Michael Doyle, 'The Legacy of Rachel Howells'. To answer the obvious question, Michael Doyle (b. 1930) is not related to Sir Arthur, at least not so far as he's been able to trace, though there does seem to be a family resemblance. Although born and educated in England, Doyle settled in Canada in 1956 and has Canadian nationality. He is by profession an export trade consultant and is recognized as one of the world authorities on international trade and letters of credit. He shares Conan Doyle's interest in boxing and has even written a monograph called A Study in Sparring about Sherlock Holmes, the Prize Ring and the Corbett-Fitzsimmons fight.
Martin Edwards, 'The Case of the Suicidal Lawyer'. Martin Edwards (b. 1955) is a practicing solicitor and has used his experience as the background for his series of novels about Liverpool solicitor and amateur detective Harry Devlin. The series began with All the Lonely People and there's been a novel a year ever since. Edwards has also edited the crime anthology Northern Blood and others in a regionally related series.
Zakaria Erzinclioglu,' The Adventure of the Bulgarian Diplomat'. Dr Erzinclioglu is a practising forensic scientist. He has been working on criminal cases (mostly murder) for over twenty years, investigating over five hundred in Britain and abroad. He was formerly Senior Research Associate at Cambridge University and, subsequently, Director of the Forensic Science Research Centre at Durham University. He is now an Honorary Lecturer at London University. He is working on Evidence, a book which looks at the interpretation of evidence in criminal trials and historical events.
L. B. Greenwood, 'Five Minutes Past Midnight'. Lillian Beth Greenwood (b. 1932) is a Canadian writer who lives not too far from Michael Doyle and Barbara Roden. Her first novel, The Street Sparrows, is a historical set in the Victorian era – she describes it as a female version of Oliver Twist. She has also written three Sherlock Holmes novels listed in the appendix, and is a member of the Vancouver Holmes organization known as the Stormy Petrels.
Lois H. Gresh, 'The Adventure of the Parisian Gentleman' with Robert Weinberg. Gresh works in the computer industry as a programmer and systems analyst and has written hundreds of technical manuals and related texts. She is the proprietor of Technohell, Inc., which designs and codes corporate websites, software and systems. Oh what fun Holmes would have had with the Internet! She has sold many short science fiction and horror stories and her first novel, The Termination Node, written with Weinberg, is in the works. It's the first of a series of near-future computer technothrillers.
Claire Griffen, 'The Case of the Incumbent Invalid'. Claire Griffen is a new writer who has previously appeared in Classical Whodunnits and the magazine Boggle. She is Australian, and spent several years as an actress and dramatist before turning to writing fantasy and mystery stories. She wrote a Sherlock Holmes play in 1986 which saw several performances with an Adelaide theatre repertory company.
Edward D. Hoch, 'Vittoria, the Circus Belle'. Edward Hoch (b. 1930) is a phenomenally prolific American short-story writer with over seven hundred to his credit. He has created many fascinating detectives, including Captain Leopold, Dr Sam Hawthorne, Nick Velvet, Ben Snow and Simon Ark. His stories appear regularly in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine but only a few have made it into individual story collections. Well worth tracking down is his Captain Leopold volume, Leopold's Way, his Simon Ark series, The Judges of Hades, City of Brass and The Quests of Simon Ark, the Nick Velvet books The Spy and the Thief and The Thefts of Nick Velvet, whilst a few of his Sam Hawthorne stories have been collected as Diagnosis: Impossible. His more general mystery fiction will be found in The Night My Friend. Hoch has written several Sherlock Holmes stories including 'The Return of the Speckled Band' in The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 'The Manor House Case' in Resurrected Holmes and 'The Christmas Client' in Holmes for the Holidays.
Roger Johnson, 'The Adventure of the Grace Chalice'. Johnson (b. 1947) is a noted Sherlock Holmes afficianado and writer of ghost stories. It was through Sherlock Holmes that Roger met his wife, Jean. He was the founder of the Newsletter of the Sherlock Holmes Society and writes regularly on matters Sherlockian. A small private press-produced his first collection of ghost stories, Deep Things Out of Darkness in 1987, and a more extensive volume, A Ghostly Crew, is under production.
H.R.F. Keating, 'The Adventure of the Suffering Ruler'. Keating (b. 1926) is the renowned author of the novels featuring Inspector Ghote of the Bombay CID, which began with The Perfect Murder in 1964 and is still going strong. He was won many awards and has compiled the invaluable reference works of the crime and mystery fiction field Whodunit;Agatha Christie: First Lady of Crime and Crime Writers: Reflections on Crime Fiction. He has also written Sherlock Holmes: the Man and His World and two Holmes pastiches, this story and 'A Trifling Affair'.
David Langford, 'The Repulsive Story of the Red Leech'. Langford (b. 1953) is a popular writer of science fiction, not averse to the occasional spoof. His first book-length work, An Account of a Meeting with Denizens of Another World, 1871, issued under the alias of William Robert Loosley fooled many people into believing it was a genuine Victorian account of a close encounter with aliens. His science-fiction novels include The Space Eater and Earthdoom! (with John Grant) plus the clever satire on the scientific establishment The Leaky Establishment, drawn from Langford's own direct experiences.
F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre, 'The Enigma of the Warwickshire Vortex'. F Gwynplaine Maclntyre – Froggy to his friends – is a Scottish-born, Australian-raised, American-resident author who is a fund of knowledge on a wide range of esoterica, as his story reveals. He is the author of the excellent Victorian science-fiction novel The Woman Between the Worlds, as well as several pseudonymous novels and many stories for the science-fiction magazines.
Michael Moorcock, 'The Adventure of the Dorset Street Lodger'. Moorcock (b. 1939) scarcely needs an introduction. He was one of the prime movers in the reshaping of science fiction in the mid-sixties, with his editorship of New Worlds and his Jerry Cornelius series of stories, and is one of the most popular writers of heroic fantasy with his many series featuring the various incarnations of the Eternal Champion, the most famous being Elric of Melnibone. Moorcock has long been fascinated with the end of the Victorian era and a number of books, most notably the Oswald Bastable series, sought to recreate an alternate Victorian world, whilst his Dancers at the End of Time sequence, also reflected that fin-de-siecle mood. It was clearly only a matter of time before Moorcock turned his creative energies to Sherlock Holmes, and I'm delighted he did.
Amy Myers, 'The Adventure of the Faithful Retainer'. Amy Myers is best known for her books featuring the master-chef with the remarkable deductive powers, Auguste Didier who first appeared in Murder in Pug's Parlour in 1987 and has built up a dedicated following. The stories are contemporary with Sherlock Holmes and there is little doubt that the two would have been acquainted
Barrie Roberts, 'The Mystery of the Addleton Curse'. Roberts (b. 1939) is a criminal lawyer who lives in the West Midlands but was born and raised in Hampshire. He is a criminal lawyer, although he has also worked as a journalist, computer programmer and lecturer, most recently lecturing on ghosts and unsolved mysteries. He is a tireless Sherlockian having developed his own chronology of the cases into which he has woven three novels to date, Sherlock Holmes and the Railway Maniac, Sherlock Holmes and the Devil's Grail and Sherlock Holmes and the Man from Hell.
