Derrick Belanger

The most ESSENTIAL stories of the Sherlock Holmes canon -- with new essays and illustrations At last The third of four volumes bringing together, in chronological order, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's most important adventures of SHERLOCK HOLMES from a biographical point of view, augmented with insightful essays and striking illustrations. The stories featured in this third volume of The Essential Sherlock Holmes include three adventures united by Holmes's greatest antagonist, Professor James Moriarty: The Valley of Fear - arguably the first hard-boiled detective storyThe Final Problem - the last Sherlock Holmes adventureThe Empty House - the return of Sherlock HolmesEach of the above stories features a new introduction by Dan Andriacco, BSI, and includes at least one new essay: "The Pinnacle of My Career" The Dual Masterpieces of The Valley of Fear - Nick Martorelli, BSISherlock Holmes the Cryptanalyst - S. Brent MorrisWith a Little Help From...? Holmes's Helpers After the Duel at the Falls - Brigitte Latella, BSI"Killed Holmes." What Was He Thinking? - Kathleen KaskaMoriarty - Steven T. Doyle, BSIA Study in Combat - Derrick BelangerThe Empty Heart Restored - John C. SherwoodEach story also includes new artwork from Brian Belanger

The most ESSENTIAL stories of the Sherlock Holmes canon -- with new essays and illustrations At last The third of four volumes bringing together, in chronological order, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's most important adventures of SHERLOCK HOLMES from a biographical point of view, augmented with insightful essays and striking illustrations. The stories featured in this third volume of The Essential Sherlock Holmes include three adventures united by Holmes's greatest antagonist, Professor James Moriarty: The Valley of Fear - arguably the first hard-boiled detective storyThe Final Problem - the last Sherlock Holmes adventureThe Empty House - the return of Sherlock HolmesEach of the above stories features a new introduction by Dan Andriacco, BSI, and includes at least one new essay: "The Pinnacle of My Career" The Dual Masterpieces of The Valley of Fear - Nick Martorelli, BSISherlock Holmes the Cryptanalyst - S. Brent MorrisWith a Little Help From...? Holmes's Helpers After the Duel at the Falls - Brigitte Latella, BSI"Killed Holmes." What Was He Thinking? - Kathleen KaskaMoriarty - Steven T. Doyle, BSIA Study in Combat - Derrick BelangerThe Empty Heart Restored - John C. SherwoodEach story also includes new artwork from Brian Belanger

In the 1920's, college student August Derleth wrote to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, asking if any more Sherlock Holmes adventures were going to be published. Upon receiving a negative reply, Derleth decided to provide some of his own. However, rather than relating more tales of Holmes and Dr. Watson, he ended up introducing the world to Solar Pons and Dr. Lyndon Parker, living in London during the 1920's and 1930's. Pons solved crimes using deduction and ratiocination, often referring to Holmes as "The Master" or "My illustrious predecessor." Since his first appearance, Pons has been a favorite with Sherlockians. Now, for the first time ever, the estate of August Derleth has authorized the first ever anthology of Solar Pons stories These twenty new adventures range from soon after Pons and Parker met in 1919 to a story that occurs after Germany has been defeated in World War II. Each of them fully and traditionally falls within the Pontine Canon. The authors of these stories have contributed their royalties to the Jan Stauber Grant Fund for the Beacon Society, which provides scholarships to educators, schools, and Sherlockian Scion societies, allowing them to purchase Sherlock Holmes books and materials in order to introduce young people to The Canon. Join us again at 7B Praed Street where The Game is Afoot

The steadily expanding devotees of the Sherlock Holmes of Praed Street will hail with delight this crowning volume in a series of collections which have now pastiched the entire quintet of the Master's adventures. Here is another collection of "as sparkling a galaxy of Sherlockian pastiches as we have had since the canonical entertainments came to an end," as Vincent Starrett - who contributes a preface to this book - wrote in his introduction to the first collection of the adventures of Solar Pons twenty years ago. A dozen new Pontine exploits round out the quintet in these pages - from The Adventure of the Sussex Archers to The Adventure of the Innkeeper's Clerk - and between these two tales are such memorable stories as The Adventure of the Haunted Library, The Adventure of the Intarsia Box, The Adventure of the China Cottage, The Adventure of the Crouching Dog, The Adventure of the Whispering Knights, and others, including among them The Adventure of the Missing Huntsman - in which Pons and Parker invade the fox-hunting country of England, and The Adventure of the Ascot Scandal, one of Pons' briefest and most amusing problems. To supplement the tales, the distinguished British author, Michael Harrison, contributes a monograph exploring the background of Dr. Lyndon Parker, and, in the course of so doing, explains the doctor's semi-American English. And, finally, August Derleth has added an Afterword in which he sets forth the facts about the origins of Solar Pons, admitting that it was never his "intention to do any considerable number of pastiches" and relating the circumstances surrounding the continuing numbers of the tales, ending happily with, "I cannot promise to write no more of them." The present collection brings the total number of the Pontine pastiches to 57 - one more than the total of the canonical short stories, of which a reviewer for The Louisville Journal-Courier wrote, "These tales recall, as nothing else has done, those delicious days and nights in Baker Street, days and nights that have vanished forever."- From the original 1965 Mycroft & Moran edition dust jacket

Once more the most successful of pastiche-detectives, Solar Pons, walks on stage with a new sequence of adventures. In this fourth major collection, Solar Pons is engaged with an intriguing variety of problems - the curious puzzle of the antique sovereign boxes narrated in the novelette, "The Adventure of the Mosaic Cylinders"; the sanguine riddle of the body in the thirteenth coffin told in "The Adventure of the Mazarine Blue"; the perplexing matter of the man devoted to British bowlers - "The Adventure of the Hats of M. Dulac"; the incredible plot to foment a religious war - "The Adventure of the Black Cardinal"; the disturbing facts in the murder of a psychic client - "The Adventure of the Blind Clairaudient" - and others. Solar Pons has won a place for himself among the outstanding exponents of the deductive. Almost two decades ago Vincent Starrett hailed his initial adventures as "the best substitutes for Sherlock Holmes known to this reviewer." The stories in this book - like their predecessors - are, as Ney MacMinn put it in The Chicago Tribune, much more than imitations - "an excellent series of adventures in detection in their own right." Here once again is the atmosphere of Baker Street and the London of Sherlock Holmes.

This long-awaited second collection of pastiches of the immortal Sherlock Holmes offers eleven new adventures of Solar Pons, who has been called by Vincent Starrett "a clever impersonator, with a twinkle in his eye, which tells us that he knows he is not Sherlock Holmes, and knows that we know it, but that he hopes we will like him anyway for what he symbolizes." Here are such fascinating stories as "The Adventure of the Paralytic Mendicant", an account of as unique a vengeance as was ever perpetrated between boards; "The Adventure of the Circular Room", a tale of a diabolic plot which will rouse many a memory of the old Master; the complex puzzle which will be of particular interest to bibliophiles told in the Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine Contest prizewinning "The Adventure of the Six Silver Spiders"; the curious affair which is "The Adventure of the Tottenham Werewolf'; and others which will bring back old, long-vanished Baker Street days. Once again in the London of years ago "the game is afoot." Certainly no living writer has brought the Holmesian pastiche to a higher development than this. There is very little difference, indeed, in the atmosphere of the stories, once they have begun to unfold; No. 7B Praed Street readily becomes 221B Baker Street; and Solar Pons, attended by his Dr. Lyndon Parker, often becomes curiously interchangeable with the Master of Baker Street and his Watson. "There is no intention to deceive," as Vincent Starrett wrote in his introduction to the first collection. "These nostalgic reminders of vanished days and nights in Baker Street are intended only to please."

Once again in old London, "the game is afoot." In these pastiches of the Sacred Writings, written when he was nineteen and twenty, August Derleth has recreated the London of Sherlock Holmes. It does not matter that the familiar name has become Solar Pons, or that the familiar Baker Street has become Praed Street - something of the nostalgic charm and fascination, of the remembered quickening of the pulse and the familiar settings of the original London of Sherlock Holmes, has been recaptured in these pages. And what intriguing titles there arc to these twelve pastiches, chosen from among a greater number Here are "The Adventure of the Frightened Baronet" - about a spectral image of Siva seen at a country estate beyond London; "The Adventure of the Purloined Periapt" - which is the purest of pastiches and perhaps the closest of all the tales in this book to the original spirit; "The Adventure of the Norcross Riddle" -containing some of the neatest deduction in the book; "The Adventure of the Man with the Broken Face" - a tale of "dark waters"; and eight others. "No doubt," writes Vincent Starrett in his Introduction, "we - and by we, I mean those frantic and incurable Sherlockians who, with August Derleth, deplore the paucity of canonical entertainments - should rather have more of the great originals, but we accept the imitations, faute de mieux, to satisfy a normal appetite. And we accept them with enthusiasm. They are the work of affectionate minds and hands. There is no intention to deceive. These stories, and others in their field, are intended only to please. They are nostalgic reminders of vanished days and nights in Baker Street."

Winter, 1890. A deep freeze has fallen upon London, and its citizens remain huddled indoors. But the cogs of the criminal underworld never stop turning, and Holmes and Watson find themselves embroiled in a crime that rocks the centre of the art world. Sir Wellington is disturbed in the middle of the night, apprehending a thief attempting to steal his rare and valuable 14th portrait of King Edward III. In the kerfuffle that follows, the painting is set ablaze and the thief escapes. When the police track down the criminal to take him to the station, he is fatally shot by an unknown assailant. But the labyrinth of deceit grows even more impenetrable, as the painting's provenance is called into question and Holmes and Watson find themselves in the midst of a vast conspiracy. It seems that this incident is just one of many at the hands of a powerful crime syndicate, duping the London's wealthy into buying imitation artwork - with the renowned National Portrait Gallery supposedly at the centre... With usurped identities, shootings, chases and conspiracies, Holmes and Watson find themselves enmeshed in a tangled web of theft, forgery and murder. Can the famous duo untangle the mystery and expose the criminal network before it is too late? Or will this case prove too complex for even their brilliant minds? Praise for The Adventure of the Peculiar Provenance: "... Derrick Belanger has once again created his own unique doorway into the world of Holmes and Watson. He makes you feel as if you're in Victorian London, and the story's twists are both surprising and satisfying." - David Marcum, author of The Papers of Sherlock Holmes "This author truly captures the storytelling virtues with which Doyle imbued Dr. Watson. Belanger's tale pulls you in from the first paragraph, and keeps you at Holmes's side as this marvelous new tale unfolds step-by-step. If you love Holmes, you'll love The Adventure of the Peculiar Provenance." - Kim Krisco, author of Sherlock Holmes: The Golden Years

From the bestselling team of Derrick Belanger and Brian Belanger comes a fun filled mystery adventure for kids of all ages. It is London, 1897, and a pleasant dinner with a very special friend, Sherlock Holmes, is shattered by a terrific explosion that plunges 10 year old twin detectives, Emma and Jimmy MacDougall, into an adventure that threatens all they know and love. A mad man, possessing a remarkable airship the size of two circus elephants, threatens not only the famous 221B Baker Street house, but all of England, even the world! The great Sherlock Holmes cannot solve this mystery alone. It is up to the MacDougall twins, to use their wits and amazing detective skills, to find the hidden airship and foil the plans of the Mad Airship Bomber!