Another Choose Your Own Adventure-style mystery, this one aimed at the younger market. So how does it stack up in comparison to the other two I’ve tried thus far, which were more clearly for grown-ups?
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Given that it revolves around loosely-codified magic, a world of ‘normal’ folk living below a world of ‘giants’ in the sky, and a pigeon who is an art critic, The Beanstalk Murder (2025) by P.G. Bell is a far better book than it has any right to be.
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Following the conclusion of the excellent Adventures on Trains series by M.G. Leonard and Sam Sedgman, I — no doubt along, one suspects, with children’s publishers — was keen for another dose of transport-based juvenile mystery-making. And so at the start of the Mysteries at Sea series by A.M. Howell do we find ourselves.
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While I would have liked Sam Sedgman’s debut novel The Clockwork Conspiracy (2024) to be rather more clue-based, given his history in the juvenile mystery field, I nevertheless enjoyed its fast pace, high energy, interesting premise, and unusual settings, and so am back for its sequel, The Forbidden Atlas (2025).
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A final non-canonical Sherlock Holmes story this month, with Death Cloud (2010) by Andrew Lane being aimed at the 8 to 12 year-old market and setting up some Minor Felonies posts for Tuesdays in January.
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Lest we forget, I was not enamoured of Lyndsay Faye’s Sherlock Holmes novel Dust and Shadow (2009), but her characterisation was strong, people seem to rate her pastiches, and Holmes arguably finds his firmest feet in the short stories. And so to Faye’s anthology of Holmes stories The Whole Art of Detection [ss] (2017) do we turn today.
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One of only a handful of tie-in novels I’ve read, Adam Christopher’s The Ghost Line (2015) did an excellent job of tapping into the feeling of Elementary (2012-19), the US TV version of the updating of Sherlock Holmes. And so to Christopher’s second and final novel for the series, Blood and Ink (2016), do we turn today.
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Donning my waders to enter the fetid waters of Sherlock Holmes pastichery, I was prepared to kiss a lot of frogs on the way to a prince or two. But with The Return of Moriarty (2025) by Jack Anderson I’ve stumbled over a very handsome prince indeed far sooner than I’d ever hope — put simply, it’s wonderful, and if you’re a fan of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Holmes universe then you need a copy of this book in your life.
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I stumbled over the Baker Street Irregulars: The Game is Afoot [ss] (2018) collection, in which thirteen authors offer wildly varying alternative versions of Sherlock Holmes, when searching for more criminous tales by Jonathan Maberry, one of the highlights of the C. Auguste Dupin-extending collection Beyond Rue Morgue [ss] (2013).
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When A. Carver published The Christmas Miracle Crimes (2023) close to Christmas 2023, I was caught off-guard: with that title, one feels it should be read in the Winter, and I try to be about four to five weeks ahead on my blogging and so it had to wait until 2024. Then I just…didn’t read it in 2024, so Winter 2025 finally comes to the rescue
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The Invisible Event 