FROM WATSONS SCRAPBOOK

My dear friend Sherlock Holmes was so pleased with the previous issue, which was entirely devoted to him, that he is now a bit despondent, inasmuch as he will need to wait till the twentieth number before it happens again.

It also took some doing to let me reprint the “Norwood” adventure; it was, after all, one of his less successful efforts. He finally agreed, though he suggested that I do not allow this issue to lay about in our rooms for him to see. Ah, well…

In the ensuing pages, the estimable Mr Grochot has rendered my notes into an excellent and accurate recounting of the Addleton tragedy.

And now here is my colleague Mr Kaye…

—John H Watson, M D

* * * *

I am pleased to offer three articles in this, the sixteenth edition of Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine. Peter James Quirk, whom I had the pleasure of meeting at the New York branch of the MWA (Mystery Writers of America), reviews the evidence for and against the British monarch Richard III as to whether he killed the two princes, or whether someone else entirely was responsible. In this, of course, the great Josephine Tey did a fine job of defending Richard in her unusual mystery novel, The Daughter of Time. I never knew what her title meant until I mentioned it to my late friend José Ferrer, who explained that there is a saying that “Truth is the daughter of time.”

Dan Di Quinzio devotes himself to a history of W. S. Baring-Gould, who gave Holmesian devotees the “official” biography of the Great Detective, the Annotated edition of the sixty cases, as well as a biography of the sleuth rumored to be Holmes’s son, Nero Wolfe of West 35th Street, Manhattan.

Gary Lovisi tells of the fascinating correspondence between Dr. Watson’s literary agent Arthur Conan Doyle and Robert Louis Stevenson.

The other stories in this issue include one author new to these pages: John Grant. The other five have appeared here before—Dianne Neral El, Steve Liskow, Laird Long, Richard Lupoff, and Stan Trybulski.

The coming issue of SHMM will feature a new tale by the estimable Kim Newman as well as more stories by Laird Long and Steve Liskow. Our regular cartoonist Marc Bilgrey also will have a new adventure for us.

There will also be two remarkable articles about criminals, one of whom was friends to nearly all of the Brooklyn police force, while the other became one of England’s most important spies during World War II.

Till then, do write to Mrs Hudson—and remember that we are always interested in new articles, as well as fiction.

Canonically Yours,

—Marvin Kaye