan Doyle’s original Holmes story “The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual.”

“The Conundrum of the Absent Cranium” has Holmes seeking to solve the mystery of a murder victim found without, you guessed it, his head.

“The Second Adventure of the Five Orange Pips” is a sequel to “The Adventure of the Five Orange Pips”, of course, and is a worthy successor to that classic tale.

Also in the original Five Orange Pips story, Doyle makes mention of an unrecorded Holmes case involving something called the Paradol Chamber. In “The Difficult Ordeal of the Paradol Chamber”, Will Murray records that adventure, and a truly creepy and harrowing one it is. Holmes himself narrates most of it since the action took place without Dr. Watson’s presence. This is a great story, my favorite in this volume, and the basis for the fine cover art by Gary Carbon.

The supernatural does figure in the final two stories, “The Impossiblity of the Premature Postmortem Message” and “The Disquieting Adventure of the Murmuring Dell”. Algernon Blackwood’s occult detective character Dr. John Silence is mentioned in the first of these and appears in the second one. “The Impossibility of the Premature Postmortem Message” involves spiritualism, a subject of much interest to Doyle that formed the basis for his third Professor Challenger novel THE LAND OF MIST. I remember reading that book many years ago, and after the hard-headed scientific adventures of Challenger in the first two books, the mysticism of THE LAND OF MIST really took me by surprise. I recall enjoying it a great deal, though, as I did all of Professor Challenger’s appearances. Murray having Sherlock Holmes tackle the subject is intriguing and very effective. “The Disquieting Adventure of the Murmuring Dell” is another very creepy tale. Disquieting, indeed.

If you’re a Sherlock Holmes fan, this is a fine addition to a very good series. I give this fourth volume of THE WILD ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES a strong recommendation. It's available in trade paperback and e-book editions on Amazon.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Ghost Stories, March 1930

One Halloween when I was a kid, I went trick or treating in a ghost costume my mother made out of an old sheet. It had been raining a lot that week and may have rained earlier in the day on Halloween, I don't recall. But by the time I got home that evening with my bag of candy, my ghost costume was soaked with mud up to the knees. That sheet went in the trash. I always thought it was one of my best costumes, though, and a very enjoyable Halloween. Thinking about that reminded me of the pulp GHOST STORIES. This issue has a cover by Dalton Stevens and a lot of stories by authors whose names are completely unfamiliar to me. The only ones I recognize are Arthur Conan Doyle, Roy Vickers, and Ben Conlon. GHOST STORIES tried to make its contents look like true stories, but most of them were pure fiction.

I normally try to do more horror and supernatural-related posts in October, especially the week of Halloween, but this October has been like none other. At least I was able to get this one in. With luck, I'll have more time next October. In the meantime, Happy Halloween!

The Wild Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Volume One - Will Murray

I’ve been a Sherlock Holmes fan for close to 60 years now. I don’t recall which of the stories I read first, but I know I was in elementary school when I discovered the series. Then, when I was in fifth grade, I read THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES (in the Scholastic Book Club edition, I think; I’ve written about that on the blog before) and was blown away, to the point that I read it again just a few months later during the summer. It remains one of my all-time favorite mystery novels, all these decades later.

By the time I was out of high school, I’d read all the stories and all four novels by Arthur Conan Doyle. When I say I’m a fan, I don’t mean to imply that I’m any sort of Holmes scholar. Most of the stories, I’ve read only once and I never actually studied them. I couldn’t win a Holmes trivia contest to save my life. But I enjoy the characters and as time went on, I read some of the pastiche novels, too, such as the ones by Nicholas Meyer and THE GIANT RAT OF SUMATRA by Richard L. Boyer when Warner Books published it in 1976. I’ve never written a Holmes pastiche, but I published one a while back at Rough Edges Press, Stephen Mertz’s excellent SHERLOCK HOLMES: ZOMBIES OVER LONDON (now available from Wolfpack Publishing and highly recommended).

So it’s safe to say that I was inclined to like THE WILD ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES by Will Murray, a new collection of ten Holmes tales written by Murray for various anthologies. This volume certainly didn’t disappoint me. In fact, I had an absolutely great time reading it. For a long-time Holmes fan, it was pure pleasure.

Some authors have taken Holmes out of his element, placing their stories in different settings and using elements from other genres. For the most part, Murray’s Holmes is the pure quill, though, classic style stories with the original setting and supporting characters. Here are the tales in this collection:

Is a blue-skinned dinosaur tearing up the Essex countryside? "The Wild Adventure of the Indigo Impossibility" provides the astonishing answer.

Holmes and Watson plunge into the darkest dens of Limehouse in search of "The Mystery of the Elusive Li Shen." Is he man, myth, or monster?

What is the secret of the uncatchable Thames footpad chronicled in "The Adventure of Old Black Duffel?"

A famous American soldier of fortune asks Sherlock Holmes to locate a Russian adventuress long believed dead in "The Adventure of the Nebulous Nihilist."

Did fairies lure a young Manchester boy to his doom? "The Misadventure of the Bonny boy" tells the chilling tale.

A wealthy art collector challenges Sherlock Holmes with an unsolvable riddle. Or is it a riddle? What is "The Enigma of Neptune's Quandary?"

Is a dead man haunting his office––or might an even stranger explanation exist for why his frightened face is imprinted on a windowpane? "The Adventure of the Glassy Ghost" reveals all.

A fiendish murderer strikes down victim after victim in "The Problem of the Bruised Tongues." The only clue: the discolored tips of their tongues.

"The Adventure of the Throne of Gilt." What could it be, and why should Dr. John Watson fear it so?

A revengeful enemy plots a gruesome end for Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in "The Unsettling Matter of the Graveyard Ghoul."

If you can resist those, you’re made of stronger stuff than I am! I'm glad to know that Murray has more of them waiting in the wings. I hope we get collections of them, too. In the meantime, this first volume of THE WILD ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES gets a very high recommendation from me.

Coming From Stark House: Strange Island Stories - Jonathan E. Lewis, ed.

From Stark House:

STRANGE ISLAND STORIES

Islands are, in many ways, the perfect settings for authors looking to craft stories that explore themes such as human isolation, lost civilizations, strange and unusual animal life, the power of nature, the cruelty of man to his fellow man, and human nature itself. The strange island story takes the reader on a journey into the weird, the bizarre, the scary, and the unsettling. It allows authors to create alternative worlds, places where cannibalism, lycanthropy, and voodoo exist… where islands can literally come alive… where women, rather than men, can be the dominant sex… where the normal rules of geography and topography are defied. Where the only limits are the human imagination. Here are nineteen classic tales from Arthur Conan Doyle, Julian Hawthorne, Francis Stevens, Jack London, H. P. Lovecraft, Frank Norris, M. P. Shiel, John Buchan and many more; plus one new story from the editor himself!

Some of the other authors in this anthology not mentioned above are Algernon Blackwood, Robert Louis Stevenson, Henry S. Whitehead, and James Francis Dwyer. The editor's previous anthology, ANCIENT EGYPTIAN SUPERNATURAL TALES, is a top-notch volume I'm still reading. STRANGE ISLAND STORIES looks like it will be excellent, too. The title alone is more than enough to catch my interest! It'll be out in March but is available for pre-order now.