“The Game’s Afoot” yet again. Thomas brings us another set of stories narrated by Dr. Watson chronicling the amazing exploits of the famous Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective.
Thomas gives us five great stories. The siege of Sidney Streets has Sherlock working alongside Winston Churchill, in fact directing Churchill’s moves somewhat in order to defeat wild anarchists let by “Peter the Painter” from Russia. In another adventure Sherlock decodes a famous German WW I memo from Herr Zimmerman that plotted to ally Germany and Mexico. Mexico was to provide submarine bases with fuel and food so that they could sink all western shipping toward England and in turn Germany would work with Japan to return the states of New Mexico, Texas and Arizona to Mexico. Sherlock’s decoding of the message to the President of Mexico brought the United States into WW I and helped England win the war.
In other tales of daring do, Sherlock helps locate treasures lost by King John in 1216, saving lives in the process. He thwarts an unscrupulous attempt at extortion in forging of poems and letters of Elizabeth and Barrett Browning. And in yet another he confronts a silly supernatural belief in a curse on Lord Arthur Savile.
The wonderful thing about these tales is that they take on the same winning formula as that used by A. Conan Doyle. The distraught client turns up at the door at 221B Baker Street pounding for entry. Mrs. Hudson shows the poor fellow or gal up to meet with Sherlock and Dr. Watson. Sherlock shocks and surprises both the client and Dr. Watson with how much he knows about the client using his great powers of observation. But it seems simple when he explains how he has observed from the calluses on the fingers that the woman was a seamstress and from the development of the muscles of the left hand that she must be left handed and from the lack of dampness about her clothing that she must have just come from “Stepping”. There is some comfort in going through this formulaic intro to each story and then getting into the meat of the problem.
A very entertaining set of new Sherlockian tales I give this set a 7 of 10 on the Weaver meter.
