• Music: "I Know Better," Vonda Shepard

Wildfires, News, & a Sherlockian Pastiche Party, Revisited!

* I'd like to give a grateful shout-out to the brave men and women of the fire crews from Macomb, Wanette, Bethel, Tecumseh, McLoud, Shawnee, and Pink, Oklahoma, as well as the Cleveland County Task Force, with fire crews from Norman, Slaughterville, Cedar Country, Moore, and Little Axe, the Pottawatomie County sheriff’s office and tribal police, and the Black Hawk helicopter crews from the Oklahoma National Guard, all of whom worked together along with local landowners yesterday to end a sudden 300-acre wildfire that raged up to the very border of my parents' property. Fortunately, no one was harmed, ranch animals were safely evacuated, and the fire has been contained (although there's an alert for another one now less than ten miles away). Here's hoping for cooler weather and rain for the area this weekend. You can see footage of yesterday's fire from Oklahoma City's KOCO here.

* In general news, I was delighted to see Anthony Letizia of Alterna-tv.com just posted a lovely review of Fringe Science: Parallel Universes, White Tulips, and Mad Scientists.

* Happy early birthday wishes to marthawells, aragornlover, snard, and alii_s! May each of you enjoy a wonderful day and a fantastic year to come.


Now, about those Sherlock Holmes pastiches...

Some months ago, I asked for recommendations of Sherlock Holmes pastiches and received some great replies. (Thank you!) I waited until I'd finished going through all of Arthur Conan Doyle's canonical Holmesian writings in order, but now I've embarked on my pastiche reading. I'm still only "baby steps" into the project, but I thought I'd list the novels I've read thus far, ranked in order from my most favorite to my least favorite. My reviews are general, and though they may contain a few spoilers about the premise of a given work, they don't give away any twist endings or key surprises.

Novels

Most Favorite Novel Thus Far:
Dust and Shadow: An Account of the Ripper Killings by Dr. John H. Watson by Lyndsay Faye (2009)
Read my review.

The Mycroft Memoranda by Ray Walsh (1985)
Read my review.

The Last Sherlock Holmes Story by Michael Dibdin (1978)
Read my review.

The Whitechapel Horrors by Edward B. Hanna (1992)
Read my review.

The West End Horror: A Posthumous Memoir of John H. Watson, M.D. by Nicholas Meyer (1976)
Read my review.

The Seven-Percent Solution: Being a Reprint from the Reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D. by Nicholas Meyer (1974)
Read my review.

The Canary Trainer: From the Memoirs of John H. Watson by Nicholas Meyer (1993)
Read my review.

Lestrade and the Ripper by M.J. Trow (1999)
Read my review.

Sherlock Holmes: The Rediscovered Railway Mysteries and Other Stories by John Taylor (2010)
Read my review.


I had difficulty ranking The West End Horror and The Seven-Percent Solution, as they were rather neck-and-neck for me. I'd recommend all of these except Trow's and Taylor's to fans of Holmes in general, but I'd still recommend Taylor's to those specifically who are fans of Benedict Cumberbatch.


Collections

The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes edited by John Joseph Adams (2009)
Read my review.


Other

In the novella/novelette category, I've read and thoroughly enjoyed "The Adventure of the Elusive Emeralds" (a poignant mystery with terrific Watson characterization, in particular, in Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine #4) and "The Adventure of the Haunted Bagpipes" (a truly chilling mystery with a very real and disturbing threat to Holmes and Watson in Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine #5), both by Carla Coupe (aka beledibabe). I highly recommend them.


Next up in my pastiche reading: the novel Sherlock Holmes and the Apocalypse Murders by Barry Day (2001) and the collection Sherlock Holmes in Orbit edited by Mike Resnick and Martin H. Greenberg (1995).


"My patronus is yo mama."
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