Jan 05 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press We once again enjoyed pleasant weather during the birthday festivities in New York (although some people heading east encountered a few problems when it snowed in the west). There was an ASH Wednesday supper at O'Casey's for dedicated enthusiasts, and the Christopher Morley Walk (led by Jim Cox) for more than a dozen Morley enthusiasts on Thursday morning (followed by lunch at McSorley's). The Baker Street Irregulars' Distinguished Speaker at the Williams Club on Thursday evening was Gahan Wilson, who told entertaining tales from his career as artist and writer, and about Hugh Hefner and Play- boy, and he happily signed Sherlockian souvenirs from as far back as 1959 (when Playboy published four pages of his artistic version of "some little- known misadventures of the great detective." More than 140 people were on hand for the William Gillette Luncheon on Fri- day at Moran's Chelsea Seafood Restaurant, where Paul Singleton and Elyse Locurto offered their version of an American (Sherlockian) in Paris. And in the afternoon Otto Penzler's open house at the Mysterious Bookshop pro- vided the usual opportunities to browse and buy. More than 170 Irregulars and guests gathered for the BSI's annual dinner at the Union League Club, where Peter Crupe delivered the cocktail-party toast to *the* Woman: Debbie Hall (who then went on to dine at the Algonquin with other ladies who have been *the* Woman). The agenda of the dinner included the usual toasts and traditions; revelations by Nicholas Meyer, David Stu- art Davies, and Steven Doyle; a warm welcome to honored guest Inga Swenson (who played Irene Adler in the musical "Baker Street" and was serenaded by Henry Boote with "Finding Words for Spring"); and a tribute to Old Irregu- lar Julian Wolff on the occasion of his centenary. Mike Whelan (the BSI's "Wiggins") announced the Birthday Honours: Irregular Shillings and Investitures to John Bergquist ("The King of Scandinavia"), Barbara Roden ("Beryl Stapleton"), Neil Gaiman ("The Devil's Foot"), Gian- luca Salvatori ("The Dacre Hotel"), Peter Calamai ("The *Leeds Mercury*"), and Art Renkwitz ("The Bar of Gold"). And Two-Shilling Awards ("for extra- ordinary devotion to the cause beyond the call of duty") were presented to Steve Rothman, Julie Rosenblatt, and Les Klinger. Mike also reported on the creation of The Baker Street Irregulars Trust has in its first year received more than $12,000 from 50 generous donors (the Trust will use the funds to support the BSI's archives at the Houghton Li- brary at Harvard University). There were 90 people at the Baskerville Bash at the Manhattan Club, enjoy- ing an evening of 1930s radio broadcasting by station WBBC, a station that was struggling to achieve financial stability and hoping to achieve a sig- nificant ratings boost special guest Basil Rathbone, who was to perform in "The Hound of the Baskervilles". Unfortunately, Rathbone never made it to the station, but station staff came up with substitute programming that in- cluded a courtroom drama "Hudson vs. Holmes" (with the plaintiff attempting to evict the defendant,) a version of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" from Beryl Stapleton's perspective, and the last-minute arrival of William Gill- ette (impersonated by Chuck Kovacic). Jan 05 #2 On Saturday morning the dealers room at the Algonquin was (as always) crowded with sellers and buyers, and at 12:30 The Cli- ents of Adrian Mulliner (devotees of the works of both Wodehouse and Wat- son) convened a Junior Bloodstain, which featured a reading of Anne Cott- on's dramatization "Sherlock Holmes and the Unsettling Smile" (there also was a "smile" contest won by Scott Monty, whose smile was described by one observer as unsettling and "truly ghastly"). The BSI's Saturday-afternoon cocktail party attracted more than 200 people to the National Arts Club, where Mary Ann Bradley introduced ladies who have been honored as the Woman over the years, and Al and Betsy Rosenblatt reported in verse on the events of the previous year and the previous even- ing. Costa Rossakis was the new winner of the Morley-Montgomery Award (an attractive certificate and a check for $500) for the best contribution to The Baker Street Journal last year: his article on "Thaddeus Sholto: (Mis)- Diagnosed"). And the Dr. John H. Watson Fund benefited from the raffle of Joseph Coppola's hand-crafted faux-Victorian tea caddy bath, and from en- thusiastic bidders in the traditional auction. The Watson Fund (administered by a carefully anonymous Dr. Watson) offers financial assistance to all Sherlockians (membership in the BSI is not re- quired) who might otherwise not be able to participate in the birthday fes- tivities. The generous donors to the auction were Joseph and Elaine Coppo- la and the Mycroft Holmes Society of Syracuse (a solid-cherry reproduction of a Victorian writing desk), Vincent Brosnan (a limited-edition print of one of Edward Bawden's lino-cut illustrations for the Folio Society's 1987 edition of "The Hound of the Baskervilles"), and Jerry and Chrys Kegley and The Curious Collectors of Baker Street (a set of handsome Canonical medals created by Maggie Schpak). On Sunday about 40 locals and visiting long-weekenders gathered at the Old Castle Pub & Restaurant for a brunch arranged by the Adventuresses of Sher- lock Holmes, and a bus-load of Sherlockians journeyed to Hadlyme for a pri- vate visit to Gillette Castle, where they were entertained by Susan Dahlin- nger (who talked about the castle and its owner), and made welcome by Will- iam Gillette (impersonated by Harold E. Niver). The Castle is open to the public from Memorial Day to Columbus Day, and well worth visiting; there's a web-site at . And the next birthday dinners in New York dinners will be held on Friday, Jan. 13, 2006. I've not reported on everything, I hasten to add; if you want more details than I've provided here, there will be much more in The Baker Street Jour- nal, which is published quarterly and costs $24.95 a year ($27.50 outside the U.S.), and checks (credit-card payments accepted from foreign subscrib- ers) should be sent to the BSJ (Box 465, Hanover, PA 17331); there's a new option for 2005, offering a subscription to the BSJ and the Christmas Annu- al for $34.95 (or $38.50 foreign). You can also subscribe at the BSJ web- site at , where there's additional interesting material, including issues of The Lamp-Post (the BSJ's occasional newslet- ter), some of the papers that have won Morley-Montgomery Awards for their authors, and news of various BSI publications. Jan 05 #3 Michael Reaves and John Pelan, the editors of SHADOWS OVER BAK- ER STREET (New York: Del Rey/Ballantine Books, 2003; 446 pp., $23.95), have assembled an anthology in which "Sherlock Holmes enters the dark, nightmare world of H. P. Lovecraft." And so he does, pursuing the NECRONOMICON and battling the Great Old Ones and various monsters; by far the best of the stories is by Neil Gaiman, and it has some fascinating sur- prises, none of which will be revealed here. Les Moskowitz has reported that Gerard Van der Leun's THE QUOTABLE SHERLOCK HOLMES, published by the Mysterious Press (Oct 00 #3) and now out of print, is available to the electronically enabled as a 217-page .pdf file at the web-site . MISSIVES FROM THE MIRE is a splendid demonstration of what can be done with modern technology: it's a CD-ROM with the "collected newsletters and other scribblings" over the 55-year history of Hugo's Companions of Chicago; Don- ald J. Terras assembled a nearly complete run of their meeting notices and newsletters, and prepared an annotated index, and the disk includes an up- to-date version of Adobe Acrobat, all for $27.50 postpaid (checks payable to Hugo's Companions, please) from Bill Sawisch (418 Gallahad Road, Boling- brook, IL 60440). The Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh will celebrate its 500th anni- versary this year, and there will be a series of exhibitions in Surgeon's Hall, including one on "Conan Doyle and the Real Sherlock Holmes" that will explore his connections with the college and his relationship with Dr. Jos- eph Bell. The college was an active bidder at Christie's last year, buying three lots, one of which included a poem that Conan Doyle wrote about the college. Ed. Lange's play "Sherlock's Secret Life" premiered at the N.Y. State Thea- tre Institute in 1997, and his new play "Sherlock's Legacy" is scheduled to open at the Schacht Fine Arts Center at Russell Sage College in Troy, N.Y., from Apr. 23 through May 7 (518-274-3256) . "Sherlock's Se- cret Life" at the Workshop Theatre in Calgary, on Feb. 4-12 (403-253-2002) , and at the Red Barn Theatre in Key West, Mar. 15 to Apr. 16 (866-870-9911) . Lange's web-site is at with information about both of the plays, and about the audiocassette of "Sherlock's Secret Life". The Norwegian Explorers' "Christmas Annual 2004" (devoted to "the architec- tural Holmes") features Derham Groves' long article ("Welcome to the Hotel Irregular") on what his architecture students came up with when challenged to design a hotel for the Baker Street Irregulars. His students are imagi- native indeed, and copies of the 62-page booklet are available from its ed- itor, John Bergquist (3665 Ashbury Road, Eagan, MN 55122); checks payable to The Norwegian Explorers, please). Reported: Lora Roberts' THE AFFAIR OF THE INCOGNITO TENANT: A MYSTERY WITH SHERLOCK HOLMES (Palo Alto: Perseverance Press/John Daniel & Co., 2004; 264 pp., $13.95); Charlotte Dodson, housekeeper at an estate in Sussex, discov- ers that her tenant, a Mr. Sigerson, is of significant assistance in solv- ing a mystery. Lora Roberts has a web-site at . Jan 05 #4 Britain's Royal Society will celebrate its 350th anniversary in 2010, and a story in The Guardian (Jan. 1) notes that the cele- bration is to include an exhibition of important items from the Society's archives, "ranging from a telescope built by Isaac Newton to a letter in defence of spiritualism by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle." Conan Doyle asked as- tronomer James Jeans to pay attention to spiritualism, saying that "Person- ally, I have studied this matter since 1887. I have experimented with more mediums than, probably, any living man." Richard Valley reports that the current issue of Scarlet Street (#52) in- cludes interviews with Patricia Morison (who appeared with Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce in "Dressed to Kill") and with Peggy Webber (who acted with Rathbone and Bruce in the Sherlock Holmes radio series); $7.95 ($10.95 out- side the U.S.) from Box 604, Glen Rock, NJ 07452 . "Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking" aired on BBC-1 on Dec. 26, and in Canada on the CBC on Dec. 29, to mixed reviews from Sherlockians who have commented on it. The closing credits noted it is a co-production of the BBC and WGBH; WGBH plans to air the program on "Masterpiece Theatre" on PBS-TV this fall. And Rupert Everett isn't the only Sherlock Holmes in the film: Guy Henry (Mr. Bilney) played Holmes in "Young Sherlock: The Mys- tery of the Manor House" (1982). Dayna McCausland has noted that this was a case in which the game truly was a foot. The December issue of the quarterly newsletter published by The Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collections at the University of Minnesota offers a re- port on Les Klinger's visit to the library, Julie McKuras' "100 Years Ago" discussion of the Parker Brothers "Sherlock Holmes" game, and Jon Lellen- berg's warm "50 Years Ago" tribute to Bliss Austin; you can request a copy from Richard J. Sveum, 111 Elmer L. Andersen Library, Univ. of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455 . "Who Shot Sherlock?" (the final title of the episode of "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" that aired on CBS-TV on Jan. 6) was an interesting show, and worth looking for as a repeat if you haven't seen it; the CSI team tries to determine how the man who played Sherlock Holmes in a Sherlock Holmes club was killed, and you may be surprised at some of the plot twists. Of course the broadcast was nicely timed for Sherlock Holmes' birthday, and I'm sure that many Sherlockians at the birthday festivities in New York are thankful that they had VCRs set to record at home. If you'd like to see Buster Keaton's "Sherlock, Jr." (1924) in a theater, the American Film Institute has scheduled a Keaton/Chaplin double feature at the AFI Silver in Silver Spring, Md., at 5:30 pm on Feb. 9. The Charlie Chaplin film is "The Circus" (1928), and there will be music accompanying both films (301-495-6721) . Bruce Holmes continues his pursuit of Sherlockian philately (and philatelic Sherlockiana), and his THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES: ILLUSTRATED WITH POSTAGE STAMPS offers the twelve stories represented by postage stamps and covers, and the selection is as usual appropriate and imaginative. The 23- page booklet costs US $29.50 (color)/$15.00 (black and white) postpaid, and Bruce's address is 3170 Joseph Howe Drive, Halifax, NS B3L 4G1, Canada. Jan 05 #5 Reported by Don Dillistone: WHODUNIT CRIME PUZZLES, by Hy Con- rad and Tatjana Mai Wyss (New York: Sterling Publishing, 2002; 96 pp., $6.95); Sherman Oliver Holmes is the great-great-grandson of Sher- lock Holmes, and poses 29 mystery puzzles for readers to solve (one of them being a sequel to "The Blue Carbuncle"). Some of the Sherman Oliver Holmes puzzles (but not the sequel to "The Blue Carbuncle") have been reprinted in MENSA WHODUNITS, by Bill Wise, Hy Conrad, and Bob Peterson (New York: Ster- ling Publishing, 2004; 286 pp., $4.98). Kelly Freas died on Jan. 2. He was an artist and an illustrator, and began his career painting buxom women on bombers during World War II. His first professional work was a cover for the Nov. 1950 issue of Weird Tales, and he went on to win 11 prestigious Hugo Awards from the World Science Fiction Society. He also worked for Mad magazine from 1957 to 1962, painting many portraits of Alfred E. "What Me Worry?" Neuman. Freas also illustrated the fine Sherlockian story "The Return", by H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire, in the Jan. 1954 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. Plan ahead: the Friends of the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection, the Bootmak- ers of Toronto, the Toronto Public Library, and the Arthur Conan Doyle So- ciety will sponsor "ACD at Thirty-Five" (celebrating the 35th anniversary of the collection) in Toronto on Oct. 20-22, 2006; if you'd like to be on the mailing list, write to ACD@35 (22 Markdale Avenue, Toronto, ON M6C 1T1, Canada) Al Gregory offers (e-mail only) his 2005 edition of "The ABC of the BSI" (an alphabetical listing of Investitures, with recipients, from "Abbey Grange" to "Young Stamford") and "The Florin Society" (couples in which both spouses have received Irregular Shillings). The BBC Radio 7 30-minute series "Cult" broadcast five new Sherlock Holmes stories on Jan. 17-21, read by Andrew Sachs and Hannah Gordon; you can lis- ten to the programs and read the scripts (along with an interview with Bert Coules) at . Two of the program were written by authors who have Sherlockian credentials: Paul Cornell, whose Doctor Who novel HAPPY ENDINGS included Holmes and Watson as characters (Feb 98 #5); and Kim Newman, whose ANNO DRACULA had many echoes from the Canon (Dec 92 #3). Newman, by the way, has a web-site at . Bernard Oudin's SHERLOCK HOLMES ET LA SUFFRAGETTE AMOUREUSE (2004; 144 pp., E18.00) is a collection of seven new pastiches, and it's only one of many interesting books available in French from Thierry Saint-Joanis' Editions Mycroft's Brother (2 impasse de la Serre - Saint Julien, 63320 Montaigut-le-Blanc, France) . "Watson's Tin Box Sponsors Essay Contest for Pupils" was the headline on a story in the Baltimore Sun (Jan. 4) about the society's campaign to explain to seventh-grade students why Sherlock Holmes is so interesting. Members of the society will present programs at local libraries, and they will dis- tribute a booklet they've prepared about "The Speckled Band" (the subject of the essay content), and then select the winners, who will be announced in April; the contest is co-sponsored by Barnes & Noble. If you'd like to see the booklet, go to . Jan 05 #6 Les Klinger reports that Universal plans to release the first season of "Murder, She Wrote" on DVD (three discs) on Mar. 29 ($49.98); the set includes the 1984 two-hour pilot "The Murder of Sherlock Holmes"), in which Brian Keith starred in the pilot as Capt. Caleb McCall- um, who attends a costume party dressed as Holmes, and may or may not have been the intended victim of a murderer. Jessica Fletcher (played by Angela Lansbury) solves the mystery, needless to say. Al Rosenblatt has kindly forwarded Michael Peel's review in the Times Lit- erary Supplement (Sept. 3, 2004) of Samantha Weinberg's POINTING FROM THE GRAVE, Cyril Wecht's MORTAL EVIDENCE, and N. E. Genge's THE FORENSIC CASE- BOOK; "The three books have little in common stylistically," Peel reports, "but all cite Sherlock Holmes' famous dictum that once the impossible has been ruled out, whatever remains - however improbably - must be true." Guy Davenport died on Jan. 4. He won a MacAr- thur Foundation "genius grant" for his essays and short fiction, and he was a distinguished teacher and artist, illustrating Hugh Kenner's THE COUNTERFEITERS (1968). The National Review obituary (Jan. 31) for Kenner noted, "Sherlock Holmes and Karl Marx in the same picture? Why not." Trevor S. Raymond reports that "Rawhide 2" (a phonograph record released by Folkways Records in 1957) with a dramatization of "The Case of the Speckled Band" by the Canadian humorist Max Ferguson is available from the Smithsonian In- stitution (they have purchased Folkways) on one CD ($17.99) or cassette ($9.95). Catalog num- ber 03872 (888-365-5939) . And that's only one of the interesting items in the winter issue of Canadian Holmes, which is published by The Bootmakers of Toronto and available by subscription (US$20.00) or included in member- ship (US$25.00); the business manager is D. Thorpe, 5 Brownlee Avenue, Tor- onto, ON M9P 2R5, Canada. Further to earlier reports (Sep 04 #4) on plans for an ITV television ser- ies starring Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie as Holmes and Watson, Jim Ballin- ger reports that Fry announced at the annual dinner of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London this month that he has realized that he doesn't resemble Holmes ("there's no description in the Canon of Holmes looking like 'a bin liner full of yoghurt'), and that the project has been scrapped. A new edition of A STUDY IN SCARLET, with the original text from Beeton's Christmas Annual and more than 600 striking illustrations by Danish artist Nis Jessen, will be published this spring by Hakon Holm (Borgmester Niel- sens Vej 24, DK-3700 Roenne, Bornholm, Denmark . There will be three versions: standard (E60.00), deluxe (E70.00), and signed and numbered in a slip-case (E78.00), and two posters will be available; there is more information (and lots of artwork) at the publisher's web-site, and you can see more of Jessen's work at . Jan 05 #7 David Grann's article about Richard Lancelyn Green in The New Yorker's Dec. 13 issue ("A Reporter at Large: Mysterious Cir- cumstances") generated renewed press speculation in Britain about Richard's death, and an excellent letter of comment from Glen Miranker in the Jan. 17 issue of the magazine. That issue also has an article by Margaret Talbot ("The Auteur of Anime") about Hayao Miyazaki, the highly-acclaimed director of Japanese animation; Sherlockians have seen his work in some of the epi- sodes in the 1983 series "Meitantei Holmes" (available here as "The Adven- tures of Sherlock Hound"). The film "Finding Neverland" (Nov 04 #5) received seven nominations for an Oscar: best picture, best actor in a leading role (Johnny Depp), art direc- tion, costume design, film editing, writing (adapted screenplay), and music (score). The Confederates of Wisteria Lodge and The Nashville Scholars of the Three Pipe Problem are planning an informal "Gathering of Southern Sherlockians" on Apr. 16 at the Sheraton Read House in Chattanooga, Tenn.; additional in- formation is available from Kent Ross (6875 Fielder Court, Rex, GA 30273) . The steam launch Aurora's successor, the P&O superliner Aurora, continues to afflict its passengers: some months ago (Dec 03 #1) more than 500 pass- engers suffered from a highly contagious virus, and now a 103-night "Grand Voyage" to 40 ports in 23 countries has been cancelled. According to a re- port in the Daily Telegraph (Jan. 21), kindly forwarded by John Baesch, the passengers spent the first 11 days of their cruise in and near Southampton while the line struggled to repair the ship's propulsion system. The cost to the company will be L22 million, but David Dingle, managing director of P&O Cruises, said there is no need to rename the ship (at its naming cere- mony, conducted by the Princess Royal, the champagne bottle didn't smash, traditionally a bad omen). JAPAN AND SHERLOCK HOLMES, edited and translated by Yuichi Hirayama, Masa- michi Higurashi, and Hirotaka Ueda (New York: The Baker Street Irregulars, 2004; 190 pp., $39.95), is the first volume in the BSI's International Ser- ies, which is intended to make available in English some of the fine Sher- lockian scholarship published in other languages. And the Japanese have a long history of enthusiasm for Sherlock Holmes: the first translation of a Sherlock Holmes story was published in 1894, a Japanese journalist inter- viewed Conan Doyle in 1910 (the interview is in the book), the first Sher- lockian society in Japan was founded in 1948, and since then members of the Japan Sherlock Holmes Club and other societies have continued to enjoy the world of Sherlock Holmes; the best of their essays, poems, and artwork will be found in JAPAN AND SHERLOCK HOLMES. $43.90 postpaid ($44.90 outside the U.S.) from The Baker Street Journal, 1836 Columbia Road #2, South Boston, MA 02127. Les Klinger has been getting a lot of publicity for THE NEW ANNOTATED SHER- LOCK HOLMES, in reviews and interviews, in print and on radio, and in vari- ous languages (thanks to the Voice of America, which broadcast an interview with Les and Dan Stashower and me last month; you can listen to us at their web-site at . Jan 05 #8 The January 2005 issue of Geotimes is their "forensic geology" theme issue, with Raymond C. Murray's feature article on "Coll- ecting Crime Evidence from Earth", Sarah Andrews' report on "A Visit to the FBI Lab", and articles by Megan Sever on "Murder and Mud in the Shenandoah" and David Abbott on "Investigating Mining Frauds". Published by the Ameri- can Geological Institute, 4220 King Street, Alexandria, VA 22302 ($3.95); Murray's article and Megan Sever's story on "Becoming a Forensic Geologist" are available at the magazine's web-site . "Forensic ge- ology," Murray notes, "began with the writings of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle." A BLUE CARBUNCLE is the latest in the "monograph series" of The Occupants of the Empty House: Janet Bensley has edited an interesting collection of papers about the gem, and the story, and the 32-page pamphlets costs $12.00 postpaid (checks payable to The Occupants of the Empty House, please) from Stan Tinsley (Box 21, Zeigler, IL 62999). Gasogene Press has three new titles available, one of them the seventh vol- ume of Leslie S. Klinger's SHERLOCK HOLMES REFERENCE LIBRARY: THE VALLEY OF FEAR, with a fine introduction by Julia Carlson Rosenblatt, whose insights on the story and its setting are as helpful to the reader as they were to those who participated in last year's excursion into the Valley; the anno- tations and appendices are as usual based on old and new Sherlockian schol- arship (2005; 143 pp., $19.95); $22.70 postpaid ($23.70 outside the U.S.) from the publisher. SERPENTINE MUSE-INGS, VOLUME TWO, edited by Susan Z. Diamond and Marilynne McKay, is the second anthology of scholarship, speculation, and toasts from archives of The Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes and their journal The Ser- pentine Muse (2005; 229 pp., $22.95); $25.70 postpaid ($26.70 outside the U.S.) from the publisher. A DISTINCT TOUCH, WATSON: BEING THE FINAL ANNALS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, by Da- vid L. Hammer, offers 13 new stories in his series of Sherlockian pastiches (the series now runs to four volumes, and his readers will grumble a bit at that "final" in the subtitle, but David reports that he had decided that it is time, in appropriately lawyerly language, to cease and desist (2003; 131 pp., $13.95); $16.70 postpaid ($17.70 outside the U.S.) from the publisher: Gasogene Press, Box 68308, Indianapolis, IN 46268. Beaten's Christmas Annual has been published for 22 years by The Sound of the Baskervilles (the Sherlockian society in Seattle), and the latest issue offers "essays, puzzles, commentary, artwork and more" by its members; the 40-page booklet is available from David Haugen, 3605 Harborcrest Court NW, Gig Harbor, WA 98332; $10.00 postpaid. Andy Fusco has kindly supplied copies for everyone of his seasonal souvenir for the birthday festivities: a pocket calendar for 1898, which also works for 2005. And this is a collectible, since it's the first printing, which Andy deemed unsuitable for distribution in New York, where people received copies of the second printing. The Spermaceti Press: Peter E. Blau, 7103 Endicott Court, Bethesda, MD 20817-4401 (301-229-5669) Feb 05 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press I neglected the annual commercials last month: the 16-page list of the In- vestitured Irregulars, the Two-Shilling Awards, the Women, and the Adven- turesses of Sherlock Holmes costs $1.25 postpaid. The 81-page list of 831 Sherlockian societies, with names and addresses for contacts for 427 active societies, is $4.70 post-paid. A run of address labels for 349 individual contacts (recommended to avoid duplicate mailings to those who are contacts for more than one society) costs $10.55 postpaid (checks payable to Peter E. Blau, please). The list of Irregulars and others also is available from me by e-mail (no charge), and all of the lists are available at Willis G. Frick's "Sherlock- tron" home page at . Charles J. Blinderman's THE PILTDOWN INQUEST (1986) was an excellent exami- nation of the Piltdown hoax and the various suspects (there's a chapter on Conan Doyle), and Blinderman and David Joyce have an excellent web-site de- voted to "The Piltdown Plot" at . Blinderman's book also is available (a very nice aspect of the Internet as a resource) at ; if you want to go directly to the chapter on Conan Doyle, which is a pas- tiche (Apr 87 #2) just substitute "11" for "1". Rosemary Clark died on Jan. 6. She was the widow of Edward F. Clark (they met at the Pentagon, Jon Lellenberg notes, where they were Ultra handlers in 1944), and she was honored by The Baker Street Irregulars as *the* woman in 1976. Sorry about that: my review omitted the price, so here's a revised repeat: The Norwegian Explorers' "Christmas Annual 2004" (devoted to "the architec- tural Holmes") features Derham Groves' long article ("Welcome to the Hotel Irregular") on what his architecture students came up with when challenged to design a hotel for the Baker Street Irregulars. His students are imagi- native indeed, and copies of the 62-page pamphlet are available from editor John Bergquist (3665 Ashbury Road, Eagan, MN 55122); $10.00 postpaid (with checks payable to The Norwegian Explorers, please). Details are now available for the annual STUD-Watsonian Weekend On Apr. 29- May 1 in and near Chicago; there will be a dinner (with Henry Zecher speak- ing on William Gillette), a running of The Silver Blaze at Hawthorne Race Course, and a Fortescue Honours brunch. Contact Susan Diamond, 16W603 3rd Avenue, Bensenville, IL 60106 . "We could put up a very fair team in the field, and were runners-up for the County Cup the last season that I played," Conan Doyle wrote, remembering his playing association football in Portsmouth, adding that "I was always too slow, however, to be a really good back, though I was a long and safe kick." Kevin Smith's SHERLOCK HOLMES WAS A POMPEY KEEPER: THE EXTRAORDI- NARY STORY OF THE ORIGINAL POMPEY AFC AND THE WORLD'S MOST FAMOUS DETECTIVE (Tiverton: Halsgrove, 2004; 152 pp., L19.95) is a detailed history of the team on which Conan Doyle played, first listed as A. C. Smith and then by his own name, and the team's success continued after Conan Doyle departed. Feb 05 #2 Philip Johnson died on Jan. 25. He was a renowned architect, and with his partner John Burgee designed four buildings in San Francisco, the most controversial of which was the Nieman Marcus department store on Union Square. According to John King's tribute in the San Fran- cisco Chronicle on Jan. 27 (forwarded by Scott Monty), Piero Patri, a local architect who worked with Johnson, recalled a planning commission hearing where speaker after speaker denounced the project. "Emotions ran high--ex- cept at the end of the front row of the audience, where Johnson sat reading a paperback Sherlock Holmes novel." It has been more than 15 years since Mysteriously Yours (a mystery dinner- theater company in Toronto) performed their first Sherlock Holmes play, and their new play "CSI: Baker Street" opened last month, and will run at least through July. The theater's address is 2026 Yonge Street, Toronto, ON M4S 1Z9, Canada (416-486-7469) (800-668-3323) . "Elementary School, My Dear Watson" was the headline on a Reuters dispatch from Moscow: Russia's police force has adopted Moscow school 1862 for chil- dren aged 6 to 17 and created a "detectives' section" as part of a campaign to clean up its reputation for incompetence and corruption. "Future Sher- lock Holmes's will be able to learn the basics of the detective's trade," First Deputy Interior Minister Alexander Chekalin said (quoted by the Itar- Tass news agency on Jan. 28). Filming on "The Strange Case of Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle" is now underway in Glasgow; the film (Nov 04 #5) was written by David Pirie, who suggests that some aspects of Holmes were based on Conan Doyle's alco- holic father. Douglas Henshall stars as Conan Doyle, and Brian Cox as Dr. Joseph Bell. No one reported the story in the N.Y. Times when it ran on Sept. 7, but it was reprinted in the San Diego Union-Tribune on Sept. 15, and noted in The Passengers' Log (Oct. 8), and although New York to San Diego to Sydney to Washington is quite a trek, it all started in Belize, eight miles east of the border with Guatemala, where a party of mycologists was searching for fungi on a ridge called Doyle's Delight, named for its resemblance to the prehistoric setting of "The Lost World". And they found some, of course, including a brilliant yellow-capped mushroom that may be new to science and might wind up named *Hygrocybe doyles delightiorium*. Karen Murdock spotted a story at about a chain of Sherlockian pubs and grills, all in Texas, in Addison, Arlington, Houston, and San Antonio, with future sites in Austin and Fort Worth; there's a web- site at . Kinky Friedman announced this month that he will run for governor of Texas in 2006, calling himself Texas' first independent candidate since Sam Hous- ton in 1859. Friedman often has Sherlockian allusions in his mystery nov- els, but said he wouldn't be writing any mysteries from the governor's man- sion. According to a story in the Kerrville Daily Times (Feb. 4), Friedman explained that "The Kinkster gets killed off in my newest book, TEN LITTLE NEW YORKERS, sort of like Sherlock Holmes at Reichenbach Falls." Friedman has a web-site at . Feb 05 #3 U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan received an honor- ary degree from the University of Edinburgh this month, and in his acceptance speech he paid tribute to Sherlock Holmes: "As an economic detective of sorts," Greenspan said, "I find kinship in the words written by this university's world-renowned alumnus, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whose Sherlock Holmes--while speaking of the art of detection--unknowingly un- locked the well-kept secrets of monetary policy-making. 'We balance proba- bilities,' he said, 'and choose the most likely. It is the scientific use of the imagination.' He sounds like a stock portfolio manager of one of Edinburgh's premium investment houses. What is true for detectives and fi- nancial risk managers is true for monetary policy-makers, and is, I am cer- tain, also true for the young minds taking shape here on these grounds." Bank of England governor Mervyn King also received an honorary degree from the University of Edinburgh. And Simon Pia reported in The Scotsman (Feb. 8) that King explained that "my predecessor said there were three kinds of economists: (1) Those who can count. (2) Those who can't." Further to my review of SHADOWS OVER BAKER STREET (Jan 05 #3), Chris Roden notes that Neil Gaiman won a Hugo Award (best short story) for his contri- bution to the anthology ("A Study in Emerald") at the World Science Fiction Convention in Boston last year. And it was well-deserved. Francis A. Young died on Jan. 17. He was described by more than one friend as a walking encyclopedia, and one of his earliest published works was his article "On the Identification of Cardinal Tosca" in the June 1964 issue of The Baker Street Journal BSJ (June 1964). Frank's books include ART OF THE FOOTNOTE: THE INTELLIGENT STUDENT'S GUIDE TO THE ART AND SCIENCE OF ANNO- TATING TEXTS (1996) and PASSING THE KEYS: MODERN CARDINALS, CONCLAVES, AND THE ELECTION OF THE NEXT POPE (1999), and we are in his debt for the CD-ROM "The Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle" issued by Insight Engineering (1997). The first issue of The Master's Trestleboard, the electronic newsletter ed- ited by Ron Fish for The Master's Masons, is available at their web-site at . The 24th annual Sherlock Holmes/Arthur Conan Doyle Symposium will be held in Dayton on Mar. 11-13, at the Holiday Inn Fairborn; additional details are available from Cathy Gill (4661 Hamilton Avenue, Cincinnati, OH 45223) (513-681-5507) . "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: The Real Sherlock Holmes" is a 57-minute document- ary issued in 2004 by Delta Entertainment Corp. on DVD ($6.99 at Amazon), with interesting footage of Conan Doyle locations from Edinburgh to Windle- sham, and (as a "special feature") the 29-minute Nigel Bruce/Tom Conway ra- dio broadcast of "The Devil's Foot" (1947). Gayle T. Harris reports a new and interesting archive for researchers: the [Edinburgh] Scotsman offers on-line access to its articles published from 1817 to 1920. Searches are free at , and there are 646 hits for "conan doyle" and 204 hits for "sherlock holmes", but you need to pay for access to the articles: L7.95 for one day, L12.95 for two days, or L19.95 for one week. Feb 05 #4 Further to the report (Dec 04 #4) on a Japanese translation of Rodger Garrick-Steele's THE HOUSE OF THE BASKERVILLES, Cliff Goldfarb has noted that the book is available in English, published by the print-on-demand company 1st Books; $24.00 (paperback) or $6.95 (electron- ic). The company's address is AuthorHouse, 1663 Liberty Drive #200, Bloom- ington, IN 47403 (888-519-5121) . Garrick-Steele received considerable publicity in 2000, when he accused Sir Arthur Conan Doyle of murdering Bertram Fletcher Robinson (with the assist- ance of Fletcher Robinson's wife Gladys) to avoid exposure as having plagi- arized THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES from a book written by Fletcher Robin- son, and far less publicity in 2001 when he accused Conan Doyle of murder- ing Charles Dawson, who knew Conan Doyle to be the perpetrator of the Pilt- down hoax. According to a story in Torquay Herald Express (Nov. 2, 2001), Garrick-Steele challenged Sherlockians: "If this is true, they are covering for a serial murderer; if they don't know this then they are fools indeed." There's nothing about Dawson in THE HOUSE OF THE BASKERVILLES, which offers details on Garrick-Steele's life and career, and lengthy (and undocumented) quotes from members of Fletcher Robinson's family, and their servants and friends, and an end-note on Garrick-Steele's plans to publish Fletcher Rob- inson's AN ADVENTURE ON DARTMOOR, the manuscript upon which Conan Doyle al- legedly based THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES. Rodger isn't the only Garrick-Steele around, according to Yahoo. "Katelin Ashford was a bit hotheaded, but hardly wicked enough to be exiled from her beloved London to the wilds of the Caribbean just to avoid a scandal! But her trip across the Atlantic turned out to be fraught with peril and pass- ion when a storm buffeted her ship, and cast her onto the deck and into the arms of an infamous privateer. Yet virile Garrick Steele was no stranger; he was the very man who'd ruined her reputation back home!" From the blurb for Kathleen Drymon's PIRATE MOON (1993). Basil Hoskins died on Jan. 17. His career as a character actor lasted for almost 50 years, in both classics and comedy, and he played Mr. Henderson in Granada's "Wisteria Lodge" (1988). It's unlikely that there's anything Sherlockian about the new film "Inside Deep Throat" (it's a documentary about the 1972 porno film "Deep Throat"), but there's a connection: Harry Reems, who starred in the film (and is now a real-estate salesman in Utah), went on to make "Sherlick Holmes" (1975), which for many years was the only porno Sherlock Holmes film available on videocassette. The Mystery Writers of America have announced their nominations for Edgar awards, including Les Klinger (best critical-biographical) for THE NEW AN- NOTATED SHERLOCK HOLMES, and Gary Lovisi (best short story) for "The Adven- ture of the Missing Detective" (in SHERLOCK HOLMES: THE HIDDEN YEARS). The winners will be announced at the MWA awards dinner on Apr. 28. THE NEW AN- NOTATED SHERLOCK HOLMES has also been nominated for an Agatha award (best non-fiction) from Malice Domestic, and Jack French's PRIVATE EYELASHES: RA- DIO'S LADY DETECTIVES has been nominated in the same category; the winners will be announced at Malice's awards banquet on Apr. 30. Feb 05 #5 Bruce Cassiday died on Jan. 12. "He was a writer with as many talents as pseudonyms," according to Jack Adrian's obituary in The Independent (Feb. 11), and one of those talents was his wide knowledge of literature: Cassiday edited ROOTS OF DETECTION: THE ART OF DEDUCTION BE- FORE SHERLOCK HOLMES (1983), and collaborated with Waltraud Woeller on THE LITERATURE OF CRIME AND DETECTION: AN ILLUSTRATION HISTORY FROM ANTIQUITY TO THE PRESENT (1988). Teddy Hayes' "The Baskerville Beast: The Musical" will have its world prem- iere at the Questors Theatre on Mar. 22-26 (12 Mattock Lane, Ealing W5 5BQ, England) (0208-237-1111) . And there's some nice artwork at the web-site. Bob Levinson is the author of ASK A DEAD MAN, and has his own web-site at , and he recently contributed to a thread on the Dorothy-L electronic mailing list about typos that manage to pass undetec- ted from ms. to printed page, noted that "My new work A STUDY IN SCARLETT O'HARA (in which Watson wonders why Holmes has done nothing about the holes in his socks, and Holmes reveals, 'I don't give a darn') will contain 60 intentional errors of fact. Readers will be invited to find these 55 err- ors of fact before Holmes does. Prizes will be awarded, although I'm not yet sure what they'll be. I'll think about it tomorrow." Ken Lanza spotted a Sherlock Holmes in Nortonville, Ky.: an on-line newspa- per noted on Feb. 9 that "February is a good month for birthdays in Nortonville . . . Dwight Holmes, son of City Councilman Sherlock Holmes and Doris Holmes, has a birthday Feb. 11." The councilman, when he ran for election in 1998, was billed as Andrew "Sherlock" Holmes." For the completists: THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES in a Treasury of Il- lustrated Classics edition adapted by Kathy Wilmore and illustrated by Ned Butterfield (New York: Modern Publishing, 2000; 189 pp., $1.99 on some dis- count tables, or $2.99 at their web-site ); five stories simplified for young readers. Further to the item on the National Library of Scotland's plans to acquire the John Murray archives (Mar 04 #3), the Library won a L17.7 million grant from the national lottery and has purchased the archives for L31.2 million. The archives include the company's correspondence with its authors, one of whom was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. "Sherlock Holmes and the Sea Grove Covenant" is this year's mystery, to be solved during Sherlock Holmes Weekends in Cape May, N.J., on Mar. 4-6 and Nov. 4-6. The weekends also feature staged readings of William Gillette's "Sherlock Holmes" by the East Lynne Theater Company, and additional details are available from the Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts, Box 340, Cape May, NJ 08204 (800-275-4278) . The famous/infamous "tent joke" was unveiled to The Hounds of the Internet in July 1998, and seems to have appeared in print first in the Reader's Di- gest (Nov. 1998), and it was published here somewhat later (Dec 01 #6), and it came in second in voting for the world's funniest joke (Oct 02 #1); it's still being told, for example in John Lescroart's THE SECOND CHAIR (2004). Feb 05 #6 The magician Ricky Jay is interested in all sorts of trickery, as you can see at his web-site , where you'll find his weekly "Jay's Journal" as broadcast by KCRW-FM (Los Angeles). On Apr. 17, 2003, Jay talked about "the American Sherlock Holmes" (Clifton R. Wooldridge, who described himself with that title in a series of booklets published early in the 20th century. Otto Plaschkes died on Feb. 14. He began his film career as assistant dir- ector on "Exodus" (1960), and went on to produce "Georgy Girl" (1966) and many other films, including the Ian Richardson television films "The Hound of the Baskervilles" and "The Sign of Four" (1983). Reported: Catherine Wynne's THE COLONIAL CONAN DOYLE: BRITISH IMPERIALISM, IRISH NATIONALISM AND THE GOTHIC (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2003; 224 pp., $75.00); an academic examination of the many Irish aspects, allusions, and echoes in Conan Doyle's writings. Sherlock Holmes died on Feb. 15, Bill Barnes reports. That's the Sherlock Holmes who lived in Newcastle, Australia. Ten years ago (Aug 94 #7) he at- tended the national meeting of the Sherlockian societies in Australia, and Michael J. Farrell reported that Mr. Holmes was born in Holmesville, with a Dr. Watson presiding over the birth (and it was the suggestion of the nurse that the child be called Sherlock). Ken Lanza spotted a report in the Desert-Mountain Times about the opening of the Sherlock Holmes Outpost restaurant and club in Alpine, Texas. Visi- tors can enjoy Mrs. Hudson's Dining Room and Dr. Watson's Pub, and will be invited to become members of Dr. Watson's Club. Michael Ross (Baskerville Bucher, Postfach 42 06 70, 50900 Koln, Germany) reports that German publishers continue to offer Sher- lockian books: Stefan Winges, author of DER VIERTE KONIG (2004) has a new pastiche TOD AUF DEM RHEIN (Emons Verlag, 2004) visit Egypt and Cologne and are involved with the parents of Indiana Jones, and Friedrich Gerhard Kimm- ek's SHERLOCK HOLMES UND DIE WAHRE GESCHICHTE VOM GESPRENKELTEN BAND (vmd, 2004) tells the "true story" of "The Speckled Band"; both books (and many others) are available from Michael. And Jeremy Paul's "The Secret of Sher- lock Holmes" (performed by Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke in 1988) has been translated into German, and performed in Idar-Oberstein in January. "Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking" aired on BBC-1 on Dec. 26, and in Canada on the CBC on Dec. 29 (Jan 05 #4), and it is scheduled on PBS-TV this fall. It will be released on DVD (region 2) on Mar. 21 (L10.99 at , according to publicity at hand from Ben Wood. In 1959 postcards from Edgar W. Smith advertised "The Oscar Meunier Bust of Sherlock Holmes" reproduced (without the bullet hole) in matte porcelain by the noted sculptor E. Pichard (actually Edgar's son, Edgar Pichard Smith). Only 25 numbered replicas were made, according to the postal card. In the Mar. 1962 issue of The Baker Street Journal there was an offer from Edgar P. Smith of a "new casting" with 25 numbered replicas. I would appreciate hearing from those who have copies of the bust accompanied by documentation as to whether they are from 1959 or 1962. Feb 05 #7 An exhibition on "Tutankhamen and the Golden Age of the Phar- aohs" is on tour, with more than twice as many artifacts from his tomb than were in the exhibition in the 1970s; it has been on display in Bonn and is now in Basel, and it will open in Los Angeles on June 16 and will then move to Fort Lauderdale and Chicago. Newspaper stories about the exhibition note that tales about mummies that come to life were popular in the 19th century, and often cite Bram Stoker's JEWEL OF SEVEN STARS (1903), but Conan Doyle was earlier, with "The Ring of Thoth" (Jan. 1890) and "Lot No. 249" (Sept. 1892). Guillermo Cabrera Infante died on Feb. 21. He was a Cuban novelist, essay- ist, supporter of Fidel Castro's revolution, and for the last forty years critic of Castro's government. His HOLY SMOKE (1985) is a fascinating, ex- pert, and humorous discussion of the history of cigars (and cigarettes and pipes) with occasional references to the Canon. Ronald Reagan has been honored by the U.S. Postal Service. He wrote to O. Dallas Baillio (director of the public library in Mobile, Ala.) in 1977, describing his debt to public libraries and the books he read as a young boy in Dixon, Ill.: "Then came the Zane Grey phase, Horatio Alger and Sherlock Holmes, and, of course, Mark Twain with Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn." And in 1992 the Reagans dined at The Sherlock Holmes in Northumber- land Street and were greeted by Holmes and Watson (costumed ac- tors Stewart Quentin Holmes and John Barrett-Watson); you can read about that in the Sherlock Holmes Gazette (spring 1993). Jack L. Chalker died on Feb. 18. He was 13 years old when he attended his first science-fiction meeting, and a year later won a Hugo Award nomination for his literary magazine Mirage; he went on to write more than 60 science- fiction and fantasy novels, and founded his own publishing company the Mir- age Press. And he reported on Scrooge McDuck's Sherlockian connections in AN INFORMAL BIOGRAPHY OF SCROOGE MCDUCK, published by Mirage Press in 1974. I noted (Jul 02 #2) that Derek Waring has played both Conan Doyle and Wat- son; can you name two other actors who have played both roles? W. W. Norton has announced a second printing of Les Klinger's THE NEW ANNO- TATED SHERLOCK HOLMES, due in bookstores in late spring, with corrections of errors in the first printing; the first print run was 30,000 copies, and the second print run will be 20,000 copies. And this fall (on Sept. 1) the retail price for the two volumes will increase to $90.00. I've mentioned the Friends of Freddy before, and Walter R. Brooks' delight- ful series of books about Freddy the Pig, and FREDDY THE DETECTIVE (Sep 02 #4); Sandra Fenichel Asher adapted that novel as "Freddy, the King of De- tectives" for the Open Eye Theatre in Margaretville, N.Y., last summer, and her web-site has a photo of Freddy in the play. There's lots of information about the society at their web-site , and the winter 2005 issue of the Bean Home Newsletter has Jack Bromiley's "Comparing Freddy the Detective with Sher- lock Holmes" (illustrated by the author); $15.00 for a two-year membership/ subscription (Box 912, Greenbelt, MD 20768). Feb 05 #8 Issue #64 of SHERLOCK offers Barbara Roisman Cooper's fine in- terview with Inga Swenson (with amusing stories about the musi- cal "Baker Street"); Roger Johnson's discussion of the influence of Robert Louis Stevenson on Conan Doyle and other mystery writers; and as usual much more, Sherlockian and non-S'ian. SHERLOCK is published six times a year, and costs L23.70 (to the U.K.)/L26.00 continent)/$45.00 (elsewhere) from Atlas Publishing, Jordan House, Old Milton Green, New Milton, Hants. BH24 6QJ, England . Classic Specialties is their Ameri- can agent (Box 19058, Cincinnati, OH 45219) (877- 233-3823); credit-card orders are welcome at both addresses, and back iss- ues are available. The two other actors who have played both Conan Doyle and Watson are Edward Hardwick (Conan Doyle in the film "Photographing Fairies" and Watson in the Granada series) and Ian Hart (Conan Doyle in "Finding Neverland" and Watson in two recent BBC-1 television films). The film "Finding Neverland" (2004), with Ian Hart as Conan Doyle (and with Johnny Depp as James M. Barrie) will be released on VHS and DVD ($29.99) in March ($29.99). The film received seven nominations for an Oscar, and won one: best achievement in music written for motion pictures, original score. Natsume Soseki has been described as Japan's most revered author (from 1984 to 2004 his portrait was on Japan's 1000-yen note); he lived in London from 1900 to 1902, and THE TOWER OF LONDON (London: Peter Owen, 2005; 240 pp., L14.95) collects English translations of his essays about his visit, along with Yamada Futaro's "The Yellow Lodger" ["Kiiro Geshukunin"], a pastiche first published in Hoseki magazine (Dec. 1953) and reprinted in many antho-logies. This is the first translation of "The Yellow Lodger", which is a pastiche in which Soseki meets Sherlock Holmes. Soseki did not enjoy his stay in London, and with good reason; translator Damian Flanagan also has contributed an excellent introduction to the book, and explanatory notes on the essays and the pastiche. Google is testing a new "print" feature that allows you to read books. Go to and search for "books about donan coyle" [and yes, you need to spell the names incorrectly] and you'll find an academic discussion of interest to those who wonder about "playing the game." The Sherlock Holmes Society of London has learned that copies of the winter issue of The Sherlock Holmes Journal mailed to overseas subscribers seem to have gone missing; the Society hopes that the missing issues will turn up in up in March, and would greatly appreciate subscribers sending the wrap- pers to Catherine Cooke, Flat 15, Copperfield Court, 146 Worple Road, Wim- bledon, London SW20 8QA, England. Ken Lanza spotted the report in the Washington Times (Feb. 19) about "pod- casting" (a term derived from Apple's iPod); you can do your own radio show over the Internet. At you can listen to Tim Al- drich read "A Study in Scarlet" and "The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes". The Spermaceti Press: Peter E. Blau, 7103 Endicott Court, Bethesda, MD 20817-4401 (301-229-5669) Mar 05 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press I mentioned MURDERLAND: A COMPANION VOLUME TO THE BAKER STREET IRREGULARS' EXPEDITION TO THE VALLEY OF FEAR earlier (Oct 04 #6); it was available in the dealers' room at the Hotel Algonquin in January. Edited by Steven T. Doyle, it's much more than an excursion book, offering 168 pages of Sher- lockian scholarship, with five pages of Conan Doyle's notes for the story, reproduced in facsimile and published for the first time. $19.95 ($23.90 postpaid to the U.S., $24.90 elsewhere); checks (payable to the BSI) can be sent to The Baker Street Journal, Box 465 Hanover, PA 17331, or you can or- der with credit cards at . Reported: Sid Fleischman's THE GIANT RAT OF SUMATRA, OR PIRATES GALORE (New York: Greenwillow, 2005; 208 pp., $16.89); for young readers, set in 1846, and the giant rat is a pirate-ship figurehead ("villains spring forth, and amazements abound"). Charles Marowitz's play "Sherlock's Last Case" is scheduled for production at the Drury Lane Theatre in Oakbrook Terrace from July 29 to Oct. 2; 100 Drury Lane, Oakbrook Terrace, IL 60181 . Peter Crupe spotted THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (New York: Sterling Publishing Co., 2005; 151 pp., $4.95) in a new series of "Classic Starts" at Barnes & Noble; it has six stories "retold from the Arthur Conan Doyle original" by Chris Sasaki, and illustrations by Lucy Corvino. Conan Doyle's tour of the United States in 1894 included a visit to Vermont to see Rudyard Kipling. "I had brought up my golf-clubs and gave him less- ons in a field," Conan Doyle recalled in his autobiography, "while the New England rustics watched us from afar, wondering what on earth we were at, for golf was unknown in America at that time." Actually, golf was known in America at that time; there was a crude three-hole course in use in Yonkers in 1888. And there's a bit more about Rudyard Kipling and golf: a story by E. Michael Johnson in Golf World (Feb. 18), at hand from Andrew Blau, notes that Kipling "invented what many believe to be the first colored golf ball when he slapped a coat of red paint on a white ball in order to make it ea- sier to find while playing golf in the snow." Darlene Cypser, who had two articles published in The Baker Street Journal in 1985 and 1988, now has a small distribution company and offers help to authors who don't have access to Amazon and other wider markets. Bifrost Distribution, Box 753, Littleton, CO 80160 . Luke Steven Fullenkamp has completed the trilogy he started with SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE ADVENTURE OF THE THREE DRAGONS (Sep 00 #1). SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE GHOST OF THE FLYING DUTCHMAN (2001, 244 pp., $13.50 paperback/$4.95 electronic) begins with Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Johnathan Watson menaced by a carriage driven by a headless coachman immune to gunfire, and foiling a villainous and murderous plot; SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE SEARCH FOR EXCALIBUR (2004, 280 pp., $14.50/paperback/$4.95 electronic) involves them with Buff- alo Bill Cody's Wild West Show while the plot continues, as villainous and murderous as ever. Both books are available from Authorhouse, 1663 Liberty Drive #200, Bloomington, IN 47403 (888-519-5212) . Mar 05 #2 "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes Theatre" is new from Blackstone Audio, offering performances of William Gillette's "Sherlock Holmes", Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Speckled Band", and Yuri Rosovsky's one-act comedy "Ghastly Murder in Famed Detective's Flat" (Mar- tin Jarvis and Kristoffer Tabori star as Holmes and Watson, and there's a full cast, and they all do fine work). $34.95 on 4 audiocassettes ($10.95 rental); $45.00 on 5 CDs ($13.95 rental); $29.95 on 1 mp3-CD; Box 969, Ash- land, OR 97520 (800-729-2665) . Jarvis was Regi- nald Musgrave on BBC Radio 4 in 1978 and recorded "The Valley of Fear" for Listen for Pleasure in 1992, and Tabori was Sir Henry Baskerville in Gran- ada's "The Hound of the Baskervilles" (1988). Further to the item (Feb 05 #8) about missing copies of The Sherlock Holmes Journal, they've now arrived, and have much of interest, including extracts from the Sherlockian papers of Sir Paul Gore-Booth. SHJ subscription costs vary depending on where you are and on whether you're adult or junior; de- tails are available from Bob Ellis, 13 Crofton Avenue, Orpington, Kent BR6 8DU England, and at the society's web-site . Jim Vogelsang spotted an attractive gift bag (suitable for baby showers, of course) with a matching tag, from Leap Year Publishing in Methuen, Mass.; the photograph is by Tom Arma, and you can see it in full color (click on "occupations") at . The Sound of the Baskervilles will celebrate their 25th anniversary the afternoon of Apr. 2, with tea and other refreshments, and commemorative pins and paperweights; additional details are available from David Haugen, 3606 Harborcrest Court NW, Gig Harbor, WA 98332; the society web-site's at . Further to the report (Apr 04 #6) on plans for a 176-foot bronze sculpture of a Native American on Holmes Peak in Oklahoma, Dick Warner has forwarded a story in the Tulsa World (Feb. 16) that reports that organizers had hoped to break ground last month, but still need to raise more money and do more design work; their goal for the $30 million project is to finish the statue in time for the state-s centennial in 2007. The March issue of The Believer ($8.00) has a six-page interview with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle by Eric Spitznagel, who was assisted by Arthur Pacheco, a psychic and trance medium from Hawaii. Conan Doyle discusses the after- life, Bram Stoker and Anne Rice, and Edgar Allan Poe (and the cover has a portrait of Conan Doyle by Charles Burns). There's also a four-panel car- toon ("Sherlock Holmes Versus Jungle Boy, Part 47") from Michael Kupperman. 826 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94110 . Dark Horse Books' THE IRREGULARS...IN THE SERVICE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES is a 128-page graphic novel written by Steven-Elliot Altman and Michael Reaves, and illustrated by Bong Dazo; Altman and Reaves had stories in SHADOWS OVER BAKER STREET (2003), and THE IRREGULARS also owes a great deal to the world of H. P. Lovecraft. $12.95, and if you can't find it in a store, their ad- dress is 10956 SE Main Street, Milwaukie, OR 97222 . Mar 05 #3 Some of the 1968 BBC television versions of the Canon starring Peter Cushing and Nigel Stock are available on region 2 DVDs: "A Study in Scarlet" and "The Boscombe Valley Mystery", "The Sign of Four" and "The Blue Carbuncle", and "The Hound of the Baskervilles"; L9.99 each at . A boxed set with all three DVDs also is available at for L24.99. The How Now! theater troupe will present "An Evening with Sherlock Holmes" at the Historic General Dodge House in Council Bluffs on Apr. 8 and 9 (605 Third Street, Council Bluffs, IA 51503) (712-322-2406); the troupe will be in costume, with music and sound effects, reading Clarinda Karpov's drama- tizations of "The Red-Headed League" and "The Man with the Twisted Lip". It's not the Duke of Balmoral's Iris, but an iris was one of four stamps in a "Spring Flowers" set issued this year by the U.S. Postal Service. Further to my earlier review (Jul 02 #1) of Bonaventure Brenn- an's 'IT COMMENCED WITH TWO...': THE STORY OF MARY ANN DOYLE, FIRST COMPANION OF CATHERINE MCAULEY, the book now has a sec- ond printing. It's a biography of Anna Maria Doyle, sister of Arthur Conan Doyle's grandfather John Doyle; born in Dublin in 1801, Anna met Catherine McAuley in 1827, became a nun in 1831, and helped found the Sisters of Mercy. The book includes information about the Doyle family and it can be bought (E30.00 postpaid) from Sister Bonaventure (2 St. Brigid's Court, Athboy, County Meath, Ireland); please pay by bank draft in euros. Further to the earlier item (Jun 02 #4) about Nicholas Twit: The Schoolboy Sherlock Holmes, there now are five books in the series . and author Cenarth Fox is presenting his talk on "Meet Sherlock Holmes" in ven- ues in Australia, and his play "The Real Sherlock Holmes" also is on tour there . When in Dubai: you can stay at the new Arabian Court Hotel, and choose from its restaurants: the traditionally-themed Bastakiya, Muglal cuisine at the Mumtaz Mahal, the Ahland Lounge, and the hotel's classic English pub: the Sherlock Holmes. Ken Lanza spotted the web-site for Wayne M. Rooney, Consulting Detective at ; there are Sherlockian images and quotations, and his e-mail address is . Samuel French (45 West 25th Street, New York, 10010) offer 18 Sherlockian scripts, from William Gillette's "Sherlock Holmes" (in the version used for the revival by the Royal Shakespeare Company) and Les- lie Bricusse's "Sherlock Holmes: The Musical" to comedies and dramas (some only marginally S'ian) by Tim Kelly. For readers who like detectives named "Sherlock": Catherine Coulter has a long-running series about FBI special agents Dillon Savich (first seen in THE COVE in 1996) and Lacey Sherlock (in THE MAZE in 1997); they married, and the tenth book in their series (POINTBLANK) is due in September. And of course there's a web-site at . Mar 05 #4 Scotland should exploit Sherlock Holmes as a national cultural icon, according to the chairman of Scotland's cultural comiss- ion, quoted in the Edinburgh Scotsman (Mar. 19). "I think we should retake Sherlock Holmes," James Boyle said. "You look at the worldwide web and you will find that all the web businesses based round Sherlock Holmes are in London, they're in Illinois, they are in Switzerland. Sherlock Holmes is a product of Scottish mind, born in Scotland, trained in Scotland. Why don't we own him? It's perfectly reasonable that you should have large business- es built round Sherlock Holmes in London, but if people want a whole range of things from academic thought to cheap souvenirs, we may as well do that. What's to stop us selling tapes of Jeremy Brett back to the Americans?" Belgium's definitive postage stamps show birds, and two recent issues show a Mediterranean gull and a partridge. "One great grey bird, a gull or curlew, soared aloft in the blue heaven" (in "The Hound of the Baskervilles"), and Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson dined on a cold partridge (in "The Veiled Lodger"). John Sherwood has been impersonating Sherlock Holmes for many years, assisted by a handy-dandy (and easily concealed) porta- ble guide to the Canon that he's now happy to share with those who might wish to benefit from his careful research: THE POCK- ET SHERLOCK, which was created in 1987, now is available in a 2005 edition that offers 70 pages of case summaries and data. The booklet costs $12.00 postpaid (and will be autographed on request) from Mystery Visits (120 Quimby Road, West Grove, PA 19390) . Leona Rostenberg died on Mar. 17. She was a bibliophile and book dealer, and with her partner Madeleine B. Stern in 1942 identified Louisa May Al- cott as the author, under a pseudonym, of a series of (at the time) racy stories, and the story of their partnership was told in their memoirs, OLD BOOKS, RARE FRIENDS: TWO LITERARY SLEUTHS AND THEIR SHARED PASSION (1997) and BOOKENDS: TWO WOMEN, ONE ENDURING FRIENDSHIP (2001). She wrote a ser- ies of articles on "Bibliately: A History of Books on Postage Stamps" for The American Philatelist in 1977, and included Sherlock Holmes, and she was in the audience when Madeleine B. Stern gave The Baker Street Irregulars' Distinguished Lecture in 2001. Turns out there's a tenuous Sherlockian connection for Russell Crowe: the music played at the end of Rupert Everett's "Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking" (broadcast in December in the UK and in Canada). Ac- cording to the Nottingham Evening Post (Mar. 5), it was "La Musica Notturna delle Strade di Madrid" (No. 6 Op. 30) by Italian composer Luigi Boccherini (1743-1805); the music also was used in the film "Master and Commander". The Practical, But Limited, Geologists will meet for drinks and dinner to honor the world's first forensic geologist, at 7:00 pm on June 22, at The Joyce on 4th in Calgary during the annual meeting of the American Associa- tion of Petroleum Geologists. We traditionally discourage scholarly pap- ers, quizzes, and slide shows, and our agenda consists entirely of toasts (some scholarly, but many not). The restaurant is at 506 24th Avenue SW, and locals and visitors are welcome. Mar 05 #5 The Constitution of The Baker Street Irregulars (drafted by El- mer Davis in 1934) states in Article IV that "The duties of the Commissionaire shall be to telephone down for ice, White Rock, and whatever else may be required and avail available." White Rock still exists, and of course there's a web-site , with a link to the White Rock Collectors Association , which in the his- tory of the company there's an item about White Rock's "ambassador without portfolio": "By 1895 America's favorite sparking table water and mixer went international, and in 1901 was featured at the coronation banquest of Eng- land's King Edward VII. A British newspaper later commented that the King always used White Rock to dilute his wine." Ken Lanza has reported a Sherlockian image at the web-site (proposed as "your guide to quackery, health fraud, and intelligent decisions"). Scott Tate reports a new Sherlockian society: The John Tur- ner Society, for people who have, or know someone who has, or are interested in diabetes. More information about the society is available from Scott at 925 La Due Avenue, Ala- mosa, CO 81101 . This year's Canonical Convocation and Caper will take place in Door County, Wis., on Sept. 23-25; there's a web-site at , or you can request additional information from Jane Richardson, 3427 East Exchange Street, Crete, IL 60417. Mary Erickson notes that Don Izban, who presided over the event for many years, has found four people to do all the work he did to make the event a success, and one assumes that Don will be there to see how they do. Sumal Surendranahth reports that there's a Sherlock Holmes Society of India on the Internet, founded in May 2001 as a meeting place for Indian fans of Sherlock Holmes . THE PRIVATE EYE WRITERS OF AMERICAN PRESENTS MYSTERY STREET: THE 20TH ANNI- VERSARY PWA ANTHOLOGY (New York: Signet, 2001; 341 pp., $6.50) was edited by Robert Randisi and includes Warren Murphy's "Highly Irregular on Baker Street", which stars his series P.I. Devlin Tracy, investigating a murder at the present-day 221B Baker Street. Further to the report (Dec 04 #2) on Laurie R. King's LOCKED ROOMS (the new Mary Russell mystery, due for release in June), the new paperback edition of THE GAME (New York: Bantam Books, 2005; 442 pp. $6.99) offers a 12-page preview from LOCKED ROOMS. Teaser excerpts are becoming more and more com- mon now, to the delight of completists. Ev Herzog spotted a Barnes & Noble reprint of Heather Hacking's HISTORICAL CATS: GREAT CATS WHO HAVE SHAPED HISTORY (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2003; 80 pp., L9.99); the cats include King Tutankhamin 'n' Kahmout (who invented the catflap), Richard the Furred, and Purrlock Holmes, all with amusing il- lustrations by the author. The Barnes & Noble reprint was issued in 2004 ($3.98) and may be found at their stores (if you're lucky) (the reprint was a one-shot, apparently, and the title can't be ordered or reordered). Mar 05 #6 It's worth recalling, occasionally, that the world of Sherlock Holmes wasn't only the Victorian world portrayed so carefully in the Canon; a fine way to see a different aspect of his world is a visit to the National Gallery of Art in Washington to view the exhibition "Tou- louse-Lautrec and Montmartre" (which will be on display through June 12, and then at the Art Institute of Chicago from July 16 to Oct. 10). There are 250 works of art in the show, offering a splendid look at a Parisian milieu that was of interest to many visitors to the city during the last two decades of the 19th century; in "The Golden Pince-Nez" there's a mention of the case of Huret in 1894, and it is difficult to imagine that Sherlock Holmes went to Paris without spending time in Mont- martre. Much of the artwork in the show is by Toulouse-Lautrec, but there also are works by Van Gogh, Manet, Degas, Picasso, and many others. "The Englishman at the Moulin Rouge" (painted by Toulouse-Lautrec in 1892) might well be a portrait of Dr. Watson (according to the catalog of the show, the model for the man was in fact a young English painter named William Warrener). The Montmartre district is specifically mentioned in the Canon (in a believably violent context) in "The Illustri- ous Client" (dated by most Canonical chronologists in 1902). The catalog also is of interest, with informative essays on "Toulouse-Lautrec and Mont- martre: Depicting Decadence in Fin-de-Siecle Paris", "The Social Menagerie of Toulouse-Lautrec's Montmartre", and "Toulouse-Lautrec and the Culture of Celebrity", and a wealth of lavish illustrations. Reported: CREATIVE HEALERS: A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS, REVIEWS, AND POEMS FROM THE PHAROS 1938-1998, edited by Edward Day Harris, Jr. (Menlo Park: Alpha Omega Alpha, 2004; 532 pp., $50.00 leather, $40.00 cloth); the contents in- clude C. Frederick Kittle's "There's More to Doyle Than Holmes!" reprinted from the winter 1997 issue of The Pharos (the journal of the honor medical society). Fred Kittle's fine collection, exhibited at the Newberry Library in Chicago in 2003, includes four generations of Doyles and Conan Doyles. The address for Alpha Omega Alpha is 525 Middlefield Road #130, Menlo Park, CA 94025 . Mycroft's League is organizing the 2nd Quadragennial Running of the Phila- delphia Silver Blaze, at Delaware Park on May 7 (you'll also be able to see the Kentucky Derby via simulcast from Churchill Downs); there will lunch in the Main Clubhouse and as always a chance to conduct Sherlockian handicapp- ing. Details available from Gideon D. Hill . The previous running of the Silver Blaze in the Delaware Valley was at Gar- den State Park in 1966, in case anyone's counting. The Spermaceti Press: Peter E. Blau, 7103 Endicott Court, Bethesda, MD 20817-4401 (301-229-5669) Apr 05 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press Laurie R. King's A GRAVE TALENT (1993) won best-first-novel awards from the Mystery Writers of America and the British Crime Writers' Association, and there now are four books in her series about San Francisco Police Depart- ment homicide inspector Kate Martinelli; Laurie reports that she is about halfway through her next Martinelli novel, due next year, and that a good portion of it concerns a newly discovered Sherlock Holmes manuscript; Mar- tinelli is (of course) scornful of the item as well as the interest among Sherlockians. Laurie also has reported in her web-log that in June she will begin work on the last Mary Russell novel, in which she and her husband return to England just in time to meet a ship from Africa that is carrying a nasty contagion, sent there from the German colonies as a prelude to the upcoming conflict, that drives its victims insane with terror. Laurie notes that "Russell and Holmes die in each others arms, I'm afraid," and that the working title of the book is THE BEEKEEPER'S APPREHENSION. That was in her blog for April 1 (headed "Black Armbands"), in case you're wondering about credibility. Her web-log is at . Ken Lanza spotted a story about "Putting a Face Value on Celebrity Cheques" in the Financial Times (Mar. 28) with a mention of the British Cheque Coll- ectors' Society (now the British Banking History Society) and an article on "Cheques and Sherlock Holmes"; the article is available at their web-site with pictures of cheques from some of the banks mentioned in the Canon. Reported: Peter Abraham's DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE: AN ECHO FALLS MYSTERY (New York: Laura Geringer/HarperCollins, 2005); 384 pp., $15.99); Ingrid Levin- Hill, eighth-grade Sherlock Holmes fan and amateur actress, inadvertently becomes a witness in the murder case of Cracked-up Katie, the weird lady in the rundown house on the wrong side of town. There's also a CD recorded by Mandy Siegfried ($27.95). "Do you know," said Lord Minto [Governor General of Canada in 1902], "ever since I received your invitation I have been thinking of Holmes, and uncon- sciously I have been trying processes of deduction. For instance, I have scanned Major Maude's shoes to see if I could determine if he had been to the stables; I have even looked closely at my daughter's nails to see if she had practiced on the piano that morning. In fact, I have neglected my duties in an endeavor to learn if I have any of the talent of deduction which Sir Conan Doyle attributes to his detective. Lady Minto was convin- ced this morning that I was crazy when I told her the butler was learning to shave with his left hand, as his left cheek was scratched. Really, this Holmes is a fascinating man, and I am afraid that now I have seen your per- formance I will be a source of deep anxiety to my family and friends." Ah, they knew how to get publicity in those long-ago days, when Herbert Kelcey and Effie Shannon were on tour in William Gillette's play and during a one- week run in Montreal learned that the Governor General was in town and in- vited him and his family and staff to see the play. They came backstage at the end of the second act, and there was an "In and Out of the Theatre" re- port in the N.Y. Times (Nov 30, 1902), recently spotted by Gayle Harris. Apr 05 #2 The Haslemere Initiative will be welcoming visitors and locals to a literary weekend featuring Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on May 6-8. The weekend will include a welcome gala dinner at the Lythe Hill Ho- tel and Spa on May 6, and a lecture by Philip Weller at the Haslemere Mus- eum on May 7, followed by a lunch at Undershaw, and there will be time to tour the countryside around Hindhead. Additional information is available at (click on "Haslemere's Literary Weekend"). The U.S. Postal Service has issued a new sheet in its "Na- ture of America" series, this year showing a Northeast De- ciduous Forest whose inhabitants include many animals men- tioned in the Canon. The weasel, shown for the first time in the history of this newsletter, is mentioned in two of the stories ("The Sign of the Four" and "The Crooked Man"). Ken Lanza has noted a fashion report at praising the trench coat, "born in the mud-soaked trenches of World War I which gave it its name," and reporting that it was boosted by Hollywood stars Humphrey Bogart, Robert Mitchum, Marlene Dietrich, and Greta Garbo, and by politicians that included prime minister Winston Churchill and president Ronald Reagan. "Even writers like Rudyard Kipling and Arthur Conan Doyle helped to popularize the coat." Does anyone recall Conan Doyle photographed wearing a trench coat? At age twelve, Mitch Cullin was given access to the largest Sherlock Holmes collection in North America, according to publicity for A SLIGHT TRICK OF THE MIND (New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2005; 253 pp., $23.95); need- less to say, the collection belonged to John Bennett Shaw, and three years later, in 1984, a photograph of the two enthusiasts appeared in USA Today. A SLIGHT TRICK OF THE MIND is a fascinating book, set in 1947 and showing an ageing and sometimes forgetful Holmes, who visited Japan after the war and has returned to bee-keeping in Sussex; a pastiche is part of the book, which is written with style and imagination, and I wish that John had lived to enjoy a book that was born in his library twenty years ago. There's al- so a recording (unabridged) by Simon Jones (who has played Holmes on stage in 1998 and 2001) on audiocassettes and CDs from HighBridge ($29.95), and Cullin has an interesting web-site at . Barbara C. Schaaf died on Mar. 29. She was an author and a journalist, and a life-long liberal Democrat, and a member of The South Downers and The Ba- ker Street Pages, and helped publicize local Sherlockian activities in the Chicago-area press. Antony Richards reports that Baker Street Studios Limited has purchased all of the murder-mystery publications of Breese Books. The company includes The Irregular Special Players and The Irregulars Special Press, and there's a web-site at that also hosts the Inspector Morse Society; their postal address is Endeavour House, 170 Woodland Road, Sawston, Cambridge CB2 4DX, England. SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE GIANT'S HAND AND OTHER STORIES, by Matthew Booth (2004; 138 pp., L5.00/E7.50/$9.50), has Holmes solving murders from three of the unrecorded cases, in Cornwall (the Addleton tragedy), Kent (Colonel Warburton's madness), and Wiltshire (the dreadful business of the Abernetty family). Apr 05 #3 Bouchercon is a long-established world mystery convention, run by fans for fans, and named in honor of Anthony Boucher (a mul- ti-talented author and a member of The Baker Street Irregulars); there were about 1,200 people (fans and authors) at Bouchercon 35 last year in Toronto and the conventions always are enjoyable. Bouchercon 36 will be in Chicago on Sept. 1-4, 2005 ; Bouchercon 37 will in Madison on Sept. 28-Oct. 1, 2006 ; Bouchercon 38 will be in An- chorage on Sept. 27-30, 2007 ; there are rumors of Orlando and Brighton competing for 2008. Chalmers Roberts died on Apr. 8. He was a journalist, and an old-fashioned generalist, and he was the Washington Post's chief diplomatic correspondent from 1953 until he retired in 1971; the biggest story of his career was the Pentagon Papers, and his threat to resign in protest if his report did not appear in the paper strengthened its resolve to publish (and he was one of the defendants named in the government's unsuccessful lawsuit against the paper). It was at a news conference with President Eisenhower in 1954 that Roberts asked the president whether military reasons were his only reasons against preventative war, and Eisenhower said: "Well, let me make it this way: if you remember, I believe it was Conan Doyle's WHITE COMPANY, there was a monk that left the church; he said there were seven reasons, and the first one was he was thrown out; they decided there was no use to recite the other six. It seems to me that when, by definition, a term is just ri- diculous in itself, there is no use in going any further." Tom Dunn, proprietor of The Pipe Smoker's Ephemeris, spotted the Sherlockian artwork (including a pipe, of course) on a computer- ized USPS first-class electronic delivery-confirmation label gen- erated by Endicia Internet Postage. George MacDonald Fraser's FLASHMAN ON THE MARCH has been published in Brit- ain (London: HarperCollins, 2005; 336 pp., L17.99), to the great delight of Flashman's fans, and it's due in the U.S. from Knopf in November; the novel involves Flashman in the Abyssinian War of 1868, so Canonical allusions are unlikely. FLASHMAN AND THE TIGER (Oct 99 #4) dealt with Colonel Sebastian Moran, with whom Flashman had three encounters (including one in an empty house in Baker Street in 1894). THE GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD, by Rick Beyer (New York: HarperResource/ HarperCollins, 2003; 214 pp., $17.95), is subtitled "100 Tales from History to Astonish, Bewilder & Stupefy" and is based the History Channel's "Time- lab 2000" series, and offers two pages on "the curious case of the doctor who gave birth to a superstar" (the doctor being Joseph Bell, and the sup- erstar being Sherlock Holmes); it's certain not a story never told, but it might astonish, bewilder, and stupefy someone. "The legal status of private detectives is unclear under China's murky ju- dicial system," according to an article in USA Today (Apr. 14); they were banned in 1993 (partly because private companies were recruiting away too many police officers), but many stayed in business, and a Chinese newspaper reported last year that an estimated 20,000 private detectives were operat- ing in China. One company is called FMS Commercial Consultation; the FMS stands for "fu er mo si" (Chinese for Sherlock Holmes). Apr 05 #4 It has been many years since I abandoned my Erector set, and I have no idea whether some enthusiast has ever constructed any- thing Sherlockian with one, but Steve Rothman reports in the spring issue of The Baker Street Journal than Don Redmond, who has for many years cre- ated the annual indexes for the BSJ, is an avid practitioner of the art of Meccano, and you can see some of his handiwork, and a photograph of Don, at . The new issue of the BSJ also offers much about Julian Wolff, including a delightful memoir by his niece Lila. The Smithsonian Institution highlights some of its more interesting paleon- tological art (including inhabitants of the Lost World) at its new web-page at . Ken Lanza spotted a new Internet resource at ; it's an "in- telligence aggregator that tracks the activities of people we have deter- mined to be noteworthy, both living and dead," and it currently offers pro- files of more than 12,000 people, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, William Gillette, Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Jeremy Brett, and David Burke. Warren Randall has created a new lapel pin honoring the sym- posium "Holmes Under the Arch II: The Site of the Four" (in St. Louis in May), and The Parallel Case of St. Louis. You don't need attend the symposium to buy the pin, which costs $7.50 postpaid from Warren (15 Fawn Lane West, South Setauk- et, NY 11720. Robert H. Dinegar ("Henry Ward Beecher") died on Apr. 21. He was a chem- ist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, an adjunct professor at the Uni- versity of New Mexico, and an Episcopal priest, involved in the scientific investigation of the Shroud of Turin. He also was a faithful member of the Brothers Three of Moriarty and in 1972 composed the Sherlock Holmes Litany which was for many years recited at their meetings, and wrote about "Sher- lock Holmes: Scientist and Chemist" in the Sherlock Holmes Journal in 1988. Bob received his Investiture from the Baker Street Irregulars in 1984. Reported: WHAT ROUGH BEAST, by H. R. Knight (New York: Dorchester/Leisure Books, 2005; 374 pp., $6.99); Conan Doyle and Houdini in 1903, involved in a battle against demonic possession. Roberta Davies discovered , a web-site that has the Canon and other books and stories by Conan Doyle, and material by many other authors; you can listen to everything free (low fidelity) or pay for it (higher fidelity). Paul Martin spotted the report that the Algonquin Hotel now is a member of the Historic Hotels of America. The program, created by the National Trust for Historic Preservation includes hotels that are at least 50 years old, listed in or eligible for the National Register of Historic Places, or rec- ognized locally as having historical significance. More information about the program and the hotel as available at , where an entry on the Algonquin mentions the famous Round Table and Dorothy Park- er's Vicious Circle, but not the Baker Street Irregulars, who have made the Algonquin their unofficial headquarters in January for many years. Apr 05 #5 I've mentioned the Invisible Library previously (Aug 01 #3) and am glad to recommend it again; it was created by Brian Quinette in 1999 and is a collection of books found only in other books ("imaginary books, pseudobiblia, artifictions, fabled tomes, libris phantastica, and all manner of books unwritten, unread, unpublished, and unfound." The URL is , and you will find books by Holmes, Watson, Moriarty, Challenger, and Jonathan Swift Somers III (the collection doesn't include short stories, so Somers' Sherlockian parodies aren't listed); the list is incomplete, and you're invited to tell the librarian about missing titles). One of the nice things about the Internet is the opportunity to listen to radio broadcasts: National Public Radio's web-site allows you to search for "Sherlock Holmes" and hear interviews with Mark Haddon, Les Klinger, David Grann, Michael Chabon, and Mitch Cullin. Brian Freemantle's THE HOLMES FACTOR (Sutton: Severn House, 2005; 313 pp., L18.99/$28.95) is the second novel in his series about Sherlock Holmes' son Sebastian, who has been sent to Russia just before the start of World War I to assess the political situation; he meets Churchill and Asquith, and Ker- ensky and Stalin and Rasputin, and is involved in lots of intrigue. Sher- lock and Mycroft and Watson are also on hand, but in supporting roles. Magda Jozsa's SHERLOCK HOLMES ON THE WILD FRONTIER (Charleston: BookSurge, 2005; 303 pp., $14.99); takes Holmes and Watson through the Wild West and into encounters with desperados, Indians, and renegades. The publisher's web-site is at . Sir John Mills died on Apr. 23. He began his acting career as a song-and- dance man in the 1920s and went on to act for decades on stage, screen, and television. He was appointed a CBE (Companion of the Order of the British Empire) in 1960, won an Oscar (best actor in a supporting role) for "Ryan's Daughter" (1970); and was knighted in 1976. And he starred as Dr. Watson (with Peter Cushing as Holmes) in the television film "The Masks of Death" (1974). I reported earlier on the exhibition "Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre" at the National Gallery of Art in Washington (Mar 05 #6), and there's now an excellent article about the exhibition in the May issue of Smithsonian mag- azine with a passing mention of the assassination in 1894 of French presi- dent Sadi Carnot. Some Sherlockian scholars who believe that the culprit was Huret, the Boulevard assassin, whose tracking and arrest won for Sher- lock Holmes an autograph letter of thanks from the French President and the Order of the Legion of Honour (see "The Golden-Pince Nez"). Caleb Carr's THE ITALIAN SECRETARY: A FURTHER ADVENTURE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2005; 263 pp., $23.95) is a new pastiche by the author of THE ALIENIST and THE ANGEL OF DARKNESS; it brings Holmes and Wat- son to Edinburgh to assist Mycroft in defending Her Majesty against a plot that involves Holyrood and David Rizzio (who was Queen Mary's secretary and met his death at Holyrood. There's an afterwood by Jon Lellenberg, who has hopes of some day reading a pastiche in which Sherlock Holmes meets Laszlo Kreizler. Apr 05 #6 The Portland Press Herald reported (Apr. 24) on the discovery of 425 autographs, notes, and letters collected in the 1890s by Harry E. Burbank of Augusta, Maine, who wrote to celebrities asking for au- tographs. The collection was found in a shirt-box hidden away in a closet in an old house and will be sold on May 5 by auctioneer James B. Julia of Fairfield; it includes signatures of six presidents, several Civil War gen- erals, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Thomas Edison, and Arthur Conan Doyle. The auction house estimates the lot at $5,000-10,000. Plan well ahead: "Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure" (adapted by Steven Dietz from William Gillette's "Sherlock Holmes") has been scheduled by the Arizona Theatre Company in Tucson, Mar. 4 through 25, and in Phoenix, Mar. 30 through Apr. 5, 2006; the show's a co-production with the Pasadena Play- house, so it's likely to be seen there later in the year. According to the company's artistic director David Ira Goldstein, Dietz "cut and re-shaped and added characters from other Holmes stories." Great Britain issued a set of six stamps last year, commemorating the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Crimean War, showing photographs from a book of "Crimean Heroes" by photographers Joseph Cundall and Robert Hewitt, who set up a temporary studio at Aldershot in 1856. There are mentions of the Crimean War in five of the Sherlock Holmes stories, including "The Glo- ria Scott" (Mortimer, the gardener, was an army pensioner, "an old Crimean man of excellent character"). Forecast for July: SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE KING'S GOVERNESS, by Barrie Rob- erts, from Severn House ; the latest in his series (Jun 03 #5), now involving Russian intrigue in London in 1897. News from the computer world: according to a report by Sam Varghese in the Melbourne Age (Apr. 1), the Open Source Development League announced that it has decided to recruit socialite Paris Hilton to gain more exposure for its campaign for free and open source software. People need to be aware of the breadth and scope of what they have to offer, League CEO Jeremy Bleats noted, and Miss Hilton "can expose things like nobody else can." He also cautioned journalists not to "confuse our League with the Red-Headed League about which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wove a tale involving Sherlock Holmes. I have to say this because our Exposure Executive is, at the moment, a red- head." The Spermaceti Press: Peter E. Blau, 7103 Endicott Court, Bethesda, MD 20817-4401 (301-229-5669) May 05 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press Last year the U.S. Postal Service authorized Stamps.com to sell personal- ized postage (Aug 04 #3), and more than 2.75 million stamps were sold in a two-month test run. Don Hobbs had a stamp that showed him with his grand- daughter in his Sherlockian library (Sep 04 #4), but I've not heard about any stamps showing Sherlock Holmes. A second year-long test run began on May 30, and a sheet of twenty 37c stamps costs $16.99 (plus shipping). Forge/Tom Doherty Associates are continuing their reissues of Carole Nelson Douglas' series about Irene Adler in paperback, with uniform cover artwork by Glenn Harrington and minor revisions and a reader's guide; the third re- issue is the first volume in the series, GOOD NIGHT, MR. HOLMES (2005). Tony van Bridge died on Dec. 20, 2004. He had a long career as an actor in Britain and then in Canada, where he spent 18 years with the Stratford Fes- tival and 30 years with the Shaw Festival at Niagara-on-the-Lake; it was at the Shaw Festival in 1998 and 1999 that played Corporal Gregory Brewster in Conan Doyle's play "Waterloo". In an obituary in Canadian Holmes, Trevor S. Raymond recalls a luncheon in 1998 when van Bridge happily signed memor- abilia for Doyleans and Sherlockians; it was suggested that he had signed enough things, and he cheerily replied, "Nonsense! This is what an actor *dreams* of." Kate Karlson reports that PBS-TV is running promos for "Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking" (with Rupert Everett and Ian Hart), due to air on "Mystery!" this fall. This year's World Fantasy Convention will be held in Madison, Wis., on Nov. 3-6, and April and Walden Derleth will be there to accept the convention's "special recognition" award to Arkham House, founded by their father August Derleth; Arkham House published its first book in 1939, and it was his My- croft & Moran imprint that issued collections of Derleth's Solar Pons stor- ies. One of Arkham recent books is ARKHAM'S MASTERS OF HORROR (2000), ed- ited by Peter A. Ruber, with 21 featured writers that include Vincent Star- rett. You can register at WFC-Madison, Box 531, Cambridge, WI 53523, or at their web-site . Further to the item (Apr 05 #6) on "Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure" (adapted by Steven Dietz from William Gillette's "Sherlock Holmes") sched- uled in Tucson and Pasadena next year, the play also will be performed at the Quadrocci Powerhouse Theater in Milwaukee from Apr. 12 through May 14, 2006. offers 61 Sherlockian and Doylean recordings in mp3 and WMA formats that you can download over the Internet at prices ranging from $2.98 to $10.00 (and you can listen to free samples of each of the re- cordings). There are three fine full-cast recordings of Canonical stories by the One Act Players (with Scot Crisp as Holmes and Glenn Carlson as Wat- son); and excellent readings by David Ian Davies of 53 Canonical tales, one pastiche written by Matthew Elliott, three by David Stuart Davies, and one non-Sherlockian story by Conan Doyle ("The Leather Funnel"). David Ian Da- vies does an excellent job with voices and accents. May 05 #2 The winter 2004 issue of The Baum Bugle includes many tributes to the late Fred M. Meyer, who promoted the cause of "Oz" for almost 60 years. According to Michael Patrick Hearn reminiscences, Anthony Boucher, editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, which had just published Martin Gardner's two-part article on L. Frank Baum, chall- enged Jack Snow (then serving as "Royal Historian of Oz") in the April 1955 issue of F&SF to create an Oz society "based on the famous Sherlock Holmes fan club, the Baker Street Irregulars. Boucher suggested the organization be called the Oz Irregulars. Snow had been discussing just such an organi- zation with Gardner, William Baring-Gould of Life magazine, and Fred Dann- ay, half of the 'Ellery Queen' writing team." It is interesting to see how many Sherlockians were involved in the creation of what became the Interna- tional Wizard of Oz Club. Mel Gussow died on Apr. 29. He worked for Newsweek, and moved to the N.Y. Times in 1969 as critic and cultural reporter, writing more than 4,000 re- views and articles for the paper over 35 years; his first Sherlockian re- view was of the Royal Shakespeare Company's revival of Gillette's "Sherlock Holmes" in 1974, and in recent years he wrote perceptive obituary tributes to some great Sherlockian actors. The Sons of the Copper Beeches and Mycroft's League made nice arrangements for a Sherlockian weekend in Philadelphia this month, including a running of The Silver Blaze at Delaware Park, which offers an interesting look at the future of horse racing: Delaware Park has a two-story casino with 2,500 slot machines, and proceeds from the slots are used to increase the size of the purses for the races; simulcast betting also is offered for three other tracks, and Delaware Park is open year-round, regardless of whether there's racing on-site. Sherlockian handicappers were happy to find two atttrac- tively-named horses in the first and second races: Briony and Good Morning Irene (unfortunately they finished 7th and 9th). The Silver Blaze was the 5th race, with Monetary Monarch on hand and finishing 7th, well behind the winner B. Murray, who might have been favored by Sherlockians who recalled "Murray, the faithful orderly," or who observed that the horse had a silver blaze. Further to the report (Apr 04 #4) about the continuing trials and tribula- tions of Liberton Bank House (where Arthur Conan Doyle lived as a child), a story in the Edinburgh Evening News (Apr. 27) reports that plans to convert the derelict house into a school and build doctors' offices in the garden have run into a funding crisis: the National Health Service may not provide the L2.8 million needed for the project. Reported: Jonathan Coe's 9TH & 13TH (London: Penguin, 2005; 64 pp., L1.50); a collection of fiction and non-fiction, including an essay (published in The Guardian on Apr. 30) about his life-long obsession with Billy Wilder's film "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes". There will be another Sherlock Holmes Festival in Tryon, N.C. on Nov. 11-13 (317 North Trade Street, Tryon, NC 28782) (800-440-7848), and David Milner reports that The Survivors of the *Gloria Scott* plan to hold their regular monthly meeting on Nov. 14 in Greenville, S.C. (only 30 minutes by car from Tryon); David is at Box 515, Taylors, SC 29687 . May 05 #3 Malice Domestic XVII was enjoyable as always, with Carole Nelson Douglas as toastmaster (she was interviewed by Irene Adler and Midnight Louie) and H.R.F. Keating receiving a lifetime achievement award. There was a panel on Sherlock Holmes on Sunday, nicely moderated by Maureen Collins, who started off asking why so many people have written pastiches, with Keating, Dan Stashower, Les Klinger, Roberta Rogow, and me (I got to explain that I was the only person on the panel who hadn't written a Sher- lock Holmes pastiche). Malice Domestic XVIII will be held Apr. 21-23, 2006, at the Crystal Gateway Marriott in Arlington, Va., featuring Katherine Hall Page as Guest of Hon- nor, Craig Rice as Ghost of Honor, Kate Grilley as Toastmaster, Douglas G. Greene as Poirot Award Nominee, and a Lifetime Achievement Award for Robert Barnard; you can register with Malice Domestic at Box 31137, Bethesda, MD 20824 . Kay Walsh died on Apr. 16. She began her acting career as a chorus girl, and appeared in her first film in 1934; she met David Lean in 1936 and they married in 1940, and she acted in more than 50 films, including "Great Ex- pections" (1946) and "Oliver Twist" (1948). She played Cathy Eddowes in "A Study in Terror" (1965) and Mrs. Hudson in the episode "A Motive for Mur- der" in the Geoffrey Whitehead television series (1981). Reported: a new edition of THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES (Hoboken: Melville House, 2004; 160 pp., $9.00); in their "Art of the Novella" series. Legend Films specializes in colorizing old black-and- white films, and the company has added the Rathbone/Bruce "Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon" (1943) and "Sherlock Holmes and the Woman in Green" (1945) to its list of DVDs ($9.98 each). "Terror by Night" and "Dressed to Kill" (both 1946) are scheduled for September. These same four films were colorized in the 1980s and issued on cassettes and then syndicated on tele- vision, in the days when colorization technology was in its infancy. Our new set of postage stamps honoring American Scien- tists includes mathematician John von Neumann, whose ar- ticle (written with Oskar Morgenstern) on "Some Elemen- tary Games" in their THEORY OF GAMES AND ECONOMIC BEHAV- IOR (1944) analyzed Holmes flight from Moriarty (in "The Final Problem"). Last month Ted Bergman donated his collection of Swedish Sherlockiana (420 books and about 600 newspaper and magazine articles) to the Svenska Deckar- biblioteket (Swedish Library of Crime and Detective Fiction) in Eskilstuna (about 100 kilometers west of Stockholm); he wants to keep his collection intact and available for academic research. "My esthetic appreciation of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries stems from their reflection, both in theme and in plot structure, of the idea of rationali- ty," Minnesota high school senior Christian Tarsney wrote in his essay on "Truth or beauty" in the Kids Philosophy Slam. He won first prize in the national contest this month, and you can read his essay at their web-site at . May 05 #4 Sylvian Hamilton died on Feb. 28. Collectors will recall the catalogs of Sherlockiana she issued in the 1980s and the early 1990s, from England and then from Scotland, where she retired from the book business and became an author, with three books about a former Crusader who turns detective in the Middle Ages. Sylvian had a gift for interesting op- ening sentences: "In the crypt of the Abbey Church at Hallowdene the monks were boiling their bishop" (THE BONE PEDDLAR), "There was only one witness, and he was already dead, but that didn't matter, he could still give evi- dence" (THE PENDRAGON BANNER) and "Countess Judith kept her husband's head in a box" (THE GLEE-MAIDEN). Don Hobbs has discovered another translation of Sherlock Holmes stories in another language: Interlingua. It's an artificial language that has been used for decades, and there was an Interlingua-English dictionary published in 1951. CINQUE AVENTURAS DE SHERLOCK HOLMES, published in 1997 (140 pp., E10.00) has five stories ("Un scandalo in Bohemia", "La liga a capillos ru- bie", "La banda maculate", "Le fascie jalne", and "La figuras dansante"); it's available from Servicio de Libros U.M.I. (Casa Postale 4035, NL-9701 EA, Groningen, Netherlands) . And the non-Sherlockian story "La horror altissime" is available without charge as an e-book at . The foreward to the dictionary states that there were five earlier international language systems: Esperanto, Ido, Esperanto II, Occidental, and Latino sine Flexione (there are two Esperanto translations known, but nothing reported for the other four). I sometimes explain to e-mail correspondents that there are two rules: if someone tells you to forward something to everyone, don't; and if you can't be bothered checking for hoaxes, don't forward messages to me. The Urban Legends Reference Pages at is an excellent place to check for hoaxes, and (thanks to Michael E. Bragg) the site discusses two stories about Conan Doyle. One is that "magician and escape artist Harry Houdini died from appendicitis brought about by his being punched in the stomach by a college student" (they conclude that the story, told by Conan Doyle and others, is false: "although some of the basic facts of this description are correct, the assumption of cause and effect is not"). And the second story is that "a medical school instructor lectures the class on the importance of taste as a diagnostic tool and demonstrates his point by conducting a diabetes test which involves dipping his finger into a flask of urine and licking it" (they report that "the origination of this story has often been attributed to Dr. Joseph Bell, the Edinburgh University instructor on whom Sir Arthur Conan Doyle modeled the character Sherlock Holmes," with credit to Harold Emery Jones, who wrote an article on "The Original of Sherlock Holmes" in the Jan. 9, 1904, issue of Collier's). An exhibition on "The Quintessential Ellery Queen: Celebrating the Centen- nial of Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee" will be on view through June 30 at the Butler Library at Columbia University in New York. Dannay, Lee, and Queen were all born in 1905, and Janet Maslin reported in the N.Y. Times on May 6 on a symposium at the Library, with speakers such as Lawrence Block, Francis M. Nevins, and Otto Penzler. Frederic Dannay was a member of The Baker Street Irregulars (as "The Dying Detective"), and Ellery Queen's THE MISADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (1944) was a landmark Sherlockian book. May 05 #5 Jim Suszynski has spotted Sherlock Holmes on the cover of (and inside as a minor character) the comic book THE SIMPSONS FUTUR- AMA CROSSOVER CRISIS II (Bongo Comics Group, 2005, $2.99): "If you are just joining us, a vortex has opened up next to the New New York Public Library a few hours ago. Apparently bringing every literary character ever written about...to life!" Peter Bramley died on Apr. 12. He was the first art director of National Lampoon, an editor of humor magazines, and creator of underground comics. He also was an illustrator, and his Sherlockian artwork can be seen in Mi- chaela Muntean's THE DETECTIVE'S WORD PUZZLE BOOK (1981). Bob Thomalen has confirmed that "Springtime in Baker Street" will be held in Tarrytown, N.Y., on Apr. 22-23, 2006. Those who attended "Autumn in Baker Street" in years past know how much fun the events have been. More information will be available anon from Bob and Terry. Roger Johnson launched The Sherlock Holmes Society of London's newsletter The District Messenger, on Dec. 1, 1982, and this month reached the 252nd issue, reporting (as always) the latest Sherlockian news from the U.K. and elsewhere; the first 100 issues (through July 23, 1990) are now available on a CD-ROM in non-searchable PDF format for L6.00 ($15.00) postpaid, from Roger at 41 Sandford Road, Chelmsford, Essex CM2 6DE, England. Roger has reported that in view of the tsunami disaster Rod Baser has post- poned his plans (Sep 04 #1) for a guided tour to India and the Andaman Is- lands in October; his web-site at offers an interesting look at his research on "Sherlock Holmes in India". Edgar B. Smith ("Dr. Moore Agar") died on May 12. Ben was a distinguished dermatologist, and for many years a member of The Sir James Saunders Socie- ty; he was co-author with Herman Beerman of an article on their Sherlock- ian specialty in the International Journal of Dermatology in 1977, and he served as president of the American Academy of Dermatology. He also was a founder of The Strollers on the Strand in Galveston and The Gila Lizards of the Arid and Repulsive Desert in Albuquerque, and received his Investiture from the Baker Street Irregulars in 1981. Stephen Leacock's parody "Maddened by Mystery; or, The Defective Detective" was first published in his NONSENSE NOVELS (1911); it was included in Ell- ery Queen's THE MISADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (1944), and there's a new edition of NONSENSE NOVELS (New York: New York Review Books Classics, 2004; 160 pp., $16.95) with an introduction by Daniel Handler (author of the Lem- ony Snicket series). Further to the report (Jan 05 #3) on the Royal College of Surgeons in Edin- burgh celebrating its 500th anniversary in 2005, the Scottish National Por- trait Gallery will include a rare picture of Joseph Bell in an exhibition on "The Healing Touch" from June 9 until Nov. 27. The exhibition will fea- ture hundreds of portraits and photographs covering the history of medicine in Scotland, according to a story in the Edinburgh Evening News (May 17), and the portrait of "Arthur Conan Doyle's inspiration for Sherlock Holmes is likely to be among the most popular images." May 05 #6 Jim Weiss has moved to Virginia, and he continues to offer his excellent recordings for younger audiences on CDs ($14.95) and cassettes ($10.95); his titles include SHERLOCK HOLMES FOR CHILDREN ("The Mazarin Stone", "The Speckled Band", "The Musgrave Ritual", and "The Blue Carbuncle") and MYSTERY! MYSTERY! (with "The Red-Headed League" and tales by Poe and Chesterton); Greathall Productions, Box 5061, Charlottesville, VA 22905 (800-477-6234) . Frank Gorshin died on May 17. He was a character actor and a nightclub performer as an impersonator when he was given the role of the Riddler in 1966 in the ABC-TV "Batman" ser- ies, and he went on to star in Las Vegas and on stage and screen. In the film "Record City" (1977) he played Chamel- eon, a criminal who concealed his activities behind various disguises, including a Sherlockian detective. is the URL for the Online Pulps site, at which Larry Estep and John Locke offer almost 300 pulp-magazine stories, including Vincent Starrett's "The Mid-Watch Tragedy" from Short Stories June 10, 1925 (a Jimmie Lavender story) and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "An Intimate Study of Sherlock Holmes" from Detective Story Magazine, Jan. 15, 1918 (reprinted from The Strand Magazine, Dec. 1917). Further to the earlier report (Feb 05 #7) on plans for a second printing of Les Klinger's THE NEW ANNOTATED SHERLOCK HOLMES, with corrections of errors in the first printing (which would make it a second edition), it's easy to identify: the string of numerals from one to zero on the title-page verso runs from two to zero. Les has noted that with more than 2,000 footnotes and almost 1,900 pages, errors were inevitable, and he continues to welcome word of errors not yet reported. Those who would prefer not to buy the re- vised second printing (which is now available) can find a list of errata at Les' web-site , and you can check the web- site from time to time to see additions to the list. It is possible, of course, that there will be a third printing with addi- tional corrections in November, when the third volume (with the four long in the set is published. And there's more news: THE NEW ANNOTATED SHERLOCK HOLMES has been nominated for an Anthony (for best non-fiction) at Boucher- con; the winners will be announced at the convention in September. Sherlock Holmes had occasion to search Mary Russell's hand-bag, and "turned it upside-down on the bed: money purse, handkerchief, note-book, pen-knife, pistol, and investigative tool-kit--all the usual paraphernalia and nothing out of the ordinary." That's one of the delightful sentences in Laurie R. King's LOCKED ROOMS (New York: Bantam Books, 2005; 400 pp., $24.00); it is the new title in the Mary Russell series, set in San Francisco in 1924 af- ter their visit to India in THE GAME. Russell intends a last look at her family home, but she and Holmes (with the assistance of Dashiell Hammett) become involved in a series of mysteries concerning her parents; good char- acterization, interesting plotting, and a nice sense of time and place. The Spermaceti Press: Peter E. Blau, 7103 Endicott Court, Bethesda, MD 20817-4401 (301-229-5669) Jun 05 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press Autograph dealer Gary Zimet of Moments in Time is offering the 34-page man- uscript of "The Greek Interpreter" for sale (on behalf of owner David Karp- eles), for $565,000. Zimet's web-site is at , and his telephone number is 845-497-7373. Phil Attwell has noted an offer from The Book People (Parc Menai, Bangor, LL57 4FB, United Kingdom of "The Sherlock Holmes Collection": ten Penguin paperback (the nine volumes of the Canon plus THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES edited by Richard Lancelyn Green) for L9.99 (deeply discounted from the L57.90 list price of the set). SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE KING'S GOVERNESS, by Barrie Roberts (Sutton: Severn House, 2005, 186 pp., L18.99) (New York: Severn House; $28.95), is the 8th in his series of novel-length pastiches; it's set in London during the Dia- mond Jubilee in 1897 and involves Diana Fordeland (who bears a striking re- semblance to Anna Leonowens) and a battle again evil Tsarist agents. The publisher's web-site is at . Helen E. Heinrich died on June 19. She was an assistant professor at Adel- phi University when she reported on her "Reise nach Reichenbach" in The Ba- ker Street Journal in 1987; she presided over The Long Island Cave Dwellers and was an active member of Sherlockian societies in the New York area, and "Lady Hilda Trelawney Hope" in The Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes. The latest issue of Sherlockiana (published three times a year by the Sher- lock Holmes Klubben i Danmark) has an article about The Sherlock Holmes Pub in Aarhus, and other Sherlockian news from Denmark; the pub's web-site is at . "They go in not because they need any certain volume but because they feel that there may be some book that needs them." That's a quote from Christo- pher Morley at the web-site for the Third Annual Kerrytown Bookfest, to be held on Sept. 11 at the Ann Arbor [Mich.] Farmer's Market. This year the BookFest will focus on mystery writers, and there will be a Sherlock Holmes Look Alike Contest judged by Sherlockian author Loren D. Estleman. There's a web-site at . Thanks to Tom Biblewski for the report. The Sherlock Holmes Festival scheduled in Tryon, N.C. on Nov. 11-13 (May 05 #3) now has a web-site at , or you can con- tact them at 317 North Trade Street, Tryon, NC 28782 (800-440-7848). David Milner reports that the festival will feature Henry Zecher and his new bio- graphy of William Gillette. DEADHOUSE: LIFE IN A CORONER'S OFFICE, by John Temple (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005; 177 pp., $28.00), offers an interesting look at forensic pathology in Pittsburgh's Allegheny County Coroner's Office in the summer of 2000, and at the pathologists and interns who worked there, and he does not neglect Sherlock Holmes' contributions to the science; the book is not for the squeamish, but it's an excellent account of the real science on which the "CSI" television shows are based. Jun 05 #2 What has 4 brains, 24 eyes, and stingers that can kill you in a minute flat? Not the lion's mane, but rather the box jellyfish (according to Paul Raffaele's article in the June issue of Smithsonian mag- azine). "On a pain scale of 1 to 10, it rated between 15 and 20," was how Australian zoologist Jamie Seymour described his encounter with one of the less venomous species; they're under careful study in northern Australia, and it's possible they can be found in others areas of the world. Ken Lanza spotted the TVNow offer of a "Mystery DVD Set of 50 Movies" on 12 double-sided DVDs for $28.00 plus shipping; the movies include eight Sher- lockian films (1933-1946), and the address is TVNow, Box 2247, Greensboro, NC 27402 (800-577-3492) . Charles McGrath commented on "a vast and ever-growing trove of serious and semiserious Holmes scholarship," in a long story about "What Makes Him the Supersleuth?" in the N.Y. Times (May 20). "Much of this last is inspired by an obsessive pursuit known as 'the game,'" he noted, "in which dedicated and slightly batty fans insist on pretending that Holmes and Watson were real people." "That painting was by Jean Baptiste Greuze," Sherlock Holmes said (in "The Valley of Fear"). Greuze's "Head of a Woman, in Profile and Turned to the Right" (in red chalk, circa 1777) is included in an exhibition "From Callot to Greuze: French Draw- ings from the Weimar" (from the Goethe National Museum in Wei- mar) at the Frick Collection through Aug. 7. The Frick is at 4 East 70th Street in New York , and there are three paintings by Greuze in its permanent collection. Thos. Kent Miller's THE GREAT DETECTIVE AT THE CRUCIBLE OF LIFE (Holicong: Wildside Press, 2005; 235 pp., $35.00 cloth, $15.95 paper) is an Allan Qua- termain pastiche, involving a young Sherlock Holmes, Richard Burton, Danny Dravot, and Peachy Carnehan (among others); it's a prequel to his SHERLOCK HOLMES ON THE ROOF OF THE WORLD (Oct 91 #3). Herbert Warren Wind died on May 30. He was the dean of American golf writ- ers and began writing for The New Yorker in 1941; he moved to Sports Illu- strated in 1954 and returned to The New Yorker in 1962. "Silver Blaze" was included in the three volumes of GREAT STORIES FROM THE WORLD OF SPORT that he edited with Peter Schwed in 1958. "Dan Scott--the evil epicenter of the WB's 'One Tree Hill'--tells his son, Lucas, that Professor Moriarty is his favorite 'Sherlock Holmes' character. Lucas reminds Dan that Moriarty was the villain. Dan says that depends on your interpretation." That's according to Mike Battaglino in the N.Y. Post (May 24), in a review kindly forwarded by John Baesch. If anyone knows the episode with this exchange, please let me know. HOLMES, by Omaha Perez (from O-P-P, June 2005, $3.50), is the first of four issues in a new comic-book mini-series; "a vicious skewering of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's classic literary creations, this Sherlock Holmes has more in common with Iggy Pop than Basil Rathbone" (according to the author). His address is Box 2013, Redondo Beach, CA 90278 . Jun 05 #3 Tony Harries, who was Sherlock Holmes' secretary for two years at Abbey House in the 1990s, and then toured the U.S., has sent his regards to those he met. He's now a teacher in a boarding school where he "talks to students about Sherlock Holmes (even when they don't want to listen)," and still enjoys travel; his two-year-old daughter is named Call- ie, "after the lovely town of Calistoga" in California. Tony has written four (non-Sherlockian) children's books, one of which (ZEEGPAW) is avail- able for $10.00 as an eBook at . Leon Askin died on June 3. He worked as a cabaret artist in Vienna in the 1930s, fled Nazi persecution, and acted in many American films and on tele- vision; he was best known as Gen. Albert Burkhalter on "Hogan's Heroes" in the 1960s, and he played the chauffeur Charles in "Sherlock Holmes und das Halsband des Todes" (1962). Victoria Gill has retired from the Toronto Reference Library, where she has served as curator of the Arthur Conan Doyle Collections since 1991, offer- ing a kind welcome to Sherlockians and Doyleans. Until her replacement is announced, Bob Coghill (who is a reference librarian as well as a member of The Bootmakers of Toronto and The Baker Street Irregulars), in addition to his other duties, will be in charge of maintaining and building the collec- tion; his e-mail address is . The spring issue of The Magic Door (the newsletter published by The Friends of the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection at the Toronto Reference Library) has Victoria's article about her last scheduled tour of the collection, a nice photograph of Victoria and Bob, and Peter Calamai's discussion of American slang as found in Conan Doyle's stories and notebooks. Copies of the news- letter are available from Doug Wrigglesworth, at 16 Sunset Street, Holland Landing, ON L9N 1H4, Canada . "Three key facts define Cru: its wine list is world-class; its chef, Shea Gallante, is among the most gifted in the city; and its location, on the ground floor of a handsome apartment building a few blocks north of Wash- ington Square, is notorious for the speed with which fine restaurants with- er and die there, like exotic plans in unsuitable soil, a phenomenon that Cru seems uncomfortably aware of." That's the opening of a (favorable) re- view of the restaurant in The New Yorker (May 30), and for those who have not yet guessed the address of that apartment building, it's 24 Fifth Ave- nue, where (in the ballroom) The Baker Street Irregulars held their annual dinners from 1987 to 1998, and Saturday cocktail parties from 1987 to 1995. The ballroom also is where Andrew Jay Peck and Karen Gurian were married, and the Baker Street Kinematograph met, in Andy's apartment upstairs. I'm not aware of any plans for a historical marker, but there may be one some- day noting the building's Sherlockian connections. From David Horspool's review of Umberto Eco's THE MYSTERIOUS FAME OF QUEEN LOANA (in The Sunday Times, June 5): "The novel's opening pages are a giddy display of the disconcerting effects of a lifetime of reading crowding in on an otherwise blank consciousness. Within a short space, Eco invokes the works of T. S. Eliot, Edgar Allan Poe, Conan Doyle, Georges Simenon, and Agatha Christie; the literary torrent continues with Hermann Hesse and Her- man Melville, Oliver Sacks and Robert Louis Stevenson." Jun 05 #4 Mike Berdan reports that his children are enjoying the "Which Way USA?" puzzle books and maps offered by Highlights for Chil- dren (Box 18201, Columbus, OH 43218) (800-962-3661) ; subscribers pay $7.40 (postpaid) per state, and the puzzle-book characters include a hound named Baskerville who "sniffs out important clues and can help you find hidden objects." Bob Thomalen reports that the Doubletree Hotel in Tarrytown is now accept- ing reservations for "Springtime in Baker Street" on Apr. 22-23, 2006, and he notes that you can save money by teaming up with someone and sharing a room; there's no registration fee for the conference, and you can reserve rooms with a credit card, and at least 20% of the rooms have already been booked. There will be eight vendor's tables (at no charge to the vendors), and it's first-come first-served for vendor registration. More information is available from Bob at (845-225-2445) . Michael Billington died on June 6. He started working as an actor at the Windmill Theatre in London, and went on to a wide variety of parts on stage and television; he was tested often for James Bond but never was cast, and he played Lever in "Magnum, P.I.: Holmes Is Where the Heart Is" (1984). Ed Bishop died on June 8. His professional acting career began in 1961 and he worked on television, stage, screen, and radio. He played Joseph Stanger- son in the Cushing/Stock version of "A Study in Scarlet" for BBC radio in 1968, Marvin in "The Baker Street Boys" for BBC television in 1968, Enoch J. Drebber in the Merrison/Williams BBC Radio 4 broadcast of Bert Coules' adaptation of "A Study in Scarlet" (1989) and Von Bork's agent in "His Last Bow" (1994). Ron Fish and Ben and Sue Vizoskie have launched a Sherlockian calendar at where societies can list meetings and events, and where people can find out what's happening where and when. If you would like to have something listed, Ron is at . Chris Martin is "married to a movie star and is a fan of Woody Allen movies (as well as Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories), but has no plans to embark on a film career of his own." From Dan DeLuca's interview in the Philadelphia Inquirer (on June 5) with the front man for the band Coldplay; the famous movie star is Gwyneth Paltrow. "Belly dancers and Sherlock Holmes enthusiasts will be on hand Wednesday to kick off the Tigard Public Library's Adult Reading Program," according to an item in the Portland Oregonian (May 26). The belly dancers got things moving and shaking with performances and refreshments, and then members of The Noble and Most Singular Order of the Blue Carbuncle presented speakers on a variety of topics related to Sherlock Holmes and the Victorian Era. Nash Entertainment has hired Julie Golden to write the screenplay for a mo- vie "inspired by the many letters sent from all over the world to Sherlock Holmes' London address, 221B Baker St., asking the great detective for help in solving real-life crimes," according to a report in Variety (June 21). The film "will center on a man living at that address who decides to take on a case from one of the letters. In becoming a detective his whole life is turned upside down." Jun 05 #5 The Practical, But Limited, Geologists gathered for drinks and dinner at The Joyce on 4th in Calgary on June 22, at the end of the annual meeting of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, and were welcomed by Jeff Campbell and Charles and Kris Prepolec representing the locals (The Singular Society of the Baker Street Dozen). We will dine next at the Alta Club (100 East South Temple) in Salt Lake City on Oct. 19 during the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America. Our tradi- tion is to discourage scholarly papers, quizzes, and slide shows, with the agenda consisting entirely of toasts (some scholarly, but many not). Fans of Sarah Andrews' mystery series will be happy to know that her geologist- detective Em Hansen will be going next to the Antarctic, since that's where Sarah will be traveling in November, funded by the National Science Founda- tion's Antarctic Artists and Writers Program. Trude Marlen died on June 9. She began her film career in 1933 and acted in her last film in 2001, and she was Maria Iretzkaja in "Die Graue Dame" (1937). Ron Randell died on June 11. He began his acting career on Aus- tralian radio in the 1930s, moved to the stage in 1937, to films in 1946, and then to television, and in 1975 he was the second actor to play James Larrabee in the Royal Shakespeare Company's revival of William Gillette's "Sherlock Holmes" in New York. Jonathan Adams died on June 13. He acted on stage and then in films and television beginning in 1965, and he played Jonas Oldacre in the Granada version of "The Norwood Builder" (1985). The Iowa Summer Rep's festival of plays written by Ken Ludwig will include his "Postmortem" (a mystery featuring William Gillette and set at his home in Connecticut), through July 24 at Iowa University's Theatre Building in Iowa City (800-533-4692) . "The Baker Street Irregulars have a claim to fame," their web-site reports, "they are the biggest band in Preston." That's Preston in Lancashire, and there are nine people in the pop band (there were only four when the band had its first gig at The Golden Cross on Feb. 5, 2003), and their web-site is at . Four of their songs can be heard at . Thanks to Ken Lanza for spotting news of the band. The American Film Institute's "100 Years" series reached "100 Movie Quotes" this year, with a jury of 1,500 film artists, critics, and historians sel- ecting from a list of 400 nominations. "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" (from "Gone with the Wind") was #1, and "Elementary, my dear Watson" (from "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes") was #65; "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!" (from "Dr. Strangelove") was #64, and "Get your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape" (from "Planet of the Apes") was #66. You can read all about it at . The March issue of the quarterly newsletter published by The Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collections at the University of Minnesota has a report by Julie McKuras on the recent gift of Sherlockiana from Dale L. Walker, John Bergquist's "50 Years Ago" discussion of Vincent Starrett and a 1955 visit to Chicago by Raymond Chandler, and an update on the collections from cura- tor Tim Johnson; you can request a copy of the newsletter from Richard J. Sveum, 111 Elmer L. Andersen Library, Univ. of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455 . Jun 05 #6 Dean Clark reported Ken Waight's "Lying in Ponds" comments on "Challenging the Pundits" at , on evalu- ating the accuracy (not the partisanship) of pundits; Waight suggests that bloggers could submit challenges, to which others (and the pundits) could respond. As an illustration he chose William Safire's mention in the N.Y. Times (Jan. 24, 2002) of "the failure of a dog named Silver Blaze to bark" in a Sherlock Holmes story, accompanied by Waight's (invented) defense and Safire's correction (Feb. 7, 2002) after he heard from "no fewer than 753 irate Holmes fans." Forecast: ARTHUR & GEORGE, by Julian Barnes, due from Jonathan Cape in July (352 pp., L17.99); it's a novel based on Conan Doyle's investigation of the George Edalji case. Barnes' web-site is at . Further to the earlier report (Feb 05 #7) on plans for a second printing of Les Klinger's THE NEW ANNOTATED SHERLOCK HOLMES, with corrections of errors in the first printing (which would make it a second edition), it's easy to identify: the string of numerals from one to zero on the title-page verso runs from two to zero. Les has noted that with more than 2,000 footnotes and almost 1,900 pages, errors were inevitable, and he continues to welcome word of errors not yet reported. Those who would prefer not to buy the re- vised second printing (which is now available) can find a list of errata at Les' web-site , and you can check the web- site from time to time to see additions to the list. The Sound of the Baskervilles have celebrated their 25th anni- versary with a lapel pin ($10.00 postpaid to non-members) and a paperweight ($25.00 postpaid to non-members); from David Haugen (3606 Harborcrest Court NW, Gig Harbor, WA 98332) Forecast: THE MAN FROM BEYOND, by Gabriel Brownstein (due from W. W. Norton in September; 320 pp., $23.95); a novel based on the conflict between Conan Doyle and Houdini over the medium Margery. The author will be reading and signing at the Three Lives Bookstore (154 West 10th Street, New York) on Sept. 29; the Odyssey Bookshop (9 College Street, South Hadley) on Oct. 5; and at the Community Bookstore (143 Seventh Ave- nue, Brooklyn) on Oct. 6. The British Library publishes a monthly newsletter "What's On", which notes that The Great Omar III ("The Most Remarkable Specimen of Binding Ever Pro- duced") will be on display beginning July 18. There's a great (non-Sher- lockian) story involved, and it begins with a magnificent jewelled binding of the Rubiyat of Omar Khayyam made by Sangorski & Sutcliffe that was lost with the Titanic