Susan Knight's Blog

The very striking cover of Mark Ellis’s nove, designed by the author’s wife Melissa Martin-Ellis, has Holmes and Watson as you have never seen them before. If Holmes is a precursor of Bond, he is definitely more the saturnine Timothy Dalton than the smooth George Lazenby, while Watson is perhaps a hunky Indiana Jones.

Between them, not Enola Holmes, but Loveday Brooke, heroine of Catherine Pirkis’s series of stories which, in the late nineteenth century, earned her the sobriquet ‘the female Holmes’.

Our heroes are young and sexy, just setting out on their investigative career in Baker Street which provides something of a cover for their other activities, working in secret for Holmes’s brother, Mycroft, and through him the British Government. There has, of course, to be a fiendish plot, very much in the Bond tradition. An organisation called the Hephaestus Ring plans to unleash terror in Paris at the opening of the Eiffel tower, prior, naturally, to taking over the world. The Ring is led by a criminal mastermind, Madame Koluchy, an exceedingly nasty, if beautiful and clever, piece of work, assisted by more familiar baddies, Professor Moriarty and Colonel Moran.

Involved in their plot too, against his will is Nikola Tesla [right], in real life an eminent inventor and electrician . In fact, it is his kidnapping that drives much of the story along as Holmes, Watson and Loveday race against time to track him down.

There are thrills aplenty here, including several vividly described violent confrontations between heroes and villains which made me think what a great film this would make. I was also delighted that Mark Ellis, an American now living in the west of Ireland, brings his characters to my native land, to picturesque Skibbereen in Cork for part of the story.

The clever interweaving of fictional and real characters contemporary with the canon, as well as references to bizarre inventions such as Mephisto the Chess Playing Android (real) or H.G. Wells’s fictional growth hormone, Herakleophorbia IV (from Food of the Gods) is part of the joy of the book. All is explained in the Afterword: Who and What They Are, the skill of the author ensuring that the narrative isn’t burdened down by the evident formidable body of research.

As well as a prolific novelist, Mark Ellis is a journalist and comic creator. His most recent books, apart from this one, are Death Hawk: the Complete Saga, Nosferatu: Sovereign of Terror, Knightwatch: Invictus X and Lakota: Serpents of Aztlan. They sound…. interesting.

221B On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is available from MX publishing from September 24: https://mxpublishing.com/products/221b-on-her-majestys-secret-service-paperback or from Amazon or similar online outlets.  

Who could resist a title like that? Don’t you just have to discover what it’s all about? I did, anyway and found a tightly plotted novel behind the book’s atmospheric cover, full of twists and cliffhangers that led inexorably from one chapter to the next. In short: a real page turner.

Dr Watson, as usual, narrates. He tells the reader how he was called upon, some time before the story proper starts, and rather against his will, to officiate in his medical capacity at the hanging of a man, Simon Rhoads, found guilty of murdering his friend, one Paul Watts. Up to the last moment – and it’s all described in vivid and shocking detail – Rhoads shouts out his innocence, despite all the evidence against him. But then, some eighteen months later, another body is found, killed in very much the same way and identified as….wait for it…. the same Paul Watts, recently returned from America.

What a scandal! The powers that be refuse to admit to the British public that a terrible miscarriage of justice has taken place. After all, Police Commissioners, even the Prime Minister, might have to resign. They cannot permit it to happen, and so Sherlock Holmes is called on to investigate privately.

Poor Dr Watson. He does his best to paint the picture for us, many years after the event when all the main actors have passed away, drawing on his copious notes. But though he describes each person connected to the case in minute detail, as well as the places where they live and work, he just cannot seem to see the wood for the trees. He’s not alone in this: the hapless Inspector Gregson is similarly bemused. So it’s up to Holmes, as ever, to unravel the mystery, and uncover what can only be described as a truly fiendish plot. Great stuff.

Ken Courtenay is a musician and retired IT consultant. Although he has written many stories of the science, horror and mystery variety, this is his first novel.

The book will be published on September 29, 2025, and can be preordered from MX https://mxpublishing.com/collections/new-books/products/the-case-of-the-man-who-died-twice-a-sherlock-holmes-adventure-paperback or from Amazon.co.uk https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=The+Man+who+died+twice+Courtenay or Amazaon.com https://www.amazon.com/Case-Man-Who-Died-Twice/dp/180424676X/

Disappearing Egyptologists, mummy’s curses, scarabs carved with mysterious and shape-shifting symbols, horrifying apparitions seemingly from beyond the tomb…. Not the usual scenario associated with the supremely rational Sherlock Holmes. Can it be that for once there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in his philosophy?

Well, JM Reinbold, in her very first foray into the world of Conan Doyle’s detective, leads the reader a hardly merry but most intriguing dance into a sinister world where nothing and no one are quite what they seem.

Ms Reinbold [right] is no first-time author, having already created a contemporary detective in the person of DCI Rylan Crowe. She has even published a well-regarded collection of haiku poetry. Now, having decided it is fun to write Sherlock mysteries, she has already embarked on the second, as well as another Rylan Crowe mystery: just like Charles Dickens, who was known to work on two novels at the same time!

The Adventure of the Black Pharoah starts when Lord Silverpin and his sister, the stunningly beautiful Vivienne (‘the most perfect specimen of feminity’ that Watson, with his usual uncritical eye for a pretty girl, had ever seen) approach Holmes to request him to discover what has happened to their father. Lord Convarron has been missing for two months, with no results to date from the police search. Having returned from an excavation at the Black Pyramid, so named because a cruel and blood-thirsty pharaoh was walled up alive inside it, Convarron disappeared while locked in his study one night, preparing for an exhibition at the Egyptian Hall in London. Was there a curse on the excavation as the local hired workers believed? One of the other explorers has already been found brutally murdered, with his hands chopped off….

Holmes agrees to investigate, but suspects Lord Silverpin and his sister are concealing something from him, which indeed they are: the existence of two ancient and powerful artefacts avidly desired by cultists, familiar and unfamiliar villains, and even the British government, in the rotund shape of Sherlock’s brother, Mycroft. The subsequent search leads Holmes and Watson to the very brink of destruction.

A delightful piece of hokum, which should please Holmes fans everywhere. I look forward to Ms Reinbold’s next novel.     

Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Black Pharaoh is available from MX publishing https://mxpublishing.com/collections/missing-an-audio-tag/products/sherlock-holmes-and-the-adventure-of-the-black-pharaoh-paperback and from Amazon etc.

It’s quite astonishing to realise, from an online interview given by Paul Metcalfe (pictured left) that the title story of the collection was his very first piece of fiction, since it and the accompanying seven other stories are confidently written, with clever plots and varied themes.

I was particularly diverted to learn from the interview that the atlases of the title story – The Picturesque Atlases of Australasia – are real. Mr Metcalfe even owns copies.  From such triggers are stories born.

We find all the elements of good traditional yarns in the present collection: from a locked room murder mystery to strange disappearances and disguises, from fiendish plots against the British Empire to the discovery of a long-buried skeleton, everything guaranteed to keep the reader guessing while eventually providing, courtesy of Sherlock Holmes of course, most satisfying explanations. I particularly liked the Benevolent Thief who robbed the rich to give to deserving charities, and was delightfully flummoxed by The Questionable Existence of Mrs Carbery’s Companion.  

It was good, as ever, to see Dr Watson relishing his food, and not letting ghastly crimes stand in the way of his enjoyment of an Irish stew or a kedgeree.

As for the final story, The Case of the Stolen Alma-Tademas, the thief is welcome to them as far as I am concerned.

Alma-Tadema’s canvasses of beautiful people in classical settings might have made him one of the most popular artists of the Victorian era, but I have to agree with the critic who described them as “about worthy enough to adorn bourbon boxes”. Nevertheless, the subject makes for a cracking yarn.

The Case of the Australian Atlases and other Sherlock Holmes Adventures is published by MX and available from them in advance of publication. You can also support the project via Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mx-publishing/sherlock-holmes-and-the-case-of-the-australian-atlases/posts/4436797

Paula Hammond’s latest collection, The Infinitely Stranger Cases of Sherlock Holmes, is a terrific read. Our intrepid detective is challenged by all manner of apparently supernatural problems, from djinns and mummies to witches and dodgy mediums. It’s hardly a spoiler to reveal that Holmes finds explanations for everything.

Incidentally, it always amuses me that Holmes, that most rational of men, was created by the credulous Conan Doyle, in later life, a champion of the Spiritualist movement and one who was utterly taken in by the Cottingley Fairies hoax.

While, of course, Holmes is the detective doing the solving here, for Ms Hammond Doctor Watson is far from being his stooge. In each story she shows us what Watson brings to the case in question, having fleshed him out from the hints and details dropped through the Canon. In the story, The Covent Garden Medium, for instance, Watson wants so much to be put in touch with his beloved dead wife, Mary, that, attending a séance, he is almost fooled, the familiar scent of her perfume luring him in. Still, he becomes suspicious when the supposed spirit mutters “Sad” when asked about the significance of that particular day for her – Watson’s birthday, which was always full of fun and laughter. Subsequently, of course, Holmes unravels the whole scam. 

The stories here are cunningly plotted and a delight to read, but I was equally taken with the notes after each. Ms Hammond clearly revels in her research (which, happily, lies lightly within the tales themselves).  

Among so many other enthralling details – did you know in Victorian times there were up to twelve postal deliveries a day in big cities? – we learn that from 1700, mummia, originally a type of resin using in Ancient Egypt in the embalming process and later a word referring to whole or powdered mummy flesh, was eaten and even prescribed as a cure-all up to 1924!

Real people make appearances, such as Lieutenant Thomas Rice Henn, a supposed colleague of Watson’s when he served as an army surgeon during the Second Anglo-Afghan war. Later, as the notes inform us, Henn was killed making a brave stand with ten others in an action known as “The Stand of the Last Eleven”, immortalised in Rudyard Kipling’s poem “That Day”.

The author often sets her stories in real places, too. For instance, she herself lives in north Wales and, from the end of her street, can see the Bryniau tower that features in her story of the same name. (Paula, left, at the tower).

Probably built in the 17th century as a watch tower, it was also associated with witches who in Wales, we are told, were largely well-regarded for their charms and herbal remedies, unless they caused harm.

The infinitely stranger cases here are certainly worth a read. If I have any criticism, it is that the book is too short. More stories, please Paula.

NB The book to be published soon by MX and available to prebook. See also Kickstarter where it has been named as #ProjectWeLove [https://bit.ly/400uGWR]

The Magician’s Trunk is the thirteenth volume in the McCabe and Cody mystery series by prolific author, Dan Andriacco, a product of MX Publishing, known almost exclusively for Sherlock Holmes pastiches and versions. But, although this series is set very firmly in modern-day Ohio, the shadow of Conan Doyle’s detective lurks on nearly every page.

Sebastian McCabe, the brains of our pair of amateur sleuths, is his own man – a mystery writer and literature professor at the fictional St Benignus University

However, he consciously models himself on Holmes, sharing his deductive powers and frequently referencing him. Meanwhile, the narrator, Thomas Jefferson (Jeff) Cody, is a veritable Watson, enthusiastically pursing red herrings, and generally catching hold of the wrong end of the stick.

I have to admit that this is the first of the thirteen mysteries that I have read, but it won’t be the last. Most enjoyable it is, with a clever, twisting plot concerning a tontine and a trunk that disappears and reappears as if by magic, and which contains a mysterious bequest. In addition, there’s a cast of colourful characters, including an animal channeler, an obsessive collector of baseball cards (bet you didn’t know that a 1952 Mickey Mantle card in mint condition was sold at auction for $12.6 million.)  and a beautiful wedding planner/magician who’s as bald as the proverbial coot.

The narrator tantalisingly refers here and there to some of Dan Andriacco earlier McCabe and Cody adventures, which look to have equally intriguing plots (“The witch gave him a closer look. ‘You’re Sebastian McCabe,’ she said. ‘I once saw you name a murderer on live television. [See Bookmarked for Murder]”).

He also incorporates very contemporary references – covid features, for instance, and there’s a mention of cryptocurrency fraudster, Sam Bankman Fried – which place the story firmly in the here and now.

I was sure the description of the Futuro house owned by one of the characters was a Dan Andriacco invention. A dwelling that looks for all the world like a newly landed UFO: how unlikely is that!

But no. Apparently, the Futuro house was designed in the late 1960s by a zany Finnish architect, though it didn’t catch on, and fewer than a hundred were made. Just another fascinating little detail in an absorbing story.

The Magician’s Trunk, A McCabe and Cody Mystery by Dan Andriacco is published by MX and available directly from them at https://mxpublishing.com/collections/2024-new-books/products/the-magicians-trunk-mccabe-and-cody-book or from the usual outlets.

This second volume of Caiden Cooper Myles’s The Further Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes is a real pleasure to read. Written very much in the style of the canon, supposedly by a rather bemused Dr Watson, our unstoppable hero has eight new mysteries to solve.

They are helpfully dated from 1896-1898, so we are in the period after the Great Hiatus, when Holmes was thought to be dead, after plunging with the villainous Moriarty into the Reichenbach Falls. With that adversary out of the way – for we can safely assume that, unlike Holmes, the Professor met his end on that occasion – it might well be expected that another will rise in his place. And indeed, in the final story of the collection, The Adventure of the Six Constables, it appears that a new antagonist has indeed arrived. I expect to hear more of this so far nameless and faceless villain in Volume III.  

Each story here is distinguished by an ingenious and intriguing plot, whether featuring kidnapped reporters, missing monogrammed napkins, a creepy sect, or a beautiful medium. One of my favourite yarns here is The Adventure of the Yellow Boxes, in which several women receive the said big bright yellow boxes containing gifts from a mysterious secret admirer.

I challenge any reader to figure out the connection between this and a series of jewellery shop robberies. But Holmes does, most satisfactorily.

Mr Cooper Myles’s Watson is a fine foil for Holmes. By no means foolish, and certainly brave, he is often frustrated by the detective’s propensity for playing his cards close to his chest, and revealing nothing until absolutely necessary. Meanwhile, Watson enjoys fine dining, a good brandy, and a pretty face, although it must be said that he is frequently intimidated by certain severe and formidable matrons.   

A final plus for me: the book is beautifully presented, with lovely illustrations by Marie-Charlotte Feret.

Available from MX publishing or Amazon or similar on-line retailers.

This anthology of ten new Sherlock Holmes stories by Brenda Seabrooke is most engaging and addictive: once I finished one tale, I immediately wanted to start on the next, however late the hour.

They are written in the style of the canon – Conan Doyle’s originals – narrated mostly by a Dr Watson who enjoys his food so much that by the last tale he has quite ‘rounded out’. Indeed, he gets quite put out if he has to miss a meal, and even at one point expresses the mournful wish that the sandwiches were more robust than cress.

Such asides provide light relief to the dark adventures embarked on by our intrepid pair, mostly through the murk of London’s notorious yellow or brown fog. In the title story, however, Holmes, laid low by a badly sprained ankle, solves the case without even having to move from his armchair.

There’s a progression here, too. The first story, Mrs Farintosh’s Opal Tiara, is related to Watson by Holmes, since it covers a period of time before the two men came to share the Baker Street rooms. Story by story Watson becomes more and more involved in the investigations and is delighted when, finally, Holmes introduces him to a client as ‘my friend and associate’.

Between sadistic murderers, vampires, damsels wrongly accused, and a mysteriously anonymous Christmas card that one year fails to appear, there’s plenty here to intrigue and absorb.

Brenda Seabrooke, who lives near the Shenandoah national park in Virginia, is the prolific author of an earlier Holmes collection, The Persian Slipper and Other Stories, as well as twenty-two books for young readers. She was a finalist for the Edgar Allen Poe award at the Mystery Writers of America. I look forward hungrily to her next collection.

The Crimson Trail and other Stories is available from MX at https://mxpublishing.com/products/sherlock-holmes-the-crimson-trail-and-other-stories

From Amazon or can be ordered through your favourite bookshop

‘Why in heaven’s name are you all dressed up like that, Watson?’

     Holmes, still in his mouse-coloured dressing gown, was lounging back on the ottoman, smoking his infernal pipe, as if we didn’t have an important engagement that evening.

  ‘Have you forgotten?’ I replied. ‘It’s the launch of Mrs Hudson’s account of our recent trip to Turkey.’

  Holmes sighed, languidly.

  ‘Oh, that!’ he said. ‘No, you go, Watson. You can represent both of us. I am far too fatigued.’

    I looked at him reprovingly.

    ‘It’s the least you can do, Holmes. After all, without Mrs Hudson, I doubt we could have solved the mystery of the harem deaths ourselves.’

    ‘Of course we could have,’ he said. ‘Admittedly, Mrs Hudson had her uses at the court of the Sultan, but I imagine her account will tend to swell her importance over and above what she actually accomplished. Which, in fact, was very little.’

     ‘I can’t believe what I am hearing,’ I exclaimed. ‘As men, neither you nor I were able to penetrate the mysteries of the harem. Mrs Hudson did so, performing to perfection and unmasking the perpetrators of a dastardly plot. We certainly could not have managed without her. Or are you claiming you could have disguised yourself as some eccentric aristocratic English lady, and taken her place?’

     It would, after all, not be the first time that Holmes had taken on the guise of the fair sex, although, in his case, ‘fair’ would hardly be the applicable adjective. Widow Twankey would be more apropos.

   ‘Please do not be stupid, Watson,’ Holmes replied. ‘Of course, I should not have attempted such a stunt.’ He passed a drooping hand over his brow. ‘But I could perhaps have passed muster as a eunuch.’

    There was no polite answer to that. However, I could barely repress a chuckle at the thought of Holmes blacked up and sporting the exotic headdress and robes of the guardians of the harem. As I hastily left, he, reading my thoughts no doubt, looked daggers at me.  

     It was some hours later when I returned, only to find Holmes had not moved from his couch. I, acting nonchalant, said nothing to him.

     ‘Well?’ he asked, after a pause. Of course, he was curious.

     ‘It was a great success,’ I said. ‘A pity you could not have been there, Holmes. Mrs Hudson was most disappointed. She has sent back some Turkish delight and baklava for you.’

     Holmes regarded the sweetmeats. ‘I suppose everyone was disappointed at my absence.’

     ‘Not at all,’ I was pleased to inform him. ‘Mrs Hudson was the star of the show and she acquitted herself admirably.’

     ‘Humph!’ Holmes frowned. ‘I knew it. I knew she would take all the glory to herself.’

     ‘Not at all. She was most careful to say that without you… and me, she would never have got out of there alive.’

     Holmes looked somewhat mollified, and popped a piece of rose-flavoured Turkish delight into his mouth. I am afraid I didn’t tell him about the dusting of powdered sugar on the tip of his long nose.

Death in the Harem: A Mrs Hudson and Sherlock Holmes Mystery (MX publishing) is available from Amazon and other on-line distributors, as well as directly from the publisher: https://mxpublishing.com/products/death-in-the-harem-a-sherlock-holmes-and-mrs-hudson-mystery

This is the fourth novel in the Sherlock Holmes and Lady Beatrice series by Geri Schear, and highly enjoyable it is, a rattling good yarn with an edge, that kept me up late turning the pages.

Subtitled The Sherlock Holmes Diaries 1901, it will not surprise anyone to learn that, rather than Dr Watson, the great detective himself is the narrator here.

Holmes comes across as less arrogantly cerebral than the hero of the Canon, more human, with doubts and weaknesses – some of which are precisely because he is more human, more empathetic. He is even married, his wife being the said Lady Beatrice, goddaughter to the late Queen Victoria, although their union isn’t a conventional one. He remains in Baker Street with Watson, while she resides in Wimpole Street.

The engrossing plot has two strands, the chief one concerning the brutal murder of Mrs Hudson’s  niece, Megan Reid, a nurse recently returned from South Africa where she was ministering to the sick and injured of the Boer War.

As the story unravels, ghastly details emerge of the conditions endured by both patients and nursing staff during that dreadful conflict.

More people died from hunger and disease than from battle, epidemics of measles, typhoid and dysentery and sweeping through the hospitals and the concentration camps, ostensibly set up to house the woman and children displaced and burnt out by the war, but turning into death camps, foreshadowing those that became so notorious later in the century.

Poor Megan, overworked when already enfeebled by illness, is sent home to recover, only to meet her terrible fate on her way to church. But is what happened in South Africa the motive for her death? The similarly brutal murder of two other returned nurses, her friends, seems to suggest as much.

The second thread concerns the mysterious removal and reappearance of blueprints for the construction of Holland’s submarine from the offices of Sherlock’s eminent brother Mycroft.  It is up to Sherlock and the intrepid Lady Beatrice to uncover the villain, which they do in fine style.

Informative notes tell us that John Philip Holland, (left, sporting a natty bowler) native of Co. Clare in Ireland, was indeed commissioned in top secret to build a submarine by the Royal Navy, as he had previously done for the US navy. Royal Holland 1 was launched in 1901.

Highly recommended.

MX publishing: https://mxpublishing.com/products/great-warrior-the-sherlock-holmes-diaries-1901