The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Edited by John Joseph Adams
Night Shade Books, $15.95, 454 pages

It has been over a hundred years since Dr. Watson first chronicled the exploits of the World’s Only Consulting Detective, and the demand of the devoted for Sherlockiana of all kinds hasn’t subsided in the slightest.But despite Holmes’s confidence in his famous axiom, in the pages of The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, the intrepid detective and his faithful companion tackle puzzles both improbable and impossible. From murder and kidnapping to theft and fraud, the crimes and conundrums detailed within these pages include everything from pirates, ghosts, legends, and scoundrels to Lovecraftian horrors, crop circles, alternate realities, and the embodiment of death itself.

Tales merely alluded to in earlier adventures are fully realized for the first time, and new insights abound, as Mrs. Hudson, Irene Adler, and Professor Moriarty each take center stage in various stories. Holmes even crosses paths with the likes of Jack the Ripper, Lewis Carroll, H.G. Wells, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself!

In addition to a great deal of new material to entice newcomers and please devotees alike, this compendium covers many of the best stories from other Sherlock compilations (particularly from Shadows Over Baker Street and Sherlock Holmes in Orbit, earlier anthologies with more of a supernatural or sci-fi bent).

As with all short story collections, not all of the contributions are up to snuff – I found both “The Spectre of Tullyfane Abbey” and “The Adventure of the Death-Fetch” very unsatisfying – but most are worth your time. Here are brief summaries of three such stories:

Tony Pi’s Dynamics of a Hanging is set during the time after Holmes’s apparent death at Reichenbach Falls, as Watson and a famous associate may have discovered the key to bringing Moriarty’s cohorts to justice.

Bradley H. Sinor’s The Adventures of the Other Detective provides a rare glimpse of an alternate world, where Watson didn’t survive his sojourn in Afghanistan, and another detective rose to prominence in Holmes’s place.

Chris Roberson’s Merridew of Abominable Memory finds an aged and afflicted Dr. Watson regaling his physician with a lost adventure of Sherlock Holmes, leading both men to question the very nature of why certain memories linger and others slip away.

Editor John Joseph Adams (of The Living Dead and Federations) has a knack for assembling truly eclectic and satisfying collections, and considering some of the names involved — Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Stephen Baxter, Anne Perry, and Anthony Burgess, among many others — he’s done it again with The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

Reviewed by Glenn Dallas