Having co-written one of the great modern crime and detective series of books for younger readers, Sam Sedgman ventures out on his own for the first time with The Clockwork Conspiracy (2024). So let’s have a look, eh?
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On the day that a child is born into the ancient, vast Swift clan, the family Dictionary is placed before the new mother and, with her eyes closed, she opens it and runs her finger down the page until it settles “on the word and definition that would become her child’s name”. What Beth Lincoln chooses to do with this intriguing idea in her debut The Swifts (2023) is…a little confused.
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After stumbling over the Five Find-Outers books and learning that there was more to Enid Blyton’s juvenile mysteries than a group of precocious youths seeing some lights in an unusual place and then stumbling over a smugglers’ plot, I turn my attention to her six ‘Barney’ mysteries which, I’m told, provided similar detectival delights.
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Sometimes the Holmes canon surprises me; I have very fond memories of certain stories, while others are almost a complete blank.
Continue readingIs this the the best title in the Sherlock Holmes canon? I don’t mean the best story, but rather the most intriguing combination of words put together to entice you in.
Continue readingMany authors and film-makers would seek to overturn this in the years ahead, but as far as the canon goes we find ourselves visiting Sherlock Holmes’ first ever case.
Continue readingArthur Conan Doyle wrote 56 short stories about Sherlock Holmes, solidly 15 of which must be among the most prized creations in the genre. The other 41, then, vary somewhat.
Continue readingTuesdays in July will see a return to the Sherlock Holmes canon, with second collection The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894) providing the material under consideration.
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One final mystery for Fatty, Bets, Daisy, Larry and Pip as, nearly seven years after first discovering them myself, and after a literary life spanning some 18 years, the Five Find-Outers and dog reach the end of the road.
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A fourth and — the blurb tells us — final go around for precocious young Aggie Morton and her Belgian friend Hector Perot…but, really, how much trouble can these two get up to on a palaeontological expedition on a Dorset beach?
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The Invisible Event 