The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures

The Contributors

Stephen Baxter, "The Adventure of the Inertial Adjustor". Since his first novel, Raft, in 1991, Stephen Baxter (b. 1957) has established himself in the front rank of British writers of science fiction. His related novels include Timelike Infinity, Flux, Ring and the collection Vacuum Diagrams. One of his most popular books was The Time Ships, a sequel to H.G. Wells's The Time Machine and it is Baxter's interest in Wells that resulted in his story in this collection, which is a fully fledged murder mystery and not science fiction.

John Betancourt, "The Adventure of the Amateur Mendicant Society". John Betancourt (b. 1963) is an American author and publisher whose Wildside Press is dedicated to producing quality books of fantasy and supernatural fiction. His own books have been mostly science fiction or fantasy, though Rememory contained a strong mystery element. Other novels include Rogue Pirate, The Blind Archer and Johnny Zed, plus the story collection Slab's Tavern and Other Uncanny Tales. He is currently working on a series of fantastic adventure novels featuring the Greek hero Hercules, starting with The Wrath of Poseidon.

Eric Brown, "The Vanishing of the Atkinsons". Brown (b. 1960) is best known for his science fiction, much of which has appeared in the British magazine Interzone. Several of his best stories have been collected as The Time-Lapsed Man and Blue Shifting. His novels include Meridian Days and Engineman.

Simon Clark, " The Adventure of the Fallen Star". Clark (b. 1958) has rapidly established himself as a writer of serious horrornovels, the books exploring much deeper aspects of the human psyche than the titles – Nailed by the Heart, Blood Crazy, Darker and King Blood – convey. Born and bred in Yorkshire where he still lives with his wife and two children, Clark worked for several years in local government before becoming a full-time writer in 1993.

Basil Copper, "The Adventure of the Persecuted Painter". Copper (b. 1924) is a prolific writer of thrillers and supernatural fiction. He is as popular amongst devotees of hard-boiled American detective fiction, with his long-running Mike Faraday series of novels, as he is amongst the gothic-horror brigade with his excellent brooding novels Necropolis and The Black Death. Closer to Holmes, Copper continued the adventures of Solar Pons started by August Derleth in 1929 in emulation of Sherlock Holmes. Copper's Pons is, if anything, even closer to the character of Holmes, perhaps because Copper has a deeper affinity with the fogbound streets of Victorian London. His Pons collections are The Dossier of Solar Pons, The Further Adventures of Solar Pons, The Secret Files of Solar Pons, Some Uncollected Cases of Solar Pons, The Exploits of Solar Pons and The Recollections of Solar Pons.

Peter Crowther, "The Adventure of the Touch of God". Crowther (b. 1949) is a prolific British writer and editor who hails from Yorkshire, the home of many contributors to this volume. He made a name with his series of anthologies based on superstitions which began with the award-winning Narrow Houses, and he has also produced an anthology of stories about angels, Heaven Sent. His recent work includes the well-received novel Escardy Gap, written with James Lovegrove, and the anthologies Destination Unknown and Tales in Time. His first story collection, The Longest Single Note, is in the works.

David Stuart Davies, "The Darlington Substitution Scandal". Davies is a noted Sherlockian, co-founder and Co-President of The Northern Musgraves Sherlock Holmes Society and editor of its journal the Sherlock Holmes Gazette. He has written two Sherlock Holmes novels, The Tangled Skein and Sherlock Holmes and the Hentzau Affair, plus the assiduously researched survey

Holmes of the Movies, and his biography of Jeremy Brett, Bending the Willow.

Michael Doyle, "The Legacy of Rachel Howells". To answer the obvious question, Michael Doyle (b. 1930) is not related to Sir Arthur, at least not so far as he's been able to trace, though there does seem to be a family resemblance. Although born and educated in England, Doyle settled in Canada in 1956 and has Canadian nationality. He is by profession an export trade consultant and is recognized as one of the world authorities on international trade and letters of credit. He shares Conan Doyle's interest in boxing and has even written a monograph called A Study in Sparring about Sherlock Holmes, the Prize Ring and the Corbett-Fitzsimmons fight.

Martin Edwards, "The Case of the Suicidal Lawyer". Martin Edwards (b. 1955) is a practicing solicitor and has used his experience as the background for his series of novels about Liverpool solicitor and amateur detective Harry Devlin. The series began with All the Lonely People and there's been a novel a year ever since. Edwards has also edited the crime anthology Northern Blood and others in a regionally related series.

Zakaria Erzinçlioglu," The Adventure of the Bulgarian Diplomat". Dr Erzinçlioglu is a practising forensic scientist. He has been working on criminal cases (mostly murder) for over twenty years, investigating over five hundred in Britain and abroad. He was formerly Senior Research Associate at Cambridge University and, subsequently, Director of the Forensic Science Research Centre at Durham University. He is now an Honorary Lecturer at London University. He is working on Evidence, a book which looks at the interpretation of evidence in criminal trials and historical events.

L. B. Greenwood, "Five Minutes Past Midnight". Lillian Beth Greenwood (b. 1932) is a Canadian writer who lives not too far from Michael Doyle and Barbara Roden. Her first novel, The Street Sparrows, is a historical set in the Victorian era – she describes it as a female version of Oliver Twist. She has also written three Sherlock Holmes novels listed in the appendix, and is a member of the Vancouver Holmes organization known as the Stormy Petrels.

Lois H. Gresh, "The Adventure of the Parisian Gentleman" with Robert Weinberg. Gresh works in the computer industry as a programmer and systems analyst and has written hundreds of technical manuals and related texts. She is the proprietor of Technohell, Inc., which designs and codes corporate websites, software and systems. Oh what fun Holmes would have had with the Internet! She has sold many short science fiction and horror stories and her first novel, The Termination Node, written with Weinberg, is in the works. It's the first of a series of near-future computer technothrillers.

Claire Griffen, "The Case of the Incumbent Invalid". Claire Griffen is a new writer who has previously appeared in Classical Whodunnits and the magazine Boggle. She is Australian, and spent several years as an actress and dramatist before turning to writing fantasy and mystery stories. She wrote a Sherlock Holmes play in 1986 which saw several performances with an Adelaide theatre repertory company.

Edward D. Hoch, "Vittoria, the Circus Belle". Edward Hoch (b. 1930) is a phenomenally prolific American short-story writer with over seven hundred to his credit. He has created many fascinating detectives, including Captain Leopold, Dr Sam Hawthorne, Nick Velvet, Ben Snow and Simon Ark. His stories appear regularly in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine but only a few have made it into individual story collections. Well worth tracking down is his Captain Leopold volume, Leopold's Way, his Simon Ark series, The Judges of Hades, City of Brass and The Quests of Simon Ark, the Nick Velvet books The Spy and the Thief and The Thefts of Nick Velvet, whilst a few of his Sam Hawthorne stories have been collected as Diagnosis: Impossible. His more general mystery fiction will be found in The Night My Friend. Hoch has written several Sherlock Holmes stories including "The Return of the Speckled Band" in The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, "The Manor House Case" in Resurrected Holmes and "The Christmas Client" in Holmes for the Holidays.

Roger Johnson, "The Adventure of the Grace Chalice". Johnson (b. 1947) is a noted Sherlock Holmes afficianado and writer of ghost stories. It was through Sherlock Holmes that Roger met his wife, Jean. He was the founder of the Newsletter of the Sherlock Holmes Society and writes regularly on matters Sherlockian. A small private press-produced his first collection of ghost stories, Deep Things Out of Darkness in 1987, and a more extensive volume, A Ghostly Crew, is under production.

H.R.F. Keating, "The Adventure of the Suffering Ruler". Keating (b. 1926) is the renowned author of the novels featuring Inspector Ghote of the Bombay CID, which began with The Perfect Murder in 1964 and is still going strong. He was won many awards and has compiled the invaluable reference works of the crime and mystery fiction field Whodunit;Agatha Christie: First Lady of Crime and Crime Writers: Reflections on Crime Fiction. He has also written Sherlock Holmes: the Man and His World and two Holmes pastiches, this story and "A Trifling Affair".

David Langford, "The Repulsive Story of the Red Leech". Langford (b. 1953) is a popular writer of science fiction, not averse to the occasional spoof. His first book-length work, An Account of a Meeting with Denizens of Another World, 1871, issued under the alias of William Robert Loosley fooled many people into believing it was a genuine Victorian account of a close encounter with aliens. His science-fiction novels include The Space Eater and Earthdoom! (with John Grant) plus the clever satire on the scientific establishment The Leaky Establishment, drawn from Langford's own direct experiences.

F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre, "The Enigma of the Warwickshire Vortex". F Gwynplaine Maclntyre – Froggy to his friends – is a Scottish-born, Australian-raised, American-resident author who is a fund of knowledge on a wide range of esoterica, as his story reveals. He is the author of the excellent Victorian science-fiction novel The Woman Between the Worlds, as well as several pseudonymous novels and many stories for the science-fiction magazines.

Michael Moorcock, "The Adventure of the Dorset Street Lodger". Moorcock (b. 1939) scarcely needs an introduction. He was one of the prime movers in the reshaping of science fiction in the mid-sixties, with his editorship of New Worlds and his Jerry Cornelius series of stories, and is one of the most popular writers of heroic fantasy with his many series featuring the various incarnations of the Eternal Champion, the most famous being Elric of Melniboné. Moorcock has long been fascinated with the end of the Victorian era and a number of books, most notably the Oswald Bastable series, sought to recreate an alternate Victorian world, whilst his Dancers at the End of Time sequence, also reflected that fin-de-siècle mood. It was clearly only a matter of time before Moorcock turned his creative energies to Sherlock Holmes, and I'm delighted he did.

Amy Myers, "The Adventure of the Faithful Retainer". Amy Myers is best known for her books featuring the master-chef with the remarkable deductive powers, Auguste Didier who first appeared in Murder in Pug's Parlour in 1987 and has built up a dedicated following. The stories are contemporary with Sherlock Holmes and there is little doubt that the two would have been acquainted

Barrie Roberts, "The Mystery of the Addleton Curse". Roberts (b. 1939) is a criminal lawyer who lives in the West Midlands but was born and raised in Hampshire. He is a criminal lawyer, although he has also worked as a journalist, computer programmer and lecturer, most recently lecturing on ghosts and unsolved mysteries. He is a tireless Sherlockian having developed his own chronology of the cases into which he has woven three novels to date, Sherlock Holmes and the Railway Maniac, Sherlock Holmes and the Devil's Grail and Sherlock Holmes and the Man from Hell.

Barbara Roden, " The Adventure of the Suspect Servant". Barbara Roden (b. 1963) is a Canadian enthusiast of the ghost and mystery story who helped found the first Canadian Holmes society west of the Rocky Mountains, the Stormy Petrels of British Columbia, in 1987. With her husband, Christopher Roden, she is joint organizer of the Arthur Conan Doyle Society. They also operate the specialist ghost-story press Ash-Tree Press and the Calabash Press devoted to books about Sherlock Holmes. "The Adventure of the Suspect Servant" won

a pastiche contest sponsored by the Bootmakers of Toronto in 1989 but is published here in a slightly revised form for the first time.

Denis O. Smith, " The Adventure of the Silver Buckle". Smith (b. 1948) is a dedicated Sherlockian scholar who has produced a number of Holmesian pastiches starting with The Adventure of the Purple Hand, issued from his own Diogenes Publications. All are listed in Appendix II and have been reissued by Calabash Press with a new story as The Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes. He also has a passion for old maps and Victorian railways, both of which are germane to Holmes's adventures. Although a Yorkshireman by birth he now lives in Norfolk with his wife and three daughters.

Guy N. Smith, "The Case of the Sporting Squire". Smith (b. 1939) was both a bank clerk and a gamekeeper before he settled down to full-time writing in 1975. He is probably still best remembered for his early gruesome horror novels such as The Sucking Pit, The Slime Beast and the best-selling Night of the Crabs, and though most of his sixty or more books are horror fiction, he has produced other material including westerns and, rather surprisingly, film novelizations of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Sleeping Beauty and Song of the South, as well as books for children under the alias Jonathan Guy. He began his writing career selling mystery and horror short stories to the London Mystery Magazine and has long been a devotee of Sherlock Holmes.

PeterTremayne, "The Affray at the Kildare Street Club". Peter Tremayne (b. 1943) is the pseudonym of Celtic scholar and historian Peter Berresford Ellis who, under his own name, has written many books tracing the history and myth of the Celts, including The Celtic Empire, Celt and Saxon and Celt and Greek. In the fiction field he established an early reputation for his books of horror and fantasy, particularly his Dracula series collected in the omnibus Dracula Lives!, and his Lan-Kern series based on Cornish mythology, which began with The Fires of Lan-Kern. He is now, perhaps, best known for his series of historical mysteries featuring the seventh-century Irish Advocate, Sister Fidelma, in

the books Absolution by Murder, Shroud for an Archbishop, Suffer Little Children, The Subtle Serpent and The Spider's Web.

RobertWeinberg, "The Adventure of the Parisian Gentleman" with Lois H. Gresh. Weinberg (b. 1946) is an American bookdealer, collector and author who has written a number of novels of fantastic fiction. He has produced several featuring occult detective Alex Werner, starting with The Devil's Auction, plus a sequence of humorous fantasy novels which began with A Logical Magician.

DerekWilson, "The Bothersome Business of the Dutch Nativity". DerekWilson has written over thirty books of history, biography and fiction, including the acclaimed family biographies, Rothschild: A Story of Wealth and Power and The Astors 17631922: Landscape with Millionaires. He also also written two fascinating books on the circumnavigation of the globe, The World Encompassed – Drake's Voyage 1577-1580 and The Circumnavigators. In the world of mystery fiction he has created the character of Tim Lacy, international art connoisseur and investigator whose cases have been chronicled in The Triarchs, The Dresden Text and The Hellfire Papers.