Echoes of Sherlock Holmes
Page 37
ANNE PERRY has published over eighty books. Fifty-three of them feature either Inspector Thomas Pitt, first of Bow Street, then of Special Branch, or Commander William Monk, lately of the Thames River Police. They, plus several short stories, are all mysteries set in Victorian London, and so it is hardly surprising that she was influenced by Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. The invitation to join in this collection was irresistible. Her story “Raffa” is dedicated to her friend Kira Gangi. www.anneperry.co.uk/books
Still on GARY PHILLIPS’s shelf is a book his aunt gave him decades ago called Conan Doyle Stories: Six Notable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Platt & Munk, Publishers. At nine or ten he read A Study in Scarlet and was hooked. Further cementing his fascination with the character, Phillips fondly recalls those Sunday afternoons in high school when he and his dad would watch the Rathbone-Bruce interpretations on Channel 9. Other recent work includes “The Two Falcons” in the Highway Kind, Stories of Cars and Crime, and a second Decimator Smith story in Black Pulp II, and comics miniseries for Hard Case Crime and DC Comics. Please drop by his website at www.gdphillips.com for further goings-on.
HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN’s parents tell the story of the Black Hole of Time, when their eldest daughter disappeared into the hayloft of the barn behind their home. Turned out thirteen-year-old Hank had settled in to read the entire volume of the Christopher Morley edition of The Complete Sherlock Holmes. Afterward, briefly, she communicated only in the code she learned in “The Adventure of the Dancing Men.” She also vowed to become a detective herself, solving crimes and catching bad guys. Hank kept her vow, in her own way, and is now the winner of thirty-three Emmy® Awards for investigative reporting at Boston’s NBC affiliate, where she is still on the air. After adding fiction to her resume, Ryan, author of eight mystery novels, has won five Agatha Awards, two Anthony Awards, two Macavitys, and, for The Other Woman, the Mary Higgins Clark Award. Her newest novel, What You See, which national reviewers have called “superbly entertaining” and “a perfect thriller,” is a Library Journal Best of 2015. Though she no longer writes in code, Hank has actually read a portion of Edward Hitchcock’s 1841 tome Final Report on the Geology of Massachusetts, but only enough to matter. www.hankphillippiryan.com
MICHAEL SCOTT is the New York Times bestselling author of The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel. Published in thirty-seven countries and twenty-five languages, he is one of Ireland’s most successful and prolific authors, with over one hundred titles to his credit. He grew up in a book-filled house where nothing was off-limits—except the very top shelf which held his father’s almost complete collection of Strand Magazines. However, a chair on top of a table gave him access to the world of Holmes and Watson. He got so caught up in reading The Hound of the Baskervilles that he fell off the chair and broke his wrist. Luckily, the magazine was unharmed. Later, a long career as an antiquarian bookseller allowed him to add to the collection, though it is still not quite complete. He spent the best part of a decade researching the events surrounding the theft of the Irish Crown Jewels. Conan Doyle himself borrowed elements from the story for “The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans.” All the revelations in the short story are based on fact because truth is always stranger than fiction. His website is www.dillonscott.com.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Our thanks to Don Maass for his astute advice regarding the contract for this book. Special thanks to Claiborne Hancock, Iris Blasi, Maria Fernandez, and Christine Van Bree of Pegasus Books for all their hard work to make this happen and for their belief in an audience for short stories.
We were fortunate to win both the Anthony and the Silver Falchion awards for “Best Anthology” for the previous book in this series, In the Company of Sherlock Holmes: Tales Inspired by the Holmes Canon, and we’re very grateful to the readers who voted for those awards. However, we both know very well that the real credit for those awards goes to our amazing friends and contributors, Laura Caldwell, Michael Connelly, Jeffery Deaver, Michael Dirda, Harlan Ellison, Cornelia Funke, Andrew Grant, Denise Hamilton, Nancy Holder, John Lescroart, Sara Paretsky, John Reppion & Leah Moore, Michael Sims, and Gahan Wilson, whose stories shone. The friends who contributed to our first volume, A Study in Sherlock: Stories Inspired by the Sherlock Holmes Canon (Random House), Alan Bradley, Tony Broadbent, Jan Burke, Lionel Chetwynd, Lee Child, Colin Cotterill, Neil Gaiman, Laura Lippman, Gayle Lynds & John Sheldon, Philip & Jerry Margolin, Margaret Maron, Thomas Perry, S. J. Rozan, Dana Stabenow, Charles Todd, and Jacqueline Winspear, got the idea started and were enthusiastic cheerleaders for succeeding volumes. Thanks also to Kate Miciak of Random House for her early support, as well as Barbara Peters and Rob Rosenwald of Poisoned Pen Press and Otto Penzler of Mysterious Books.
Finally, endless gratitude to those who work hard behind the scenes on all of our books and on whose constant support we depend: Zoë Elkaim and Sharon Klinger.
ECHOES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
Pegasus Books Ltd.
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Copyright © 2016 by Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger
Individual stories are copyrighted by the authors.
Holmes on the Range. Copyright © 2015 by John Connolly. First appeared in Night Music: Nocturne, Vol. 2.
The Adventure of the Extraordinary Rendition by Cory Doctorow. Copyright © 2016, Cordoc-Co LLC. Previously published in Astro Noise: A Survival Guide for Living Under Total Surveillance, edited by Laura Poitras and published by The Whitney Museum of American Art.
First Pegasus Books cloth edition October 2016
Interior design by Maria Fernandez
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher, except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review in a newspaper, magazine, or electronic publication; nor may any part of this book be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other, without written permission from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN: 978-1-68177-225-7
ISBN: 978-1-68177-276-9 (e-book)
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