Laurie R. King

This third collection of “stories inspired by the Holmes canon” that Les Klinger and I have edited is out now, in hardback, e-, and next week, in audio.  In celebration, and to tempt you into the mix, I thought I’d post a few tidbits from the stories.  Here’s the first sampler…

Where There is Honey

by Dana Cameron

Writing settles my mind. Getting my the thoughts out of my head and onto the page, with the accompanying smell of ink and the scratch of the pen across fresh paper, has become a daily habit, especially when we are working on a case. Once committed to paper, my whirlwind thoughts cease to plague me so terribly. I hate the persistence of memory, questioning the actions I took or did not take on a case, what I observed or did not observe—, and always, what might have been. These “might have beens” stretch to eternity, a litany of failure. I have observed a marked lowness of spirits when I do not keep to this ritual, and so try to be constant in it. On some occasions, since my discharge from the army, I have found myself unnerved by new worries, and the ordering of my rampaging thoughts, corralling and quieting them, helps.

Indeed, I was busily writing when my friend Sherlock Holmes stalked into the room and hurled himself into a chair that late March evening just a few months after we took up residence there. I had hoped that he would presently close his eyes and doze, as he sometimes did after reviewing the successful completion of the day’s work, but it was not to be. He immediately leaped up again and began to pace, ignoring the brandy and gasogene, snapping his long fingers as if counting time in music or attempting to summon up a stray memory.

Many would have seen this as juvenile rude behavior. But for me, alarm bells began to ring. His tenseness often infected me, even as I worked diligently to keep to a quiet life to stave off those terrible spells that come over me, paralyzing and robbing me of all sense. Just But only this morning he had been bemoaning the swirling yellow fog and the prosaic dun-colored houses across the street.

“You’re writing, Watson.”

I remarked that his powers of observation had never been more acute.

 

 

 

Holmes on the Range: A Tale of the Caxton Private Lending Library & Book Depository

by John Connolly

…

Extract from the manuscript (Caxton CD/ MSH 94: MS)

Holmes regarded Moriarty intensely, his every nerve aquiver. Before him sat the most dangerous man in England, a calculating, cold-blooded, criminal mastermind. For the first time in many years, Holmes felt real fear, even with a revolver cocked in his lap and concealed by a napkin.

“I hope the wine is to your liking,” said Moriarty.

“Have you poisoned it?” asked Holmes. “I hesitate even to touch the glass, in case you have treated it with some infernal compound of your own devising.”

“Why would I do that?” asked Moriarty. He appeared genuinely puzzled by the suggestion.

“You are my archnemesis,” Holmes replied. “You have hereditary tendencies of the most diabolical kind.   A criminal strain runs in your blood. Could I but free society of you, I should feel that my career had reached its summit.”

“Yes, about that archnemesis business…”

“What about it?” asked Holmes.

“Well, isn’t it a bit strange that it’s never come up before? I mean, if I’m your archnemesis, the Napoleon of crime, a spider at the heart of an infernal web with a thousand radiations, responsible for half that is evil in London—all that kind of thing—and you’ve been tracking me for years, then why haven’t you mentioned me before? You know, it would surely have popped up in conversation at some point. It’s not the kind of thing one tends to forget, really, is it, a criminal mastermind at the heart of some great conspiracy?   If I were in your shoes, I’d never stop talking about me.”

“I—” Holmes paused. “I’ve never really thought about it in that way. I must admit that you did pop into my mind quite recently, and distinctly fully formed. Perhaps I took a blow to the head at some stage, although I’m sure Doctor Watson would have noted such an injury.”

“He writes down everything else,” said Moriarty. “Hard to see him missing something like that.”

**

Want some more? You can order from Poisoned Pen (signed), Amazon, B&N, and Audible.