Customer Reviews:
Sherlock Holmes Pistaches
The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes AdventuresI have always been a fan of Sherlock Holmes pistaches, as well as the Doyle originals. The selection in this book is enormous and fun to read. I heartily advise it for any Holmes and Watson aficionado.

Merely Elementary Holmes
The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes stories is certainly mammoth in size, with nearly 500 pages of stories. The stories themselves, however, seldom rise above the ordinary. Holmesophiles will no doubt tremendously appreciate the chronology and annotated bibliography assembled by editor Mike Ashley, although they may also chuckle at Ashley's tendency to say "I know Watson says this case happened in 1897, but I think he was lying and it really happened in 1895."

Apart from Ashley's chronology and bibliography there isn't much memorable here. The stories are all adequate but lack the spark that make the original Doyle adventures special. All are stories even the casual Holmes fan won't mind reading, but none will compel the reader to revisit them.

No disappointments in readable collection
Mike Ashley has assembled a large collection of Sherlock Holmes short stories, mostly new to this collection (three are reprinted, but I only had the previous appearance of one of these).

If you are someone who is a fan of Sherlock Holmes and is always looking for more, than this is a book you will want. The stories are of a consistent quality, written by authors who are practiced in their art, and involve Holmes and Watson considering problems whose solutions are not normally obvious from the outset.

For me, while none of the stories were particularly outstanding in either good or bad terms. I enjoyed Stephen Baxter's 'The Adventure of the Inertial Adjustor', Peter Crowther's 'The Adventure of the Touch of God' and Zakaria Erzinçlioglu's 'The Adventure of the Bulgarian Diplomat' marginally more than the others.

I'd recommend this book to Holmes enthusiasts, or to those with little exposure to the Great Detective. It is a good collection of decent quality.

Not Up to Doyle's Standards
I find myself disagreeing with many of the other reviewers here, but I found only a very few of the stories as good as the Doyle originals. And I think I know why they didn't grab me like the originals do. The originals were written by a man living in Victorian England while these stories were all written almost 100 years later by writers trying to interpret Victorian England. I think that's why the originals ring more true to me. Conan Doyle had all the little details right at his fingertips because he was living in the period. Modern writers try but I don't find the little touches needed to evoke the period. I also found that many writers strained to add those little deductive touches that Conan Doyle always managed to put in. Some of the examples of "deduction" were downright silly.

That said, there are a few stories that do come close with "The Adventure of the Bulgarian Diplomat" being my favorite. If you really like the Conan Doyle originals you may be disappointed in this collection.

Uneven, but worthwhile.
This massive collection of Holmes pastiches is a worthwhile addition to a Sherlockian collection although not all of its entries are of the same quality. The tales themselves range from excellent through serviceable to downright silly, with only a handful approximating the quality of Doyle's original stories. Nevertheless the overall quality is very good, despite some jarring notes here and there (more, of course, in some tales than in others).

Also helpful is the mass of information assembled at the rear of the volume. Here we find a complete chronology of Holmes's cases -- not only those recorded by Doyle, but also a fair number of those recorded by others (including the contributors to this volume). Also most helpful is the chronology's inclusion of Watson's unpublished cases, to which he often alluded in passing. Some of these have since been published (in some cases in several versions by several authors; such instances of redundancy typically include pastiches by Adrian Conan Doyle and June Thomson).

There is also a list -- not a complete list, which would have occupied a full volume of its own -- of the Holmes tales extant as of 1997, together with helpful information on their authors. (The list omits those tales in which Holmes is not a central character -- e.g. Carole Nelson Douglas's "Irene Adler" series -- and those which are of a clearly fantastic nature, in which Holmes encounters e.g. Dracula or Edwin Drood.) This valuable list will be helpful to readers who wish to track down works by other pastiche artists of note -- say, Denis O. Smith (who is represented in this volume) or June Thomson (who unfortunately is not). The volume closes with capsules of information regarding each of the contributors.

The tales themselves are in most instances culled from Watson's allusions to unpublished cases and are presented in what purports to be chronological order. We find, for example, the business of the Abernettys (drawn to Holmes's attention by a remark about the depth to which the parsley had sunk into the butter on a hot day); the Darlington substitution scandal; the "very simple" case Holmes had handled for Mary Morstan's employer, Mrs. Cecil Forrester; the matter of the Amateur Mendicant Society; the case of the Grice Petersons on the isle of Uffa; the tragedy of the Atkinson brothers; the matter of the Addleton curse; the death of Crosby the banker; the story of the red leech; the Abergavenny murders; and a matter Holmes handled under a commission from the Sultan of Turkey.

Some of these cases have been written up before, of course, in versions that are quite irreconcilable with those presented here. Moreover, in a handful of cases there are at least superficial conflicts internal to this volume itself: the "red leech," for example, is dealt with in passing in a second tale, and the business of the Abernettys is mentioned in passing in terms that do not seem to suit the version of the tale included here. Editor Mike Ashley tries valiantly to deal with some of these conflicts. However, since few of these tales appear to be authentic in the first place, these difficulties are merely apparent.

Not many of the pastiches contained herein reach the standards set by the best of Doyle's tales. But the majority of them are better than the worst of the originals. And in general, the pastiches in the short-story genre are usually, to my mind, _much_ better than the novel-length ones. In that field Nicholas Meyer has many competitors but few rivals.

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