Soon after volume two of this series, we got volume three of The Wild Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Will Murray. Murray has been doing new stories with Doc Savage, The Spider, Tarzan, and other pulp characters. His first Sherlock Holmes collection came out in 2020 from Altus Press, and the second and third both came out in 2023 but from Will’s own Odyssey Publications imprint.
This time we again get a nice cover by Joe DeVito, and another map of story locations by Jason Eckardt. I do like that they continued with the title logo since volume one, adding their unique Sherlock Holmes logo on the cover they started with volume two.
Again, this volume has 10 canon-style stories, mainly from volumes in the series of The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories. Only one story is original to this collection. While the cover gives a different impression, only two stories deal with H.G. Wells‘s Martian invaders. Instead, inspired by the last volume we get four stories dealing with a new villain for Holmes: Giles Greengold. And Holmes has some encounters with other literary characters, including a return of one.
Full disclosure, I was provided a copy to review.
Let’s take a look at what we get in this volume. Instead of looking at them in their order within the volume, I’ll look at the stories in groups. These stories are set in loose chronological order from Holmes’s early years to WWI when he was retired.
First up are the four Giles Greengold stories. The first, “The Disturbing Adventure of the Missing Dispatch Box” is set early in the career of Holmes and Watson. While Holmes is off in Paris dealing with a problem, Watson is disturbed to find that his battered tin dispatch box, in which he holds his notes on Holmes cases, is missing from his bedroom! When Holmes returns, he figures that someone does not wish Watson’s notes for one is his cases to come to light, and it was thus taken. Holmes figures it is Giles Greengold who sometimes takes care of things from elements of the royal family, but can they get back the rest?
In the next one, “The Alarming Adventure of the Audacious Assassin,” Greengold returns and attempts to assassinate Holmes! This leads to Holmes and Watson decamping for a hotel. But why is Holmes being targeted? And why go to the extreme of killing their postman to get a letter meant for them? We start to learn about the network of associates Greengold here.
The next one is actually a sequel to a story in the first volume, as it has the return of Col. Richard Henry Savage. After their affair, the colonel is off to Europe for personal reasons. But then is mysteriously attacked and carried off in “The Adventure of the Dubious Brothers Burke.” Can Holmes find the colonel before the worst can happen? In this one, we (and Holmes) finally meet Greengold himself.
And in the final one, set during WWI, Holmes and Watson, working with British intelligence, put a stop to a sinister plot in “The Adventure of the Villainous Viceroy,” which involves Greengold again. Can they stop him for a final time? Overall I thought these were a great set of stories with a unique villain.
As noted, there are two stories tied to the Martians. “The Problem of the Weedy Wanderer” is done as a series of letters between Holmes and Mycroft regarding a member of the Martian humanoid servitor race that Holmes finds in 1907, and is a setup for the subsequent “The Adventure of the Second Coming,” which tells of, well, the second invasion attempt by the Martians. This one is the longest within the volume and has the Martians landing in the sea off the coast of England. I wondered how Holmes might be involved in such a situation, and thought this was pretty well done. We get the appearance of another fictional vehicle as well.
Then we get a story set in America, “The Adventure of the Grey Seal,” during WWI. Here, Holmes in disguise meets with Jimmy Dale, The Grey Seal, and enlists him, if a bit reluctantly, in helping him with a mission dealing with the German embassy. This story is set between the first and second Grey Seal novels when Dale is thought dead after the events at the end of the first. Having read the Grey Seal stories, I thought this one was well done.
In another “team up” story, so to say, has Holmes meeting Dr. Herbert West, the sinister reanimator from the story by H.P. Lovecraft in “The Adventure of the Reckless Reanimator” Set during WWI, when Holmes is retired and probably close to death. Watson encounters West in a hospital being treated for shell shock after his field hospital in France was bombed. After helping Watson with the outbreak of the Spanish flu, West gets Watson to introduce him to Holmes, as he needs to help with his experiments in reanimation. And Holmes agrees for reasons you’ll see. This story was noted as being controversial, which I think I can understand why. But I thought both Holmes and West were used well here.
Rounding out the collection are two other stories, both pretty good. The first, “The Problem of Lady Gravely,” occurs before Holmes met Watson, but which he relates to him. Holmes is approached by a dowager countess to find her wayward daughter, who has run off with a man. But Holmes is unable to find either. Further, when she apparently went to Scotland to marry, he again is unsuccessful. Then she is found dead, her body badly mutilated in Scotland, but he is unable to find the culprit. He later comes to realize what really happened.
The other, Holmes and Watson are trying to figure out the cause of a new outbreak of cholera. Which they finally trace to the titular character of “The Problem of the Plutonium Poisoner.”
Again, this is another great collection of stories. While you can read them in any order, I would recommend at least reading the Greengold stories in chronological order, as they are arranged as such in the volume.
So, when might we see a further volume? Now, Will Murray has recently posted he’s up to a little over 40 Holmes stories. Certainly enough for a fourth volume. But I know he is working on others, and in fact, we are promised four other upcoming books. Two are novels utilizing a couple of pulp heroes, another is a collection of stories in another of his areas of interest, and the last, I believe, is a collection of non-fiction works about another character that added to a pair of recent volumes. But I’m sure he’ll circle around for volume four at some point.
