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katikat
"The Execution of Sherlock Holmes: And Other New Adventures of the Great Detective" by Donald Thomas3 stars out of 5
This anthology consisted of 5 stories, all written by Donald Thomas. The first 4 ranged from good to great and I was willing to give this book 4 stars - but then the last one happened, "The Queen of the Night".
In this short story, Sherlock Holmes went against Col. Moriarty, Prof. Moriarty's brother, unfortunately, it was overly complicated and Watson was made an idiot: Holmes was unwilling to tell Watson what exactly was going on and when Watson reacted, based on his incomplete information, Holmes' reaction was rather venomous and honestly, if I were Watson, I would have told Holmes to go to hell. This story undermined all the pleasure I took from reading the previous 4 stories.
Other than that, the first two stories - "The Execution of Sherlock Holmes" and "The Case of the Greek Key" - felt more like spy stories than mysteries. The first one was very MacGyver like, the second one reminded me of "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" because Holmes was trying to find a mole.
In "The Case of the Peasenhall Murder" Holmes wasn't looking for a murderer, he was trying to prove that the accused did not do it; the murder itself remained unsolved.
And "The Case of the Phantom Chamberlain" was interesting only because Watson was allowed to actually do something and used his medical knowledge.
