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A review by swirls
Gaslight Grimoire: Fantastic Tales of Sherlock Holmes by Charles Prepolec
4.0
This is an absolutely wonderful collection that I felt kept the spirit of the Strand publications, complete with illustrations for each story. The stories were hit or miss, but honestly, this book was just good plain fun.
I shamelessly adore fanfiction. I've loved it ever since I was about 10 and discovered Star Trek novels in Half Priced Books. I can never let characters go completely - I always want more and I want it from other fans who understand. So I was understandably delighted to see Barbara Hambly, one of my favorite TOS writers, as the author of the first story. Holmes, a former Lost Boy? Taking the case to find the missing Darling children? Fighting a mysterious eldritch creature with Peter Pan? Shut up, I'll take it.
I read all of the Sherlock Holmes canon a few years ago and Doyle would sometimes tease the reader with the potential for a supernatural solution, but always kept Holmes firmly in "our" reality - no ghosts or vampires in those stories. But it's a pleasure to see him scoffingly investigate ghostly apparitions with William Hope Hodgson's Carnacki the Ghost-Finder, reluctantly join forces with H. Heron and E. Heron's psychic detective, Flaxman Low, and even, in his old age, nonchalantly fight vampires with a hardboiled gumshoe in LA. In the weakest of the stories, he takes it upon himself to track down Doyle's own dinosaur-hunting Professor Challenger. There's even a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo by Raffles, the "gentleman thief."
Okay, so this is probably not great literature. But who cares? This was a fantastic weird collection. The final two stories, Red Sunset (the hardboiled gumshoe story) and The Red Planet League (a ridiculously depraved Moran describing Professor Moriarty's convoluted revenge against an academic rival) had me giggling hysterically. I still don't know what made me request this volume from the library, but I'm glad to have it. This was a pleasure to read.
I shamelessly adore fanfiction. I've loved it ever since I was about 10 and discovered Star Trek novels in Half Priced Books. I can never let characters go completely - I always want more and I want it from other fans who understand. So I was understandably delighted to see Barbara Hambly, one of my favorite TOS writers, as the author of the first story. Holmes, a former Lost Boy? Taking the case to find the missing Darling children? Fighting a mysterious eldritch creature with Peter Pan? Shut up, I'll take it.
I read all of the Sherlock Holmes canon a few years ago and Doyle would sometimes tease the reader with the potential for a supernatural solution, but always kept Holmes firmly in "our" reality - no ghosts or vampires in those stories. But it's a pleasure to see him scoffingly investigate ghostly apparitions with William Hope Hodgson's Carnacki the Ghost-Finder, reluctantly join forces with H. Heron and E. Heron's psychic detective, Flaxman Low, and even, in his old age, nonchalantly fight vampires with a hardboiled gumshoe in LA. In the weakest of the stories, he takes it upon himself to track down Doyle's own dinosaur-hunting Professor Challenger. There's even a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo by Raffles, the "gentleman thief."
Okay, so this is probably not great literature. But who cares? This was a fantastic weird collection. The final two stories, Red Sunset (the hardboiled gumshoe story) and The Red Planet League (a ridiculously depraved Moran describing Professor Moriarty's convoluted revenge against an academic rival) had me giggling hysterically. I still don't know what made me request this volume from the library, but I'm glad to have it. This was a pleasure to read.