How do you deal with the burden of an all-too-famous name? In the case of Christoper Sherlock Webster, you try to ignore it, then after realizing you cannot outrun your legacy, decide to make the best of it. Like his famous namesake, Sherl Webster enjoys the fine art of deduction, so when his best friend Morris Rennie brings up the idea of opening a detective agency, it doesn't take too much to convince him to give it a try. After a brief introduction to the whos and hows of the story, Raymond Kay Lyon presents the reader with five cases, composed in the spirit of Arthur Conan Doyle. Each story is broken up into three chapters and generally told from Sherl's perspective, except for "The Persistent Admirer", which opens with an awkward and frankly unnecessary scene told by an omniscient narrator. The information contained therein could easily have been recalled by the client character instead.

As far as the cases are concerned, "The Fur Trade' is not only the first but also the weakest of the five, featuring a somewhat predictable outcome. The rest of the stories feature quirky details that, along with the engaging narrative, kept me reading. With the exception of "The Fur Trade", I did not guess the identity or the motive of the perpetrators (which admittedly may say something about my own detective abilities), and that certainly added to the enjoyment of the cases. It would be lovely to read more from the Baskerville Agency in the future.

The version I read contained several glaring grammatical and spelling errors that I hope will be corrected before the book reaches a broader audience.

I found the cases outlined in the short stories with this new version of Sherlock Holmes rather unsatisfying, they lacked depth and felt a little on the superficial side. The answers felt ridiculously obvious as well. I offer numerous apologies but this short story collection was really not for me. Many thanks for the ARC.