About the Contributors
Peter K. Andersson is a Swedish historian specialising in urban culture in the late nineteenth century. He has previously published two collections of Sherlock Holmes stories, The Cotswolds Werewolf and Other Stories of Sherlock Holmes and The Sensible Necktie.
Hugh Ashton was born in the U.K., and moved to Japan in 1988, where he remained until 2016, living with his wife Yoshiko in the historic city of Kamakura, a little to the south of Yokohama. He and Yoshiko have now moved to Lichfield, a small cathedral city in the Midlands of the U.K., the birthplace of Samuel Johnson, and one-time home of Erasmus Darwin. In the past, he has worked in the technology and financial services industries, which have provided him with material for some of his books set in the 21st century. He currently works as a writer: novelist, freelance editor and copywriter (his work for large Japanese corporations has appeared in international business journals), and journalist, as well as producing industry reports on various aspects of the financial services industry. Recently, however, his lifelong interest in Sherlock Holmes has developed into an acclaimed series of adventures featuring the world’s most famous detective, written in the style of the originals, and published by Inknbeans Press. In addition to these, he has also published historical and alternate historical novels, short stories, and thrillers. Together with artist Andy Boerger, he has produced the Sherlock Ferret series of stories for children, featuring the world’s cutest detective.
Brian Belanger is a publisher and editor, but is best known for his freelance illustration and cover design work. His distinctive style can be seen on several MX Publishing covers, including Silent Meridian by Elizabeth Crowen, Sherlock Holmes and the Menacing Melbournian by Allan Mitchell, Sherlock Holmes and A Quantity of Debt by David Marcum, Welcome to Undershaw by Luke Benjamen Kuhns, and many more. Brian is the co-founder of Belanger Books LLC, where he illustrates the popular MacDougall Twins with Sherlock Holmes young reader series (#1 bestsellers on Amazon.com UK). A prolific creator, he also designs t-shirts, mugs, stickers, and other merchandise on his personal art site at www.redbubble.com/people/zhahadun.
Derrick Belanger is the author of the #1 bestselling book in its category.y Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of the Peculiar Provenance, which was in the top 200 bestselling books on Amazon. He also is the author of the MacDougall Twins with Sherlock Holmes books, the latest of which is Curse of the Deadly Dinosaur, and he edited the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle horror anthology A Study in Terror: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Revolutionary Stories of Fear and the Supernatural. Mr. Belanger has recently started the publishing company Belanger Books, which released the Sherlock Holmes anthology Beyond Watson. Derrick Belanger also is a frequent contributor to I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere. He resides in Colorado and continues compiling unpublished works by Dr. John H. Watson.
S.F. Bennett was born and raised in London, studying History at Queen Mary and Westfield College, and Journalism at City University at the Postgraduate level, before moving to Devon in 2013. The author lectures on Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes, and 19th century detective fiction, and has had articles on various aspects from The Canon published in The Journal of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London and The Torr, the journal of The Poor Folk Upon The Moors, the Sherlock Holmes Society of the South West of England.
Bob Byrne was a columnist for Sherlock Magazine and has contributed to Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine and the Sherlock Holmes short story collection Curious Incidents. He publishes two free online newsletters: Baker Street Essays and The Solar Pons Gazette, both of which can be found at www.SolarPons.com, the only website dedicated to August Derleth’s successor to the great detective. Bob’s column, The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes, appears every Monday morning at www.BlackGate.com and explores Holmes, hard boiled, and other mystery matters, and whatever other topics come to mind by the deadline. His mystery-themed blog is Almost Holmes.
Molly Carr has been writing articles (paid and unpaid!) for many years on every conceivable subject for a wide variety of magazines and newspapers, and once had a tale accepted for the BBC’s Morning Story slot. But it wasn’t until she discovered MX Publishing that she attempted a whole book. In fact, she has written five books: The Sign of Fear and A Study in Crimson, which are meant to be funny, a semi-academic In Search of Dr Watson, a collection of pieces with the title Sherlock in the Spring Time, and A Sherlock Holmes Who’s Who - which one critic said would do in lieu of anything better, and another called “excellent”. She lives in a beautiful part of the country, which unfortunately is sometimes disturbed by the very noisy lawnmowers of landscape gardeners. This makes her long for a cork-lined room in which to compose something readers might see as really worthwhile.
Mike Chinn has published almost sixty short stories, from westerns to Lovecraftian fiction, with all shades of fantasy, horror, science fiction, and pulp adventure in between, along with a tale of the good Professor in The Mammoth Book Of The Adventures Of Moriarty (2015, Robinson). The Alchemy Press published a collection of his Damian Paladin fiction in 1998, whilst he has edited Swords Against The Millennium (2000) and The Alchemy Press Book Of Pulp Heroes Volumes 1, 2, and 3 (2012, 2013 and 2014 respectively) for the same imprint. 2015 saw the publication of his short story collection Give Me These Moments Back (The Alchemy Press), and a Steampunk Sherlock Holmes mash-up, Vallis Timoris (Fringeworks). A new Damian Paladin collection, Walkers in Shadow, and a Western, Revenge Is A Cold Pistol, are to be published by Pro Se Productions.
Bert Coules wandered through a succession of jobs from fringe opera company manager to BBC radio drama producer-director before becoming a full-time writer at the beginning of 1989. Bert works in a wide range of genres, including science fiction, horror, comedy, romance and action-adventure but he is especially associated with crime and detective stories: he was the head writer on the BBC’s unique project to dramatise the entire Sherlock Holmes canon, and went on to script four further series of original Holmes and Watson mysteries. As well as radio, he also writes for TV and the stage.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) Holmes Chronicler Emeritus. If not for him, this anthology would not exist. Author, physician, patriot, sportsman, spiritualist, husband and father, and advocate for the oppressed. He is remembered and honored for the purposes of this collection by being the man who introduced Sherlock Holmes to the world. Through fifty-six Holmes short stories, four novels, and additional Apocryphal entries, Doyle revolutionized mystery stories and also greatly influenced and improved police forensic methods and techniques for the betterment of all. Steel True Blade Straight.
C.H. Dye first discovered Sherlock Holmes when she was eleven, in a collection that ended at Reichenbach Falls. It was another six months before she discovered The Hound of the Baskervilles, and two weeks after that before a librarian handed her The Return. She has loved the stories ever since. She has written fan-fiction, and her first published pastiche, “The Tale of the Forty Thieves”, was included in The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories - Part I: 1881-1889.
Jan Edwards is a British author. She was born near Horsham, Sussex, UK, but now lives in Staffordshire Moorlands with her husband, Peter Coleborn, and the obligatory three cats. She has a life-long passion for folklore and the supernatural, and draws on this for her fiction. To date, forty-plus of her short stories have seen publication in magazines and anthologies, including The Mammoth Book of Dracula, The Mammoth Book of the Adventures of Moriarty, and Terror Tales of the Ocean. Much of her published short fiction is reprinted in the collections Leinster Gardens and Other Subtleties and Fables and Fabrications. Jan won a Winchester Slim Volume Prize for her rural novel Sussex Tales, was short-listed for a BFS Award for Best Short Story as an author, and short listed three times as editor of anthologies. She edits anthologies for the award winning Alchemy Press and also for Fox Spirit Books. In a previous existence she has been Chairperson for both the British Fantasy Society and Fantasycon. Other works by Jan Edwards include Leinster Gardens and Other Subtleties, Sussex Tales, Fables and Fabrications. Anthologies edited by Jan and Jenny Barber include The Alchemy Book of Ancient Wonders, The Alchemy Press Book of Urban Mythic, The Alchemy Press Book of Urban Mythic:2, and Wicked Women. Jan’s World War II crime novel Winter Downs is due for publication in 2017. For more details on Jan and her fiction visit http://janedwardsblog.wordpress.com/
Matthew J. Elliott is the author of Big Trouble in Mother Russia (2016), the official sequel to the cult movie Big Trouble in Little China, Lost in Time and Space: An Unofficial Guide to the Uncharted Journeys of Doctor Who (2014), Sherlock Holmes on the Air (2012), Sherlock Holmes in Pursuit (2013), The Immortals: An Unauthorized Guide to Sherlock and Elementary (2013), and The Throne Eternal (2014). His articles, fiction, and reviews have appeared in the magazines Scarlet Street, Total DVD, SHERLOCK, and Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, and the collections The Game’s Afoot, Curious Incidents 2, Gaslight Grimoire, The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 8, and The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories - Part III: 1896-1929. He has scripted over 260 radio plays, including episodes of Doctor Who, The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Twilight Zone, The New Adventures of Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer, Fangoria’s Dreadtime Stories, and award-winning adaptations of The Hound of the Baskervilles and The War of the Worlds. He is the only radio dramatist to adapt all sixty original stories from The Canon for the series The Classic Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Matthew is a writer and performer on RiffTrax.com, the online comedy experience from the creators of cult sci-fi TV series Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K to the initiated). He’s also written a few comic books.
Steve Emecz’s main field is technology, in which he has been working for over twenty years. Following multiple senior roles at Xerox, Steve worked for platform provider Venda, and Fintech startup Powa Technologies. Steve is a regular trade show speaker on the subject of mobile commerce, and his time at Powa took him to more than forty countries - so he’s no stranger to planes and airports. He wrote two novels (one bestseller) in the 1990’s and a screenplay in 2001. Shortly after, he set up MX Publishing, specialising in Neurolinguistic (NLP) books alongside his day job. In 2008, MX published its first Sherlock Holmes book, and MX has gone on to become the largest specialist Holmes publisher in the world, with over one hundred authors and over two hundred books. Profits from MX go towards his second passion - a children’s rescue project in Nairobi, Kenya, where he and his wife, Sharon, spend every Christmas at the rescue centre in Kasarani. In 2014, they wrote a short book about the project, The Happy Life Story.
Melissa Farnham, Head Teacher of Stepping Stones School, is driven by a passion to open the doors to learners with complex and layered special needs that just make society feel two steps too far away. Based on the Surrey/Hampshire border in England, her time is spent between relocating a great school into the prestigious home of Conan Doyle, and her two children, dogs, and horses, so there never a dull moment.
James R. “Jim” French became a morning DJ on KIRO (AM) in Seattle in 1959. He later founded Imagination Theatre, a syndicated program that is now broadcast on over 120 stations in the U.S. and Canada, and also heard on the XM Satellite Radio system all over North America. Actors in French’s dramas have included John Patrick Lowrie, Larry Albert, Patty Duke, Russell Johnson, Tom Smothers, Keenan Wynn, Roddy MacDowall, Ruta Lee, John Astin, Cynthia Lauren Tewes, and Richard Sanders. Mr. French states, “To me, the characters of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson always seemed to be figures Doyle created as a challenge to lesser writers. He gave us two interesting characters - different from each other in their histories, talents and experience but complimentary as a team - who have been applied to a variety of situations and plots far beyond the times and places in The Canon. In the hands of different writers, Holmes and Watson have lent their identities to different times, ages, and even genders. But I wanted to break no new ground. I feel Sir Arthur provided us with enough references to locations, landmarks, and the social conditions of his time, to give a pretty large canvas on which to paint our own images and actions to animate Holmes and Watson.”
Wendy C. Fries is the author of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson: The Day They Met and also writes under the name Atlin Merrick. Wendy is fascinated with London theatre, scriptwriting, and lattes. Her website is wendycfries.com.
Mark A. Gagen BSI is co-founder of Wessex Press, sponsor of the popular From Gillette to Brett conferences, and publisher of The Sherlock Holmes Reference Library and many other fine Sherlockian titles. A life-long Holmes enthusiast, he is a member of The Baker Street Irregulars and The Illustrious Clients of Indianapolis. A graphic artist by profession, his work is often seen on the covers of The Baker Street Journal and various BSI books.
Paul D. Gilbert was born in 1954 and has lived in and around Lindon all of his life. He has been married to Jackie for thirty-nine years, and she is a Holmes expert who keeps him on the straight and narrow! He has two sons, one of whom now lives in Spain. His interests include literature, ancient history, all religions, most sports, and movies. He is currently employed full-time as a funeral director. His books so far include The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes (2007), The Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes (2008), Sherlock Holmes and the Giant Rat of Sumatra (2010), The Annals of Sherlock Holmes (2012), and Sherlock Holmes and the Unholy Trinity (2015). He has recently finished Sherlock Holmes: The Four Handed Game.
John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836-1893) was born in Leeds, England. His amazing paintings, usually featuring twilight or night scenes illuminated by gas-lamps or moonlight, are easily recognizable, and are often used on the covers of books about the Great Detective to set the mood, as shadowy figures move in the distance through misty mysterious settings and over rain-slicked streets.
Arthur Hall was born in Aston, Birmingham, UK, in 1944. He discovered his interest in writing during his schooldays, along with a love of fictional adventure and suspense. His first novel, Sole Contact, was an espionage story about an ultra-secret government department known as “Sector Three”, and was followed, to date, by three sequels. Other works include three Sherlock Holmes novels, The Demon of the Dusk, The One Hundred Percent Society, and The Secret Assassin, as well as a collection of short stories, and a modern detective novel. He lives in the West Midlands, United Kingdom.
Dr. John Hall has written widely on Holmes. His books includes Sidelights on Holmes, a commentary on The Canon, The Abominable Wife on the unrecorded cases, Unexplored Possibilities, a study of Dr. John H. Watson, and a monograph on Professor Moriarty, “The Dynamics of a Falling Star”. (Most of these are now out of print.) His novels include Sherlock Holmes and the Adler Papers, The Travels of Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes and the Boulevard Assassin, Sherlock Holmes and the Disgraced Inspector, Sherlock Holmes and the Telephone Mystery, Sherlock Holmes and the Hammerford Will, Sherlock Holmes and the Abbey School Mystery, and Sherlock Holmes at the Raffles Hotel. John is a member of the International Pipe-smoker’s Hall of Fame, and lives in Yorkshire, England.
Narrelle M. Harris is a Melbourne-based writer of crime, horror, fantasy and non-fiction. Her books include Fly By Night, fantasies Witch Honour and Witch Faith (both short-listed for the George Turner Prize), and vampire books The Opposite of Life and Walking Shadows. The latter was nominated for the Chronos Awards for Science Fiction and Fantasy, and shortlisted for the Davitt Awards for crime writing. Narrelle also writes erotic romance. Find out more at www.narrellemharris.com.
Roger Johnson BSI is a retired librarian, now working as a volunteer assistant at Essex Police Museum. In his spare time he is commissioning editor of The Sherlock Holmes Journal, an occasional lecturer, and a frequent contributor to the Writings About the Writings. His sole work of Holmesian pastiche was published in 1997 in Mike Ashley’s anthology The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures (and in script form in The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories - Part IV - 2016 Annual.) Like his wife, Jean Upton, he is a member of both The Baker Street Irregulars and The Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes.
Jonathan Kellerman is the author of 48 books, 83.3% of them best-selling crime novels.
James Lovegrove is the author of more than fifty books, including The Hope, Days, Untied Kingdom, Provender Gleed, the New York Times bestselling Pantheon series, the Redlaw novels, and the Dev Harmer Missions. He has produced three Sherlock Holmes novels, with a Holmes/Cthulhu mashup trilogy in the works. He has also sold well over forty short stories and published two collections, Imagined Slights and Diversifications. He has produced a dozen short books for readers with reading difficulties, and a four-volume fantasy saga for teenagers, The Clouded World, under the pseudonym Jay Amory. James has been shortlisted for numerous awards, including the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, the Bram Stoker Award, the British Fantasy Society Award, and the Manchester Book Award. His short story “Carry The Moon In My Pocket” won the 2011 Seiun Award in Japan for Best Translated Short Story. His work has been translated into over a dozen languages, and his journalism has appeared in periodicals as diverse as Literary Review, Interzone, and BBC MindGames. He reviews fiction regularly for the Financial Times. He lives with his wife, two sons, cat, and tiny dog in Eastbourne, not far from the site of the “small farm upon the South Downs” to which Sherlock Holmes retired.
David Marcum plays The Game with deadly seriousness. He first discovered Sherlock Holmes in 1975, at the age of ten, when he received an abridged version of The Adventures during a trade. Since that time, David has collected literally thousands of traditional Holmes pastiches in the form of novels, short stories, radio and television episodes, movies and scripts, comics, fan-fiction, and unpublished manuscripts. He is the author of The Papers of Sherlock Holmes Vol.’s I and II (2011, 2013), Sherlock Holmes and A Quantity of Debt (2013, 2016) and Sherlock Holmes - Tangled Skeins (2015). Additionally, he is the editor of the three-volume set Sherlock Holmes in Montague Street (2014, recasting Arthur Morrison’s Martin Hewitt stories as early Holmes adventures,) and most recently this current ongoing collection, The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories (2015- ). He has contributed stories and essays to The Baker Street Journal, The Watsonian, Beyond Watson, Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, About Sixty, The Solar Pons Gazette, and The Gazette, the journal of the Nero Wolfe Wolfe Pack. He began his adult work life as a Federal Investigator for an obscure U.S. Government agency, before the organization was eliminated. He returned to school for a second degree, and is now a licensed Civil Engineer, living in Tennessee with his wife and son. He is a member of The Sherlock Holmes Society of London, The Occupants of the Full House (a Scion of the Baker Street Irregulars), The John H. Watson Society (“Marker”), The Praed Street Irregulars (“The Obrisset Snuff Box”), The Solar Pons Society of London, The Diogenes Club of Washington, D.C., and The Diogenes Club West (East Tennessee Annex), a curious and unofficial Scion of one. Since the age of nineteen, he has worn a deerstalker as his regular-and-only hat from autumn to spring. In 2013, he and his deerstalker were finally able make his first trip-of-a-lifetime Holmes Pilgrimage to England in 2013, with return trips in 2015 and 2016, where you may have spotted him. If you ever run into him and his deerstalker out and about, feel free to say hello!
William Patrick Maynard was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. His passion for writing began in childhood and was inspired by an early love of detective and thriller fiction. He was licensed by the Sax Rohmer Literary Estate to continue the Fu Manchu thrillers for Black Coat Press. The Terror of Fu Manchu was published in 2009 and was followed by The Destiny of Fu Manchu in 2012 and The Triumph of Fu Manchu in 2016. His previous Sherlock Holmes stories appeared in Gaslight Grotesque (2009, EDGE Publishing), Further Encounters of Sherlock Holmes (2014, Titan Books), and The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories, Part II (2015, MX Publishing). He currently resides in Northeast Ohio with his wife and family.
Julie McKuras ASH, BSI discovered Sherlock Holmes at the age of eleven through the late night magic of the Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce films. It was a bonus to learn there were actually books written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. She served as the President of the Norwegian Explorers of Minnesota for nine years, and has been on the board of The Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collections since 1997, editing their quarterly newsletter since 1999. Julie was the first editor of the BSI Trust newsletter as well. She is a frequent contributor to the Friends newsletter, and has had articles published in the Baker Street Journal, London’s Sherlock Holmes Journal, Through the Magic Door, and The Serpentine Muse. Her essays have been included in The Norwegian Explorers Christmas Annuals, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes: Essays and Art on The Doctor and The Detective, “A Note on the Sherlock Holmes Collections” published in The Horror of the Heights, Violets and Vitriol, and Sherlock Holmes in the Heartland: The Illustrious Clients Fifth Casebook. She is a co-editor of The Missing Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes, and with Susan Vizoskie, she co-edited Sherlockian Heresies. Julie has been a speaker at a number of conferences and events, such as The Sherlock Holmes Society of London’s Statue Festival, Holmes Under the Arch, the Newberry Library, From Gillette to Brett, and the 2014 Reichenbach Irregulars Conference in Davos. She lives in Apple Valley, Minnesota with her husband, Mike, and with her children, their spouses, and her three grandchildren nearby.
Mark Mower is a crime writer and historian whose passion for tales about Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson began at the age of twelve, when he watched an early black-and-white film featuring the unrivalled screen pairing of Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. Hastily seeking out the original stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and continually searching for further film and television adaptations, his has been a lifelong obsession. Now a member of the Crime Writers’ Association and the Sherlock Holmes Society of London, Mark has written numerous books about true crime stories and fictional murder mysteries. His first Holmes and Watson tale, “The Strange Missive of Germaine Wilkes” appeared as a chapter in Volume I of The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories (MX Publishing, 2015). His own collection of pastiches, A Farewell to Baker Street (MX Publishing, 2015) appeared shortly afterwards. His non-fiction works have included Bloody British History: Norwich (The History Press, 2014) and Suffolk Murders (The History Press, 2011). Alongside his writing, Mark lectures on crime history and runs a murder mystery business. He lives close to Beccles, in the English county of Suffolk.
Sidney Paget (1860-1908), a few of whose illustrations are used within this anthology, was born in London, and like his two older brothers, became a famed illustrator and painter. He completed over three-hundred-and-fifty drawings for the Sherlock Holmes stories first published in The Strand magazine, defining Holmes’s image forever after in the public mind.
Ashley D. Polasek, PhD, FRSA, BSB, ASH, is an “Aca-Sherlockian”, happily living at the crossroads of academia, traditional Sherlockiana, and contemporary fandom. Ashley holds a doctorate in the study of Sherlock Holmes on screen. As an internationally recognized authority on Sherlock Holmes adaptations, she has spoken on the subject at academic conferences and Sherlockian events across the U.S., the U.K., and continental Europe. She has published in peer reviewed journals and academic texts relating Holmes to literary and film studies topics as diverse as postcolonialism, feminism, postmodernism, historical period, costume, war propaganda, performance theory, copyright, and fan studies. With Lyndsay Faye, Ashley is the co-editor of Sherlock Holmes: Behind the Canonical Screen from BSI Press, and as a guest emeritus at 221B Con, she has spoken on over two-dozen panels since the convention’s inception in 2013. She has been interviewed about Sherlock Holmes on CNN International and CBS Sunday Morning. When she is not writing and speaking about Sherlock Holmes, Ashley spends her days teaching composition and literature and her evenings training in Historical European Martial Arts. She lives in Upstate South Carolina with her husband, Mr. Hyde, and her Wheaten Terrier, Jekyll. Ashley can be found on Twitter @SherlockPhD.
Tracy J. Revels, a Sherlockian from the age of eleven, is a professor of history at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina. She is a member of The Survivors of the Gloria Scott and The Studious Scarlets Society, and is a past recipient of the Beacon Society Award. Almost every semester, she teaches a class that covers The Canon, either to college students or to senior citizens. She is also the author of three supernatural Sherlockian pastiches with MX (Shadowfall, Shadowblood, and Shadowwraith), and a regular contributor to her scion’s newsletter. She also has some notoriety as an author of very silly skits: for proof, see “The Adventure of the Adversarial Adventuress” and “Occupy Baker Street” on YouTube. When not studying Sherlock, she can be found researching the history of her native state, and has written books on Florida in the Civil War and on the development of Florida’s tourism industry.
Roger Riccard of Los Angeles, California, U.S.A., is a descendant of the Roses of Kilravock in Highland Scotland. He is the author of two previous Sherlock Holmes novels, The Case of the Poisoned Lilly and The Case of the Twain Papers, as well as a series of short stories in two volumes, Sherlock Holmes: Adventures for the Twelve Days of Christmas and Further Adventures for the Twelve Days of Christmas all of which are published by Baker Street Studios. He has another novel, a new series of short stories, and a non-fiction Holmes reference work in various stages of completion. He became a Sherlock Holmes enthusiast as a teenager (many, many years ago,) and, like all fans of the Great Detective, yearned for more stories after reading The Canon over and over. It was the Granada Television performances of Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke, and the encouragement of his wife, Rosilyn, that at last inspired him to write his own Holmes adventures, using the Granada actor portrayals as his guide. He has been called “The best pastiche writer since Val Andrews” by the Sherlockian E-Times.
Denis O. Smith’s first published story of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, “The Adventure of The Purple Hand”, appeared in 1982. Since then, numerous other such accounts have been published in magazines and anthologies both in the U.K. and the U.S. In the 1990’s, four volumes of his stories were published under the general title of The Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes, and, more recently, a dozen of his stories, most not previously published in book form, appeared as The Lost Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes (2014) and The Lost Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes Volume II (2016). He also wrote a new story for the anthology, Sherlock Holmes Abroad (2015). Born in Yorkshire, in the north of England, Denis Smith has lived and worked in various parts of the country, including London, and has now been resident in Norfolk for many years. His interests range widely, but apart from his dedication to the career of Sherlock Holmes, he has a passion for historical mysteries of all kinds, the railways of Britain and the history of London.
S. Subramanian is a retired professor of Economics from Chennai, India. Apart from a small book titled Economic Offences: A Compendium of Crimes in Prose and Verse (Oxford University Press Delhi, 2012), his Holmes pastiches are the only serious things he has written. His other work runs largely to whimsical stuff on fuzzy logic and social measurement, on which he writes with much precision and little understanding, being an economist. He is otherwise mainly harmless, as his wife and daughter might concede with a little persuasion.
Amy Thomas is a member of the Baker Street Babes Podcast, and the author of The Detective and The Woman mystery novels featuring Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler. She blogs at girlmeetssherlock.wordpress.com, and she writes and edits professionally from her home in Fort Myers, Florida.
Nicholas Utechin BSI joined The Sherlock Holmes Society of London in 1966, aged fourteen. Ten years later he became Editor of The Sherlock Holmes Journal - a position he held for thirty years. The year 1976 also saw the publication of two Holmes pastiches he co-wrote: The Earthquake Machine and Hellbirds. He is a Baker Street Irregular, an honorary senior member of the Sons of the the Copper Beeches Scion society, a founding member of the John H. Watson Society, and has contributed extensively to Sherlockian scholarship over the decades. The fact that he is related to Basil Rathbone could have something to do with this madness. In another life, he was a senior producer and occasional presenter for BBC Radio in the field of current affairs. Now retired, he lives in Oxford, U.K., with his wife, Annie, follows the careers of their two sons with interest, and the lives of their two grandchildren with love. He believes he knows quite a lot about fine wine and silent films (meeting and interviewing Lillian Gish was something special,) and is lucky enough to own a Sidney Paget original (sadly not one for a Sherlock Holmes story.)
Marcia Wilson is a freelance researcher and illustrator who likes to work in a style compatible for the color blind and visually impaired. She is Canon-centric and her first MX offering, You Buy Bones, uses the point-of-view of Scotland Yard to show the unique talents of Dr. Watson. She can be contacted at gravelgirty.deviantart.com
Vincent W. Wright has been a Sherlockian and member of The Illustrious Clients of Indianapolis since 1997. He is the creator of a blog, Historical Sherlock, which is dedicated to the chronology of The Canon, and has written a column on that subject for his home scion’s newsletter since 2005. He lives in Indiana, and works for the federal government.