I was so impressed by The Fatal Folio, third in the Cambridge Bookshop mystery series by Elizabeth Penney, that I went back and read the first two. The series began with Chapter and Curse and continued with A Treacherous Tale. They’re great cozy mysteries, particularly for Anglophiles. Molly Kimball and her mother move from Vermont to Cambridge, England, after the death of her father and to help her aunt run a family bookshop, one of the oldest in the city. […]

As regular readers know, I enjoy choose-your-own-path books, particularly when they’re Sherlock Holmes-related (and even more so when they’re comics). Thus, I was curious to know more about the line of Sherlock Holmes Solo Mysteries, seven paperbacks published in 1987 and 1988. The first one is Murder at the Diogenes Club, which made me even more interested, as the Diogenes Club is where Mycroft Holmes hangs out, and he’s my favorite. Sadly, that book was incredibly disappointing. You are a […]

Can You Survive the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes? combines the interactivity of a choose-your-own-path book with three classic Sherlock Holmes stories: “The Red-Headed League,” “The Speckled Band,” and to say the other would be giving things away. The reader gets to pretend to be Sherlock Holmes himself, which is fun, particularly as you can’t be too cautious. You’re told at the start that Moriarty may have sent you a case as a trap, but if you turn down too many, […]

I have just read a historical mystery that I adored! The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies stars Lady Augusta and her twin sister Julia and is set in Regency London. The two women are in their forties and unmarried, so everyone, particularly their officious brother, thinks they should be ignored. Instead, they wind up helping women who have no other option. They recover blackmail letters and set out to rescue a wife kept prisoner by her husband. Along the way, […]

I’m a fan of “Sherlock Holmes in the modern era” stories. I love the way they illustrate how the detective character is timeless while making entertainment out of the culture clash between the Victorian era and today. The latest version I’m aware of is the novel Holmes Coming, published at the end of 2022. Dr. Amy Winslow, through a complicated series of events, winds up being present when an earthquake awakens a crazy man from a steampunk laboratory. She takes […]

As many viewers of the Enola Holmes movie did, I suspect (particularly given the prominent bullet on the cover of this book), I found myself curious about the book series that inspired it. There were six young adult novels, originally, written by Nancy Springer and published from 2007 to 2010. The series picked back up after the success of the movie, with Enola Holmes and the Black Barouche released last year. It opens with a prologue in which Sherlock Holmes, […]

Since I like Sherlock Holmes and Golden Age mysteries and old Hollywood, Anthony Boucher’s The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars was an enjoyable read for me. It’s important to remember that this was originally published in 1940. Which explains why there’s one major female character, Maureen O’Breen, an attractive redhead who works in publicity for a film studio making a new Sherlock Holmes movie. (Maureen is the sister of Boucher’s series character, a PI in LA. Boucher was better-known […]

If you like Holmes and you like Wodehouse, you might want to try this slim, quick read. A Case of Domestic Pilfering was written 
by Rohase Piercy with Charlie Raven and was independently published in 2017. In 1890, Guy Clements is a dramatic but addle-headed young man who prattles on and has gotten himself in temporary financial difficulty. His very close friend Max is visiting from the country. Guy has previously met Dr. Watson at the horse races. Max is […]