âDoctor, I no longer desire to interfere with your creative endeavours. Publish or not as you see fit.â
Presented within this volume are a further six, previously unpublished, accounts by John H. Watson, M.D. These adventures bring Holmes and Watson into the worlds of high-society and politics as well as bringing them into contact with the successor to their most infamous enemy.
Why does a politician wake up next to a dead man in a mystical circle?
Who is responsible for the disappearance of an Aztec statue?
How does a notorious gambler end up dead and naked in his study?
Why does a respected doctor murder a politician he barely knew?
âDoctor, I no longer desire to interfere with your creative endeavours. Publish or not as you see fit.â
Presented within this volume are a further six, previously unpublished, accounts by John H. Watson, M.D. These adventures bring Holmes and Watson into the worlds of high-society and politics as well as bringing them into contact with the successor to their most infamous enemy.
Why does a politician wake up next to a dead man in a mystical circle?
Who is responsible for the disappearance of an Aztec statue?
How does a notorious gambler end up dead and naked in his study?
Why does a respected doctor murder a politician he barely knew?
I was pleasantly surprised when my recent volume chronicling the adventures shared with my friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, received a welcome as warm as the volume which preceded it. I feared the natural audience for such accounts had declined with the passage of time. To find myself mistaken was an undoubted relief.
Thus emboldened, I elected to channel my energies into a further volume. The problem has always been one of selection and suitability. Many accounts that Holmes would not object to did not, in my opinion, merit a wider audience. Others, that I knew to be engaging, he would prohibit on the grounds of taste or his feeling that they did not show him as he believed my readers wished to see him.
It was with considerable effort that I persuaded him to acquiesce to the publication of the enclosed examples. The recent death of a certain individual undoubtedly facilitated matters. This will become apparent as you turn the pages that follow.
John H. Watson, M.D.
London 1921
I reviewed a previous volume in this series. That is why I was pleased and surprised by The Further Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes Volume III. This six-story collection is where Mylesâs literary effort transcends homage and becomes its own meaningful extension of the Holmes legend. The offering is confident, structurally sound, emotionally aware, and willing to take risks with characters who have too often been treated as static icons. "The Grand Master," Holmes' serialized nemesis from "The Six Constables" in Volume II, gives this collection a spine.
What truly distinguishes this Volume III is its thematic maturity. Myles leans into ideas Conan Doyle often skirted - the manipulation of narrative, the ethics of publication, the danger of mythmaking. Watsonâs role as chronicler becomes a point of vulnerability. Holmesâs desire for a worthy opponent becomes a liability. And the antagonist, who is younger and more manipulative than Professor Moriarty, turns public perception into a weapon.
Holmes fans will find the book invigorating. For readers of Myles' readers might be impressed that he is still on the rise. The writer has found his audience, and gives them stories that feel genuinely necessary. The author understands the power of that and uses it to tighten the readerâs attention from the first page.
The opening adventure, "The Chichester Circle," is the strongest in the volume. It begins not with a client but with a criticâMichael Quinn, an American who arrives at Baker Street to chastise Watson for the âdrop in qualityâ of his recent published cases. The exchange is unsettling, and Myles lets it be unsettling. The idea that the villain is reading Watsonâs stories, reacting to them, even demanding new ones, is a clever and modern twist that still feels perfectly at home in the canon.
The case is classic Holmes - a respected MP awakens beside a corpse in a cursed clearing, with a bloody dinner knife between them and no memory of how he arrived there. Myles lets the strangeness breathe. The case unfolds with the right balance of deduction, misdirection, and human frailty.
The other stories â"The Little God," "The Leman Street Solicitor," "Woodrush House," "The Reckless Gambler," and "The Deadly Doctor"âcontinue the pattern - standalone mysteries with incremental revelations about the antagonistâs network. Each tale has its own flavor, yet the volumeâs cohesion comes from the sense that Holmes is maneuvered, watched, and tested. Myles never overplays that.