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Dead Ringers: Sherlock Holmes Stories
Join Holmes and Watson on eleven original adventures, spanning their earliest collaboration to their service to the Crown in the Great War. Revisit A Study in Scarlet, return to The Copper Beeches, and learn the shocking truth behind the Bogus Laundry Affair. There will be murder under the big top, ancient prophecies come true, and a mysterious new queen of crime all putting the Great Detective to the test in these action-packed stories. This volume collects the best traditional pastiches by Robert Perret, Sherlockian author and scholar, and member of the John H. Watson Society and Doyle's Rotary Coffin.
284 pages, Paperback
Published November 26, 2019
4 people want to read
About the author
Robert Perret
22 books1 followerRobert Perret is a writer and librarian living on the Palouse in north Idaho. He has published short stories across the pulpy genres but has a special interest in Sherlock Holmes. He is a member of the John H. Watson Society and Doyle's Rotary Coffin.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 25, 2020
This volume of short stories from the pen of noted Sherlockian Robert Perret is quite a treat.
The stories have all been published in a wide variety of publications and it is nice to have them all collected together in one volume.
Robert Perret's style is tight and firm and the stories fairly bounce along. Perret's Holmes rarely jars, and the relationship between Holmes and Watson is solid gold.
Writers sometimes concentrate so hard on Holmes and Watson that other canonical characters suffer. Not in these stories: Lestrade, Gregson, Mrs. Hudson, and others are all as well rounded, and the original characters solid and believable.
With any anthology there will be stories of greater and lesser appeal to each reader. For me, the absolute stand out stories were:
The Mystery of the Change of Art
The Adventure of the Pharaoh's Tablet
The Adventure of the Twofold Purpose.
The later story was my favourite; its gothic overtones making for quite a chilling tale.
An excellent volume of stories to while away a cold winter's evening. Highly recommended.
The stories have all been published in a wide variety of publications and it is nice to have them all collected together in one volume.
Robert Perret's style is tight and firm and the stories fairly bounce along. Perret's Holmes rarely jars, and the relationship between Holmes and Watson is solid gold.
Writers sometimes concentrate so hard on Holmes and Watson that other canonical characters suffer. Not in these stories: Lestrade, Gregson, Mrs. Hudson, and others are all as well rounded, and the original characters solid and believable.
With any anthology there will be stories of greater and lesser appeal to each reader. For me, the absolute stand out stories were:
The Mystery of the Change of Art
The Adventure of the Pharaoh's Tablet
The Adventure of the Twofold Purpose.
The later story was my favourite; its gothic overtones making for quite a chilling tale.
An excellent volume of stories to while away a cold winter's evening. Highly recommended.
March 27, 2020
Dead Ringers, the latest collection by Robert Perret, consists of eleven stories which previously appeared separately in other anthologies or reviews. The plots are pleasingly preposterous and often quite lurid, some revisiting familiar tales from the canon, such as A Study in Scarlet or The Copper Beeches. Others tread new ground. The Bogus Laundry Affair takes the reader into the sinister underworld of London, while The Adventure of the Pharaoh’s Tablet, toys with the occult. The longest story and the final one in the book, For King and Country, starts in the First World War, with Watson at the Somme discovering a mysterious roomful of corpses neatly seated round a table. With more plot twists than a corkscrew, and a side trip to Turkey, the story ends in post-war France and a well-deserved retirement plan.
Robert Perret describes in the introduction how he first came to Sherlock in his youth through an old paperback in a local library but it was not until years later when he found the Complete Stories in a Costco of all places that he really became hooked. Looking further he discovered that there were and are an army of fans writing their own pastiches and decided to give it a try himself. Since when, he hasn’t stopped. The result is this most entertaining volume.
Robert Perret describes in the introduction how he first came to Sherlock in his youth through an old paperback in a local library but it was not until years later when he found the Complete Stories in a Costco of all places that he really became hooked. Looking further he discovered that there were and are an army of fans writing their own pastiches and decided to give it a try himself. Since when, he hasn’t stopped. The result is this most entertaining volume.
June 6, 2021
Well, this was a wonderful collection of stories, covering an extended timeline and a varied type of cases.
There is a story from when Holmes still lived in Montague Street and we get to see the first meeting between him and Lestrade, and quite a few happening after His Last Bow; we have some stories, like 'The Gnarled Beeches', that are follow-ups from canon ones and others completely originals but still faithful in characterization and style to the Conan Doyle's.
Great writing, solid mysteries and believable secondary characters, this is a treat for those who love Holmes and Watson.
There is a story from when Holmes still lived in Montague Street and we get to see the first meeting between him and Lestrade, and quite a few happening after His Last Bow; we have some stories, like 'The Gnarled Beeches', that are follow-ups from canon ones and others completely originals but still faithful in characterization and style to the Conan Doyle's.
Great writing, solid mysteries and believable secondary characters, this is a treat for those who love Holmes and Watson.
November 21, 2020
Solid book of short Sherlockian pastiches. A couple of weaker ones, but most are really authentic in Watson's voice. "Gnarled Beeches" was my fave (bc I'm a sucker for a canon call-back).
(quarantine book #106; read a mystery)
(quarantine book #106; read a mystery)
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews