ABOUT THE BOOK
Sherlock Holmes is the most famous fictional detective ever created. The supremely rational sleuth and his dependable companion, Dr Watson, will forever be associated with the gaslit and smog-filled streets of late nineteenth and early twentieth century London. Yet Holmes and Watson were not the only ones solving mysterious crimes and foiling the plans of villainous masterminds in Victorian and Edwardian England. The years between 1890 and 1914 were a golden age for English magazines and most of them published crime and detective fiction. The startling success of the Holmes stories that appeared in The Strand magazine spawned countless imitators. This volume highlights some of those 'Rivals of Sherlock Holmes'. In the fifteen tales which Nick Rennison has brought together in this anthology, readers can meet:
THE THINKING MACHINE - Jacques Futrelle's dazzlingly intellectual genius Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, aka the Thinking Machine, even more capable than Holmes himself of solving the most baffling of mysteries through brainpower alone
CARNACKI THE GHOST FINDER – detective of the occult created by the legendary horror writer William Hope Hodgson, author of The House on the Borderlands
EUGENE VALMONT – a sophisticated and urbane French detective, created by Robert Barr, who lives in exile in London and uses his Gallic wit and wisdom to learn the truth about the mysteries that regularly come his way
NOVEMBER JOE – Hesketh Prichard's Canadian woodsman who uses his extraordinary powers of observation to track down villains and bring them to justice
CRAIG KENNEDY – a scientific detective from the years before the First World War, created by the American writer Arthur B. Reeve, who uses startling new technological advancements like X-rays and microphones to solve crime
HAGAR OF THE PAWN SHOP – Fergus Hume's feisty and tempestuous gypsy woman who investigates the strange stories associated with the objects that customers bring to her in her London pawn shop
It may well be true that there never has been and never will be a detective quite like Sherlock Holmes but he did not stand alone. He did have his rivals and, as this collection of short stories shows, many of their adventures were as exciting and entertaining as those of the master himself.
"...[an] intriguing anthology..." - Mail on Sunday [read the full review]
The years leading up to the First World War witnessed an explosion in the popularity of detective fiction. In large part this was due to the phenomenal success of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, and other writers were quick to spot an opportunity.
G.K.Chesterton's Father Brown stories are still widely read but I must confess I'd never heard of most of the authors in Nick Rennison's intriguing anthology. I greatly enjoyed Jacques Futrelle's master of logical thinking, Professor Van Dusen, aka 'The Thinking Machine'.
"...a book which will delight fans of crime fiction...." - Verbal Magazine [read the full review]
It is rare, these days, to read a crime short story of any quality, but the original detective par excellence, Sherlock Holmes, existed almost entirely in that form. We tend to forget this, used as we are to the filmed versions of these classics.
In this volume, Nick Rennison hs collected a number of stories from Conan Doyle's contemporaries and in so doing has created a book which will delight fans of crime fiction. There are well-known names here, like G.K. Chesterton and Arnold Bennett, but most of these writers have been lost to the vagaries of fashion and it is a pleasure to rediscover them. I challenge anyone not to want more of Miss Lois Clayton or Cecil Thorold, the Millionaire Detective. A dip into the puzzles of the past, when detective stories did not have to extend over 500 tortuous pages to justify their existence.
"...it's good to see that Mr Rennison has also selected some rarer pieces — and rarer detectives, such as November Joe, Sebastian Zambra, Cecil Thorold and Lois Cayley...." - Roger Johnson, The District Messenger (Newsletter of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London) [read the full review]
Sherlock Holmes long ago became fixed in our minds as the archetype of the detective, especially the Victorian detective. Can you imagine a book called The Rivals of C August Dupin? No. But there have been two separate series entitled The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes (and a equally splendid collection called Shadows of Sherlock Holmes) and now Nick Rennison, author of the exceptionally clever Sherlock Holmes: An Unauthorized Biography, has compiled another volume with the same name, subtitled An Anthology of Crime Stories 1890- 1914 (No Exit Press, PO Box 394, Harpenden, Herts. AL5 1XJ; £9.99). I suppose it was inevitable that there should be some overlap with Sir Hugh Greene's classic series for Penguin, since both editors have chosen what they believe to be the best chronicles of the Thinking Machine and Carnacki the Ghost Finder, but it's good to see that Mr Rennison has also selected some rarer pieces — and rarer detectives, such as November Joe, Sebastian Zambra, Cecil Thorold and Lois Cayley. Some of the authors are well known for their mystery stories (Jacques Futrelle, G K Chesterton, Guy Boothby, Fergus Hume, Arthur B Reeve), some are more familiar in other fields (Arnold Bennett, Grant Allen, William Hope Hodgson, Hesketh Prichard), and some are almost unknown to me (Headon Hill, Rodrigues Ottolengui). The fifteen stories, and their protagonists, all have the virtue of individuality, even those most obviously influenced by Sherlock Holmes, such as Professor Van Dusen, 'the Thinking Machine' — but then Van Dusen's creator, Jacques Futrelle, was a deviser of jaw-droppingly ingenious plots. You may well find that some of these sleuths really do qualify as rivals of Sherlock Holmes (Father Brown surely does!) and in any case it's good to be reminded that Holmes was not a completely isolated phenomenon.
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