A.J. Raffles and (Of Course) Sherlock Holmes

On our trip to Sherlockian pilgrimage to England, which started Oct. 8, I took with us a fully loaded Kindle. The first book I read was Richard Foreman's Raffles: The Complete Innings, a pastiche of the Raffles stories written by Arthur Conan Doyle's brother-in-law, E.W. Hornung.

I'm not familiar enough with the original Amateur Cracksman stories to assess how they stack up as pastiches of Horning's writing style, but the five novelletes and one short story in this collection are good tales with several Sherlockian spins.

Holmes himself appears in the first story. The description of the great detective gives a hint at some of the good writing in these stories: "His nose was indeed hawk-like and protruded out to such an extent that I fancied Sherlock Holmes could have smelled tomorrow."

Elsewhere, Holmes is called "the Napoleon of Justice" -- a nice phrase, that.

Even in stories where Holmes does not appear as a character, there are echoes of him throughout in the dialogue, characters (Lestrade, Irene Adler), and in the plot lines, two of which recall "A Study in Scarlet."

So there is a lot here for Holmes fans. But it's also just fun to read. My favorite line is "The asp was kinder than the critics were when she played Cleopatra."