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Post by Michael Connolly on Oct 8, 2021 11:20:33 GMT
David Stuart Davies, The Shadow of the Rat (Calabash Press, 1999). I've just started to re-read this for the first time since I got it in 2000. From Amazon: In The Shadow of the Rat, a body is found floating in the river - a body that has been deliberately infected with the plague virus. Holmes and Watson find themselves seeking answers at The Bridge of Dreams, a club where a person's darkest wish can be granted - for a price. Holmes falls under the control of a will stronger than his own which threatens the life of his closest friend Watson and leaves the government - indeed itself - open to a deadly terror, the monstrous Giant Rat of Sumatra.While it's not as good as The Giant Rat of Sumatra by Richard L. Boyer or The Holmes-Dracula File by Fred Saberhagen also about the rat, so far Davies's version is rather better than I remembered, being fast-paced with a strong narrative drive. It's easily available as a Wordsworth paperback paired with The Tangled Skein, also by Davies but about Dracula separately. The large image of the cover above is the best I could find. Holmes is patently based on Jeremy Brett.
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Post by andydecker on Oct 9, 2021 16:27:19 GMT
The large image of the cover above is the best I could find. Holmes is patently based on Jeremy Brett. It is a nice artistic version of Brett.
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Post by Michael Connolly on Oct 13, 2021 11:30:47 GMT
The large image of the cover above is the best I could find. Holmes is patently based on Jeremy Brett. It is a nice artistic version of Brett. The book itself is only okay. The plot depends on two-way telepathy being created by hypnosis. I don't mind this, but Holmes himself proposing the idea as a reality is totally out of character.
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Post by Michael Connolly on Oct 13, 2021 11:39:27 GMT
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Post by Michael Connolly on Oct 13, 2021 11:55:07 GMT
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Post by andydecker on Oct 13, 2021 19:13:44 GMT
I don't like the look or sound of this either. The cover is too modern as is the post-tv series use of "Sherlock" in the title rather than "Sherlock Holmes". Maybe he now is the son of Dracula , brother of Donald. The cover is the usual PC generated romance cover crap.
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Post by andydecker on Oct 13, 2021 19:21:07 GMT
And this metal poster is damn silly. How can a novel idea be so pedestrian in the end? Missed chance.
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Post by Michael Connolly on Oct 15, 2021 11:38:56 GMT
Has anyone else read this Sherlock Holmes/Jack the Ripper novel from 1984? The resolution of the plot takes some swallowing. However, I liked it enough to hold onto it. It came out only in hardback here and in America. Very cheap copies can be found online via Bookfinder.com etc.
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Post by andydecker on Oct 15, 2021 17:52:18 GMT
Has anyone else read this Sherlock Holmes/Jack the Ripper novel from 1984? The resolution of the plot takes some swallowing. However, I liked it enough to hold onto it. Every time I think I know at least the major versions of Holmes vs the Ripper, the next one comes along. How many exist?
If I just see the flood of Holmes pastiches on the market - alone here in Germany there are dozens in the small press - I wonder if somewhere in the world of Holmesmania there is an ongoing complete bibliography.
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Post by Michael Connolly on Oct 18, 2021 11:54:47 GMT
Has anyone else read this Sherlock Holmes/Jack the Ripper novel from 1984? The resolution of the plot takes some swallowing. However, I liked it enough to hold onto it. Every time I think I know at least the major versions of Holmes vs the Ripper, the next one comes along. How many exist? If I just see the flood of Holmes pastiches on the market - alone here in Germany there are dozens in the small press - I wonder if somewhere in the world of Holmesmania there is an ongoing complete bibliography.
This is the closest such bibliography that I know about: www.schoolandholmes.com/The best criticism I've read on Holmesian pastiche is "Romancing the Holmes: Some thoughts on Sherlock Holmes pastiche" by Roger Johnson in THE MUSGRAVE PAPERS # 11 (1998).
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Post by andydecker on Oct 18, 2021 17:04:33 GMT
Thanks for the link. Unbelievable. 1987 stories listed? I guess there is a clever Holmes - or Watson - quote for this kind of insanity, but I don't know it.
Is the article still valid? In twenty years the situation must have changed dramatically.
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Post by Michael Connolly on Oct 20, 2021 12:22:32 GMT
Thanks for the link. Unbelievable. 1987 stories listed? I guess there is a clever Holmes - or Watson - quote for this kind of insanity, but I don't know it. Is the article still valid? In twenty years the situation must have changed dramatically.
The School and Holmes website is very useful. While it is not critical, you can use the plot synopses to decide on the books. "Romancing the Holmes: Some thoughts on Sherlock Holmes pastiche", a twenty-two page chronological and thematic critical survey of pastiches, is still valid and the best single work I've seen on the subject. It covers every novel you'd expect up to 1998 and key short story pastiches also. I once asked Roger in an e-mail if he'd updated his essay. He told me there were so many books to cover it would be hard to do and, following Sturgeon's Law, most of it is crap anyway. Anyway, Roger is now the editor of The Sherlock Holmes Journal. You can download its very knowledgeable reviews of new Sherlock Holmes books, fiction and non-fiction, from here: www.sherlock-holmes.org.uk/the-sherlock-holmes-journal-summer-2021/
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Post by Michael Connolly on Oct 27, 2021 11:13:22 GMT
Has anyone else read this Sherlock Holmes/Jack the Ripper novel from 1984? The resolution of the plot takes some swallowing. However, I liked it enough to hold onto it. It came out only in hardback here and in America. Very cheap copies can be found online via Bookfinder.com etc. Plot contrivances apart, I think The Mycroft Memoranda is worth a read. So is this, the retitled 1975 Panther paperback edition of William S. Baring-Gould's Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street: A Life of the World's First Consulting Detective (1962). The back cover categorizes the book as a biography. Of most interest to the Vault is Chapter XV: Jack the Harlot Killer.
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Post by The Lurker In The Shadows on Oct 31, 2021 23:40:38 GMT
While a sliver of Hallowe'en yet remains, here's a tale of masks, guises, and phantoms. The king of detectives encounters the King in Yellow, as Imagination Theatre's 'The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' presents 'The Pallid Mask' by... well... me... www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3ItFmTyAvY(Available on YouTube for the next two months.)
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Post by helrunar on Nov 1, 2021 0:09:02 GMT
Very nice work, Lurker. I've been listening and I enjoy it a great deal.
cheers, Hel
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