Months of reading for a low price! Sherlock Holmes Never Dies: Six New Adventures of the World’s Greatest Detective is an absolute bargain! Having read most of Copland’s work, I purchased this despite having read some of the stories included in this compendium because of the several stories that I haven’t read yet. The low price makes this book an absolute steal! The book includes six stories, all are of course, pastiche stories based on the classic Sherlock Holmes stories. You don’t really have to read the old stories that Copland based them on but if you happened to be familiar with the old work by Conan Doyle, your enjoyment of these new Sherlock stories will be enhanced.
I admire Copland’s work because he captures the essence of every facet of a traditional Holmes story and not just the plot elements, such as the various plot twists, or the humor, but the character stuff as well. In his stories, Watson and Holmes have great chemistry, and that is not easy to pull off regardless of how famous and established the characters are. I love how Copland always seems to include tidbits of humor into the story, to ease the tension of the breathtaking plot, which helped and reminded me to take a breath every once in awhile. The versatility of this author is a perfect recipe for the Sherlock universe, a universe that caters to a broad audience, an audience of many tastes. But Copland’s greatest strength is how he manages to weave in historical facts with his fiction and it’s a joy to be a part of. There’s a real world gravitas to it all and he breathes a breath of fresh air into these stories, reimagining them for the modern age, and for the modern reader.