Master of the Art of Detection

Sherwood-Fabre (the Early Case Files of Sherlock Holmes series) delivers a solid collection of stories featuring Doyle’s detective. Canonical entries include a creative fleshing-out of one of Watson’s untold tales (“The Most Winning Woman”), and a sequel to Doyle’s “The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax,” which finds Carfax, a former client of Holmes’s, returning to seek help recovering jewels stolen by the criminals who kidnapped her in the original story. The author pulls off a shrewd and satisfying locked-room mystery with “The Adventure of Kisin’s Curse,” in which Holmes must ascertain how the assistant to an explorer was poisoned in a sealed room. Holmes’s deductive talents are captured with aplomb in “The Adventure of Lafitte’s Missing Treasure,” in which the detective tackles the case of an American woman’s missing husband, who disappeared while on a quest for a legendary pirate’s treasure. Throughout, Sherwood-Fabre plays it safe, delivering comfort-food pastiches that rely heavily on established tropes. Sherlockians will be pleased. (Self-published)