Kirjahaku

The Return of Solar Pons ScholarshipIn 1928, college student August Derleth wrote to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, asking if any more Sherlock Holmes adventures were going to be published. Upon receiving a negative reply, Derleth decided to provide some of his own. However, rather than relating more tales of Holmes and Dr. Watson, he ended up introducing the world to Solar Pons and Dr. Lyndon Parker, living in London during the 1920's and 1930's. Pons solved crimes using deduction and ratiocination, often referring to Holmes as "The Master" or "My illustrious predecessor". Since his first appearance, Pons has been a favorite with Sherlockians. Between the 1920's and the early 1970's, Derleth produced over seventy Pons short stories and novels, publishing them through his own imprint, Mycroft & Moran. The Pons stories were beloved within the Sherlockian community, so much so that scholarship developed about the character.We continue that tradition of Solar Pons scholarship with The Pontine Dossier, Millennium edition. Read essays on August Derleth and Solar Pons by today's Pontine scholars as they analyze the Sherlock Holmes of Praed Street. "The Game" is afoot

Once again in old London, "the game is afoot." In these pastiches of the Sacred Writings, written when he was nineteen and twenty, August Derleth has recreated the London of Sherlock Holmes. It does not matter that the familiar name has become Solar Pons, or that the familiar Baker Street has become Praed Street - something of the nostalgic charm and fascination, of the remembered quickening of the pulse and the familiar settings of the original London of Sherlock Holmes, has been recaptured in these pages. And what intriguing titles there arc to these twelve pastiches, chosen from among a greater number Here are "The Adventure of the Frightened Baronet" - about a spectral image of Siva seen at a country estate beyond London; "The Adventure of the Purloined Periapt" - which is the purest of pastiches and perhaps the closest of all the tales in this book to the original spirit; "The Adventure of the Norcross Riddle" -containing some of the neatest deduction in the book; "The Adventure of the Man with the Broken Face" - a tale of "dark waters"; and eight others. "No doubt," writes Vincent Starrett in his Introduction, "we - and by we, I mean those frantic and incurable Sherlockians who, with August Derleth, deplore the paucity of canonical entertainments - should rather have more of the great originals, but we accept the imitations, faute de mieux, to satisfy a normal appetite. And we accept them with enthusiasm. They are the work of affectionate minds and hands. There is no intention to deceive. These stories, and others in their field, are intended only to please. They are nostalgic reminders of vanished days and nights in Baker Street."

This long-awaited second collection of pastiches of the immortal Sherlock Holmes offers eleven new adventures of Solar Pons, who has been called by Vincent Starrett "a clever impersonator, with a twinkle in his eye, which tells us that he knows he is not Sherlock Holmes, and knows that we know it, but that he hopes we will like him anyway for what he symbolizes." Here are such fascinating stories as "The Adventure of the Paralytic Mendicant", an account of as unique a vengeance as was ever perpetrated between boards; "The Adventure of the Circular Room", a tale of a diabolic plot which will rouse many a memory of the old Master; the complex puzzle which will be of particular interest to bibliophiles told in the Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine Contest prizewinning "The Adventure of the Six Silver Spiders"; the curious affair which is "The Adventure of the Tottenham Werewolf'; and others which will bring back old, long-vanished Baker Street days. Once again in the London of years ago "the game is afoot." Certainly no living writer has brought the Holmesian pastiche to a higher development than this. There is very little difference, indeed, in the atmosphere of the stories, once they have begun to unfold; No. 7B Praed Street readily becomes 221B Baker Street; and Solar Pons, attended by his Dr. Lyndon Parker, often becomes curiously interchangeable with the Master of Baker Street and his Watson. "There is no intention to deceive," as Vincent Starrett wrote in his introduction to the first collection. "These nostalgic reminders of vanished days and nights in Baker Street are intended only to please."

Once more the most successful of pastiche-detectives, Solar Pons, walks on stage with a new sequence of adventures. In this fourth major collection, Solar Pons is engaged with an intriguing variety of problems - the curious puzzle of the antique sovereign boxes narrated in the novelette, "The Adventure of the Mosaic Cylinders"; the sanguine riddle of the body in the thirteenth coffin told in "The Adventure of the Mazarine Blue"; the perplexing matter of the man devoted to British bowlers - "The Adventure of the Hats of M. Dulac"; the incredible plot to foment a religious war - "The Adventure of the Black Cardinal"; the disturbing facts in the murder of a psychic client - "The Adventure of the Blind Clairaudient" - and others. Solar Pons has won a place for himself among the outstanding exponents of the deductive. Almost two decades ago Vincent Starrett hailed his initial adventures as "the best substitutes for Sherlock Holmes known to this reviewer." The stories in this book - like their predecessors - are, as Ney MacMinn put it in The Chicago Tribune, much more than imitations - "an excellent series of adventures in detection in their own right." Here once again is the atmosphere of Baker Street and the London of Sherlock Holmes.

The steadily expanding devotees of the Sherlock Holmes of Praed Street will hail with delight this crowning volume in a series of collections which have now pastiched the entire quintet of the Master's adventures. Here is another collection of "as sparkling a galaxy of Sherlockian pastiches as we have had since the canonical entertainments came to an end," as Vincent Starrett - who contributes a preface to this book - wrote in his introduction to the first collection of the adventures of Solar Pons twenty years ago.A dozen new Pontine exploits round out the quintet in these pages - from The Adventure of the Sussex Archers to The Adventure of the Innkeeper's Clerk - and between these two tales are such memorable stories as The Adventure of the Haunted Library, The Adventure of the Intarsia Box, The Adventure of the China Cottage, The Adventure of the Crouching Dog, The Adventure of the Whispering Knights, and others, including among them The Adventure of the Missing Huntsman - in which Pons and Parker invade the fox-hunting country of England, and The Adventure of the Ascot Scandal, one of Pons' briefest and most amusing problems.To supplement the tales, the distinguished British author, Michael Harrison, contributes a monograph exploring the background of Dr. Lyndon Parker, and, in the course of so doing, explains the doctor's semi-American English. And, finally, August Derleth has added an Afterword in which he sets forth the facts about the origins of Solar Pons, admitting that it was never his "intention to do any considerable number of pastiches" and relating the circumstances surrounding the continuing numbers of the tales, ending happily with, "I cannot promise to write no more of them."The present collection brings the total number of the Pontine pastiches to 57 - one more than the total of the canonical short stories, of which a reviewer for The Louisville Journal-Courier wrote, "These tales recall, as nothing else has done, those delicious days and nights in Baker Street, days and nights that have vanished forever."- From the original 1965 Mycroft & Moran edition dust jacket

When August Derleth died on July 4, 1971, he had written and finished revising all the stories for The Chronicles of Solar Pons. The manuscript lay on his desk, ready for final typing.This, then, is the... last major collection of the Pontine series. However much the reader may regret bidding goodbye to a cherished friend of more than forty years' constance, the ten tales presented here make for a fine and fitting exit.The range and variety of the puzzle-problems are wide. There is the classic flight-and-pursuit motif of the espionage thriller, The Adventure of the Orient Express. The strangeness of The Adventure of the Benin Bronze and the grim search in The Adventure of the Missing Tenants are matched by the long and tangled web behind The Adventure of the Red Leech.Whether enjoyed as pure entertainment, or for the exercise of nimble minds in an attempt to outwit Solar Pons, the reader will find in these pages an additional reward: the easy flow of a prose style that is the hallmark of a superior craftsman.- From the original 1973 Mycroft & Moran edition dust jacket

Roger Riccard, one of the most respected Sherlock Holmes authors, has again taken pen in hand to bring forth the second five adventures in a new series of short stories for your entertainment. The Adventure of the Fool and His Money - Dr. Watson receives an invitation to join an old comrade-in-arms in a treasure hunt. However, it takes Sherlock Holmes's knowledge and deductive powers to steer them in the right direction. The Case of the Gunsmith of Sherwood - The Sheriff of Nottingham needs Holmes's help to rescue a kidnapped gunsmith in a case which has international implications. The Mysterious Horseman - A visiting American has come to breed with an offspring of Silver Blaze. But who is following him and why? The Adventure of the Italian Gourmet - Has the internationally Sfamous culinary critic lost his taste? The Judgement of Dr. Watson - A zealous prosecutor goes after Dr. Watson based upon a publication that implicates both him and Holmes in the obstruction of justice.Sit back and enjoy reading this second volume of A Sherlock Holmes Alphabet of Cases, and watch out for Volume 3 (K to O) coming soon."Roger Riccard's Sherlock Holmes stories remind you why you love Sherlock Holmes." David Marcum

Doctor John Watson tantalisingly informed us, in The Problem of Thor Bridge, that a box full of unpublished adventures of Sherlock Holmes had been left in the vaults of Cox & Co. of Charing Cross. However, what Watson neglected to tell us was that more than one such box existed, containing accounts of the great detective which had hitherto remained unknown, save for cryptic hints dropped by Watson in the published stories.Hugh Ashton, recognised to be one of the leading writers of Sherlock Holmes pastiches, edited Watson's manuscripts from the first box and prepared them for publication. This formed the "Deed Box" series of adventures, with the second box forming "Dispatch-Box" series. After these two boxes originally belonging to Doctor Watson had been examined and the stories therein edited by Ashton, a third box was discovered, containing a pipe, a Persian slipper, and a battered Gladstone bag. The bag in its turn contained many notebooks. These notebooks held accounts, in Watson's almost illegible doctor's handwriting, of more cases of the most famous of all sleuths, most of which have now been edited and published in volumes of the MX Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories.Fourteen of these adventures are brought together here in one volume for the first time.The book also includes a foreword by eminent Sherlockian and editor of the MX Volumes, David Marcum.The stories are traditional in style and plotting, remaining faithful to the Canonical originals, but add depth to the characters of Holmes, Watson, and those around them, while taking nothing away from the originals by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.