Nearly a year after the debut issue, SHERLOCK HOLMES MYSTERY MAGAZINE #2 is finally available, with another 130-ish pages of mostly all-new material, perfect-bound and edited by the ever-reliable Marvin Kaye.
It begins with Kim Newman’s reviews of a handful of Sherlock Holmes-oriented books, which are welcome, but many of the titles are several years old. With so many new titles published every season, it’d be nice to see those covered instead. Holmes’ landlady Mrs. Martha Hudson returns with a faux advice column that’s more annoying than anything, especially with the inclusion of recipes.
Carole Buggé follows with an essay on radio adaptations of Holmes stories. It’s certainly informative, and if I had the patience to listen to audio plays, I’d definitely use it for reference. Then we come to the meat of the mag: the fiction section.
All of the fiction is centered around mystery and detection, although not necessarily featuring the great detective himself. Darrell Schweitzer’s “The Adventure of the Hanoverian Vampires” is one that does, and it’s an amusing little tale narrated by a cat. Gary Lovisi’s “A Study in Evil” is another, in which Holmes has been arrested for murder, which he doesn’t deny. Arthur Conan Doyle is repped by another reprint, “The Musgrave Ritual.”
In “A Reputation for Murder,” M.J. Elliott certainly hits that Sherlockian spirit with her girl-detective protagonist. David Waxman’s “Tough as Diamonds” is fine enough, but there’s no real suspense or problem-solving in its story of a missing dog. Ron Goulart’s “The Mystery of the Flying Man” is a little too muddled to be effective, but Marc Bilgrey hits “You See, but You Forget” out of the proverbial park, with a story of revenge on a landlord whose negligence results in the death of an elderly tenant. Bilgrey also contributes this issue’s lone cartoon; it’d be fun to see more of these sprinkled throughout the pages, rather than the Victorian-era clip art.
On the copyright page, Wildside Press promises SHMM to be a quarterly publication. I’ll believe that when I see it, but whenever I see a third issue, I’ll welcome it. —Rod Lott
OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF MARVIN KAYE:
• DON’T OPEN THIS BOOK! edited by Marvin Kaye
• THE FAIR FOLK edited by Marvin Kaye
• FORBIDDEN PLANETS edited by Marvin Kaye
• THE GHOST QUARTET edited by Marvin Kaye
• SHERLOCK HOLMES MYSTERY MAGAZINE #1 edited by Marvin Kaye
• THE ULTIMATE HALLOWEEN edited by Marvin Kaye
Related posts:
- Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine #1
- Klinger offers ANNOTATED SHERLOCK HOLMES bookplates
- The Mysterious World of Sherlock Holmes
- Sherlock Holmes on the Stage: A Chronological Encyclopedia of Plays Featuring the Great Detective
- The Penguin Book of Gaslight Crime: Con Artists, Rogues, and Scoundrels from the Time of Sherlock Holmes
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I was in the midst of writing you when the screen went blank, so I don’t know whether you got a partial message from you. Essentially, I want to thank you for the fine reviews of my work on your handsome website, which my friend and contributor Marc Bilgrey just told me about.
I’d like to clarify a couple of things for your reviewer, one of which I thought I’d addressed in my 1st editorial, but I could be mistaken.
1. SHMM is meant to a magazine of mystery and crime fiction. While I’d love to restrict it to the reader solvable mysteries I grew up with, they aren’t being written with anywhere the frequency they used to. So crime stories will enrich the mix. Your reviewer was certainly on our wave length with his positive reaction at Marc Bilgrey’s revenge story in issue # 2, but I don’t know why he did not accord the same understanding to Mr. Waxman’s “Tough as Diamonds,” which was never intended to be a mystery, just a semi-hardboiled private eye caper. It shouldn’t be rapped for what its author and I never intended it to be.
2. Re your reviewer’s absolutely justifiable frustration over the datedness of Kim Newman’s book reviews, and the book cited in the Ron Goulart interview that was no longer Ron’s most recent mystery novel .. when Kim and Carole wrote their respective contributions, their information WAS up to date. But Wildside Press took so effing long to get around to actually printing SHMM that issue # 1 lay around for some TWO years after final edit; issue # 2 about a year overdue. Now I have a lot of love and loyalty for the Wildside people, they’re all very nice guys with excellent editorial taste and vision, but historically they’ve always spread themselves way too thin.
Cordial best,
Marvin Kaye
http://www.marvinkaye.com
Hi, Marvin — The comment on Waxman’s story is meant to be read as a statement of fact instead of an opinion. I’m not knocking it for not being what it’s not, but simply trying to make clear it’s not of the same solvable mold as others.