Wordsworth: The Contemporary Fiction

[dem bones]

David Stuart Davies - The Tangled Skein (Wordsworth, 2006)

Foreword - Peter Cushing.

Blurb:

It is the autumn of 1888. Following the successful conclusion of the investigation into the affair of the Hound of the Baskervilles, Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson have returned from Dartmoor, little realising that fate will see them back in Devon before the year is out.

Holmes receives a potentially lethal package, the first strand in the tangled skein which he will need to unravel before this adventure is resolved.

A threat to Holmes's life, murders on Hampstead Heath, and a strange phantom lady lead Holmes and Watson into the most dangerous investigation they have ever undertaken - an encounter which brings them face to face with evil itself, embodied in Count Dracula, the Lord of the Undead.

Mark Valentine (ed.) - The Black Veil And Other Tales of Supernatural Sleuths (Wordsworth Mystery & the Supernatural, July 2008)

Introduction - Mark Valentine

Robert Eustace & L.T. Meade - The Warder of the Door
E. & H. Heron - The Story of Sevens Hall
William Hope Hodgson - The Gateway of the Monster
Arthur Machen - The Red Hand
Allen Upward - The Haunted Woman
Robert Barr - The Ghost with the Club-foot
Vernon Knowles - The Curious Activities of Basil Thorpenden
Donald Campbell - The Necromancer
L. Adams Beck - Waste Manor
John Cooling - The House of Fenris
Mark Valentine - The Prince of Barlocco
Colin P. Langeveld - The Legacy of the Viper
Mary Anne Allen - The Sheelagh-na-gig
A.F. Kidd - The Black Veil
R.B. Russell - Like Clockwork
Rosalie Parker - Spirit Solutions

Blurb:
The Gateway of the Monster… The Red Hand… The Ghost Hunter

To Sherlock Holmes the supernatural was a closed book: but other great detectives have always been ready to do battle with the dark instead. This volume brings together sixteen chilling cases of these supernatural sleuths, pitting themselves against the peril of ultimate evil. Here are encounters from the casebooks of the Victorian haunted house investigators John Bell and Flaxman Low, from Carnacki, the Edwardian battler against the abyss, and from horror master Arthur Machen’s Mr Dyson, a man-about-town and meddler in strange things. Connoisseurs will find rare cases such as those of Allen Upward’s The Ghost Hunter, Robert Barr’s Eugene Valmont (who may have inspired Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot) and Donald Campbell’s young explorer Leslie Vane, the James Bond of the jazz age, who battles against occult enemies of the British Empire. And the collection is completed by some of the best tales from the pens of modern psychic sleuth authors.

Other than David Stuart Davis's Sherlock Holmes versus Dracula novel, The Tangled Skein and the same author's short vampire story in Children Of The Night, as far as i'm aware (i don't have all the books) Wordsworth haven't published much contemporary horror/ supernatural fiction. One editor who bucks the trend is Mark Valentine. Along with the vintage material, The Werewolf Pack includes stories by Ron Weighell, Steve Duffy, Gail-Nina Anderson and R.B. Russell and The Black Veil continues in the same vein with at least six contributions by present day authors including Rosemary Ghosts & Scholars Pardoe under her 'Mary Anne Allen' pseudonym and Rosalie Parker, whose creepy In The Garden will long be remembered by those who've enjoyed the Fifth Black Book Of Horror.

[ripper]

Dem, in February 2010 Wordsworth are publishing a volume containing The Tangled Skein and another of DSD's Sherlock Holmes adventures, The Shadow of the Rat, in their £2.99 range. DSD has also edited a volume of Sherlock Holmes stories by modern authors called The Game's Afoot for Wordsworth. Just as an aside, DSD contributes 3 or 4 commentary tracks on the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes DVD collection, and very good they are, too, imho.

[dem bones]

ah, i saw The Game's Afoot on my recent excursion to Lovejoys (where, incidentally, the books are priced up at £2.50 a pop) but passed on it for the time being. i'm looking forward to reading The Tangled Skein: Holmes has taken on/ teamed up with Dracula a few times now - off the top of my head, Lori Estleman's The Adventure Of The Sanguinary Count, Fred Saberhagen's The Holmes-Dracula File: i'm sure there are more, and there's a thread in it if any of our Sherlock Holmes devotees care to enlighten us?

David Stuart Davis has his own site and welcomes suggestions for future Wordsworth editions. Maybe if some of the authors on here banded together ...?

[andydecker]

Dec 24, 2009 16:57:56 GMT dem bones said:

i'm looking forward to reading The Tangled Skein

So I ordered a couple of Wordsworth, among them this novel, as I was in the mood for some Holmes.

Normally I am not so keen on things like Holmes vs the Ripper or likeminded stuff. It has become quite a cliche. So I hadn´t high expectations.

But I was pleasently surprised. The novel captures Holmes and Watson quite well, and it is rather daring in basically re-writing Dracula. It makes sense here. To combine it with The Hound of Baskerville was a bit odd at first, but in retrospect quite inspired.

So I liked it.