cover image Gaslight Grotesque: Nightmare Tales of Sherlock Holmes

Gaslight Grotesque: Nightmare Tales of Sherlock Holmes

. EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing,, $16.95 (311pp) ISBN 978-1-894063-31-9

Overall, the quality of the 13 new Holmes stories in this volume is superior to those in 2008's similarly-themed Gaslight Grimoire, despite that book's better-known roster of contributors. Once again, Barbara Roden's (Northwest Passages) exceptional story ""Of the Origin of the Hound of the Baskervilles"" is on a level of its own. Roden takes advantage of a lacuna in Doyle's classic-the missing pages from a letter Watson to Holmes-and transforms it into a complex story with a unique explanation of the demonic beast haunting the Baskerville family. Hayden Trenholm's ""The Last Windigo"" integrates the Baker Street duo into a frightening mystery set in the remote Canadian wilderness. Neil Jackson in ""Celeste"" proposes a more science-fictional solution to the classic enigma of the ship Mary Celeste and her crew. The anthology also benefits from a very thoughtful and comprehensive overview of the horror genre up until the late nineteenth century by expert Leslie S. Klinger.