I’ve been trying to decide how to handle this project on my blog – do I write a post for each story? Do I do a monthly wrap up post?
Anyway, at this point, I’ve decided to write up a post for each story, although I’m not sure I will continue as I have started.
A word about my incredible deck of cards – for anyone who is interested, the Etsy listing is here. Every image is a miniature work of art, related to a well known literary character or classic story and they are absolutely gorgeous. The fact that I pulled Sherlock as my first card was a pure coincidence, although also possibly a sign that fortune favors my enterprise!
Anthology: Deep Waters, edited by Martin Edwards
Story: Echo of a Mutiny by R. Austin Freeman
This story was new to me, and is a fairly long short story. It even has two chapters. It’s an inverted mystery – the first chapter sets up the mystery, so the reader knows everything. The second chapter brings in Dr. Thorndyke, a recurring detective character from Freeman’s work, and he figures out (more or less, and in this case rather less) what happened, with the help of a bitten pipe stem, some flake tobacco, a knife, and some barnacles. It was all very Sherlockian, making the card even more appropriate.
Inverted mysteries aren’t my favorite, but this was fun, and I think that they may work better as short stories. I’m not going to bother to try to rate the stories because I struggle with a star scale for books, much less short fiction.