Sherlock Holmes: The American Years
The 10 all-original tales in Edgar-finalist Kurland's lively third Sherlock Holmes anthology (after 2004'sSherlock Holmes: The Hidden Years)chronicle the exploits of the fledgling sleuth in America, before he settled in Baker Street. Richard A. Lupoff gets the volume off to a strong start with Inga Sigerson Weds, in which the adolescent Sherlock's cash-strapped parents send him and his jealous sister across the Atlantic to a distant cousin's New York City wedding. In Darryl Brock's witty My Silk Umbrella, Holmes encounters Mark Twain at a Hartford base ball match. The detective meets another Connecticut luminary, P.T. Barnum, in Michael Mallory's droll The Sacred White Elephant of Mandalay. Dr. Watson appears once, in a postscript to Gary Lovisi's improbable The American Adventure, in which the normally emotionless Holmes falls hard for a beautiful stage actress. Other contributors include Steve Hockensmith, Peter Tremayne, and Rhys Bowen.(Feb.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.