News from the Peschel Press — June 8, 2018

We’ve got a number of books that came to fruition at the same time to talk about, plus an upcoming appearance at Scintillation of Scions 2018!

Last one first: We’ll be driving down Friday to the Sheraton BWI Hotel to showcase our books at Scintillation of Scions 2018. After years of appearing at craft and book shows, this will be the first time we’ll be displaying our 223B Casebook line to an audience of Sherlock Holmes fans.

Sherlock Holmes in the Jazz Age

We had planned this appearance for several months, which gave us enough time to push out the latest book in the 223B Series: “Sherlock Holmes Jazz Age Parodies and Pastiches I: 1920-1924.” Like the others, this one contains stories and a few poems published during this time in Arthur Conan Doyle’s life. Among them:

* Vincent Starrett’s “The Unique Hamlet,” considered by Ellery Queen to be one of the best pastiches ever written.

* Charles Hamilton’s “The Case of the Sinn Feiners,” one of two Irish-themed parodies in the collection.

* “Watson!” by Capt. A.E. Dingle, a nautical story in which the idle rich get their comeuppance.

* “The Master Mind,” a satirical piece by a promising writer with the odd name of Dashiell Hammett. (Wonder whatever became of him?).

* “The Mystery of the Murdered Major,” by James Thurber, written when he was a reporter for the Columbus Dispatch (thanks to them for giving permission to republish, as it is under copyright).

* “How Watson Learned the Trick,” by Conan Doyle, written for Queen Mary’s Dollhouse library.

I also added “The Case of the Missing Mortician,” a TwainLock story, five essays describing Conan Doyle’s life year by year, and the usual researched introductions and footnotes, and contemporary art.

The ebook is in the works and should be out by the end of the month.

The Mark Twain / Sherlock Holmes Stories

The approach of Scintillation also motivated me to write another story in the TwainLock series and publish the collected works.

I admit, I’ve been hiding this light in plain sight. A long time ago, the year 2000 to be exact, I wrote “The Adventure of the Whyos,” in which Mark Twain, sailing to Europe in disgrace over the collapse of his finances, gets dragged by an old friend into the troubles he had trying to marry his daughter off to an English lord. Twain decides to consult Holmes on the matter, having been through a few adventures before with him.

The story amused me and in high hopes I sent it off to “Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine” where it was rejected, then “Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine,” where it also bounced back with unseemly haste. The story stayed in a drawer for years until I encountered Jonathan Maberry, the excellent writer of thrillers, at a Pennwriters convention booksigning.

The details are vague, but for some reason I brought up the story and regretted being unable to place it. “Why don’t you publish it yourself?” he said, and of course he was right, and lo, it was done.

Over the years, I gathered notes and material for a series of stories, and the creation of the 223B Casebook gave me the opportunity – being the editor and publisher – to sneak in a story at the end of each book. After all, who would complain?

So most of the books in the series got a story (sometimes I couldn’t finish one in time and had to let it go). To be honest, except for one person noticing, I still don’t know if they’re any good. But I loved researching and writing them, and got to know Twain’s authorial voice quite well.

I have to confess: These are tricky stories. They’re not quite mysteries like we think of them, with clues and suspects and ‘bring the suspects together and reveal the solution.” They’re more like tall tales, as if dictated by Sam Clemens as part of his autobiography project, and then discarded.

There were several restrictions placed on the TwainLock stories:

* They had to conform to the chronologies of both Sherlock and Clemens. For Sherlock, I used Les Klinger’s timeline, and R. Kent Rasmussen’s Mark Twain from A to Z for Clemens.

* It had to be told from Clemens’ point of view, in his narrative voice. This was a hard nut to crack. We think of him as a creator of aphorisms, but that was Twain, a fictional character he created. The real Sam Clemens was a more complex creature. His narrative voice changed whether he was writing a sketch, a short story (of which I think only a few of his works could be classified as one), a polemic, or an entry in his autobiography.

* These stories should also be somewhat realistic and plausible, as if they could have happened to Clemens. I didn’t want them to be a Watson-narrated pastiche, even though one of them, it turns out, was narrated by Watson.

These are the stories:

Our Man in Tangier (1867): A Clemens / Mycroft story, set in Morocco, which Twain visited before writing The Innocents Abroad.

The Adventure of the Dancing Man (1868) A Clemens / Watson story, set in San Francisco on the Fourth of July.

The Adventure of the Jersey Girl (1878) A Clemens / Irene Adler story, set in Heidelberg where Clemens and his family stayed.

The Adventure of the Stomach Club (1879) Finally! Clemens meets Holmes, then out of college and living near the British Museum.

The Adventure of the Missing Mortician (1882) Clemens and Holmes in America! Set in Hartford, where we get a glimpse of Mark Twain’s home and meet his wife, Livy.

The Adventure of the Fight Club (1887) A Watson-narrated story set in London about gambling, boxing, and fraud.

The Adventure of the Whyos (1894) The story that started it all.

Available now in trade paperback, with the ebook version coming later this month.