The Temple of Dagon

I picked up a new book yesterday. It is called Shadows Over Baker Street.

"Sherlock Holmes enters the nightmare world of H. P. Lovecraft"

From the back cover:

What would happen if Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's peerless detective, Sherlock Holmes, and his allies were to find themselves faced with Lovecraftian musteries whose solutions lay not only beyond the grasp of logic, but beyond sanity itself? In this collection of original tales, twenty of today's cutting-edge writers provide answers to that burning question

It seems pretty interesting. The writers include Neil Gaiman, Brian Stableford, Poppy Z. Brite, Barbara Hambly, Steve Perry, and Caitlin R. Kiernan.

Here is an Amazon link

Contents:

• A Study in Emerald - Neil Gaiman
  Tiger! Tiger! - Elizabeth Bear
  The Case of the Wavy Black Dagger - Steve Perry
  A Case of Royal Blood - Steven-Elliot Altman
  The Weeping Masks - James Lowder
  Art in the Blood - Brian Stableford
  The Curious Case of Miss Violet Stone - Poppy Z. Brite & David Ferguson
  The Adventure of the Antiquarian’s Niece - Barbara Hambly
  The Mystery of the Worm - John Pelan
  The Mystery of the Hanged Man’s Puzzle - Paul Finch
  The Horror of the Many Faces - Tim Lebbon
  The Adventure of the Arab’s Manuscript - Michael Reaves
  The Drowned Geologist - Caitlín R. Kiernan
  A Case of Insomnia - John P. Vourlis
  The Adventure of the Voorish Sign - Richard A. Lupoff
  The Adventure of Exham Priory - F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre
  Death Did Not Become Him - David Niall Wilson & Patricia Lee Macomber
  Nightmare in Wax - Simon Clark

Horror and detectives tend not to work, in my opinion. Even Poe couldn't interest me in Marie Roget.

The book has two or three really cool stories. Gaiman's definitely falls into that group. The rest range from dull and cliched to mildly interesting.

I will let you know more of my thoughts once I have finished it

i dug it. i bought it when i was unemployed and, having nothing to do all day, finished it in a jiffy.

(not an actual "jiffy," but you now...a jiffy.)

Jesus Prime: have you read any of Michael Marshall Smith's stuff? i would recommend ONLY FORWARD or ONE OF US. not detective stories, but they're close enough to using the same 'voice.'

Never even heard of him. I'll see what I can dig up.

Jesus Prime wrote:Horror and detectives tend not to work, in my opinion. Even Poe couldn't interest me in Marie Roget.

I don't know about mixing horror with detectives, but "Roget" is definitely the weakest and longest of the Dupin stories. "Rue Morgue" and "Purloined Letter" are much better.

Lovecraft did say though that at one time he modeled his writing on Arthur Conan Doyle's detective stories. It may be that little of that bleeds through in the gradual discovery process and/or "piecing together" of his later stories--Call of Cthulhu, Mountains of Madness, Whisperer.

Jesus Prime wrote:Never even heard of him. I'll see what I can dig up.

he ah, authors now under Michael Marshall. the Straw Men trilogy is the lastest thing he's written, and it is also very good.

"Cthulhu by Gaslight"?

Gonna pick that up.

krakenten wrote:"Cthulhu by Gaslight"?

sounds cool

BTW, Marie Roget is based on an actual unsolved case, as sensational at the time as Jon-Benet Ramsey.
Poe presents a possible solution, which might have gotten him into a spot of disfavor had he not couched it as fiction.
Look up his little known short, "The Assignation", little known, but as macabre a bit of romantic claptrap as might be desired.

I would get that book but David Niall Wilson sucks, but getting the book for Paul Finch though is another story. I published Finch on the second anthology. Finch is a good writer. I read him on the Cyberpulp anthology.

Sounds good to me.

I saw that book recently in waterstones and decided against buying it since I don't really have any enthusiasm or knowlegde for sherlock holmes and/or detective stories.

However in this months Fortean Times there's a favourable review of a new computer game called Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened which conciously combines HPL and Sherlock Homles and looks interesting. Doubt it could live up to "dark corners" though.... (I really love that game)