The Editor’s Gas-Bag (with a wink at Philip Shreffler, Donald Pollock, Steven Rothman, and other editors of the Baker Street Journal.) Allen Mackler, BSI: At last August’s Sherlock Holmes Collections weekend at the University of Minnesota, significant attention was paid to the late Allen Mackler (“Sarasate”), including tributes by Dr. Paul Martin (“Dr. Leslie Armstrong”) and me at the installation at the Wilson Library of the marvelous 221B sitting-room Allen had created in his Minnesota home and left to the Collections. It is largely thanks to another fabulous bequest by Allen that the new permanent E. W. McDiarmid Curatorship for the Sherlock Holmes Collections has been created. Before moving to Minnesota Allen lived in Washington D.C. and worked at its NPR affiliate WETA-FM, with his own weekly “Collectors Forum” program featuring music from his immense personal collection of vintage 78rpm classical records. On one occasion he presented “Sherlock Holmes and Music,” and E. W. McDiarmid Curator Timothy Johnson has just added a recording of that program to the University Libraries’ media section. [February 10, 2011] Return to the Welcome page. Detective Fiaschetti: Some interesting Irregular comments from Burt Wolder, Peter Ashman, Clifford Goldfarb, Daniel Stashower, Susan Dahlinger, Russell Merritt, and Peter Blau have been appended to the article described two entries below, go here and scroll down to the end. [February 10, 2011] Return to the Welcome page. Coming up next week, Tuesday February 15th: From Dr. Wesley Britton of spywise.net: Next Tues., Jon Lellenberg, literary agent of the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle estate, will discuss Doyle and his most famous creation on Dave White Presents. Jon will also talk about a remarkable group known as the Baker Street Irregulars and his new novel—BAKER STREET IRREGULAR—a blend of fact and fiction, mystery and espionage. And a touch of Mr. Holmes as well . . . The new edition of DWP debuts Tues. Feb. 15 at 7:30 p.m. Eastern, then 7:30 Pacific over www.KSAV.org On Wed. Feb. 16, the program will become available for download anytime you like a www.audioentertainment.org/dwp I’m interviewed for thirty minutes about the BSI and my novel, followed by other features on what is a 90-minute biweekly program in all. Even if you can’t catch it that night, it can be accessed at the second website above any time from the following day on. [February 8, 2011] Return to the Welcome page. Something brand-new about Christ Cella’s Speakeasy. Something original, unknown to De Waal, and also to Irregulars -- the tough cop who protected Christ Cella’s speakeasy during Prohibition when Christopher Morley and his kinsprits were cooking up the BSI there, and what he thought of Sherlock Holmes -- a minority report from around that table in Cella’s kitchen, published by one of the original Baker Street Irregulars! [February 6, 2011] Return to the Welcome page. Now in the Essays section: Just added, my Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collections Newsletter article of last month about “Julian Wolff and Still Waters,” with the kind permission of McDiarmid Curator Timothy Johnson and newsletter editor Julie McKuras. In addition to what it has to say about Julian Wolff personally, I think more recent arrivals to the ranks of the BSI may be surprised to learn how succession occurred in an earlier era, even if Julian bears responsibility for how this has changed, and not to the BSI’s betterment. The Sherlock Holmes Collections Newsletter is invaluable reading for all interested in the world of Sherlock Holmes, and if you don’t receive it already, contact the editor at Mike9750@aol.com. [January 29, 2011] Return to the Welcome page. Another highlight of the BSI weekend. It is the custom at BSI dinners to read Elmer Davis’s Constitution & Buy Laws, first devised in 1934 (though occasionally tampered with along the way to today). At the January 6th BSI Special Meeting held at The Coffee House in New York City, the Davis Documents were read by Karl Meyer (“Fritz von Waldbaum”), as eloquently as you’d expect from a former New York Times editorial writer and distinguished historian of The Great Game. This year we also took advantage of the presence of Richard B. Bernstein, author of The Founding Fathers Reconsidered, Amending America, Thomas Jefferson, and other works of constitutional history, which he teaches at New York Law School, and asked him to follow the reading with an explication of Davis’s remarkable text. With his permission we present it here. It was well received, to say the least. [January 21, 2011] Return to the Welcome page. Woody Hazelbaker’s “great Hiatus”: The BSI weekend is behind us, and some new Links of the Week are now up, but it’ll be a while yet before Woody Hazelbaker’s World resumes with new installments. For the next few weeks, my time must go to finishing a new Conan Doyle book project for the British Library to publish in the autumn -- an annotated edition of his first attempt at a novel, The Narrative of John Smith, written 1883-84 and never published. Once more Dan Stashower and I are teaming to annotate the text, and write a critical introduction for it. As a novel, it’s clear why it wasn’t published, but as a view into Conan Doyle’s mind when he was a young (23, 24) struggling physician in Southsea struggling to become a writer as well, it is very revealing, with many autobiographical references and foreshadowing of literary works to come, including A Study in Scarlet which he would write just a year or two later in the spring of 1885. [January 16, 2011] Return to the Welcome page. Umm, no, but thanks for the thought . . . . Marian Misters of Sleuth of Baker Street bookshop in Toronto writes in its Merchant of Menace newsletter, about my BSI historical nvel Baker Street Irregular: “The descriptions of the characters that meet for lunch on a regular basis to discuss Sherlock Holmes (as well as drink as much as they do!) is brilliant. To paint the detailed, lively picture that the author does must mean that he was present at the discussions! Of course, that would make him near a hundred! (I know he’s not that ancient!)” [January 15, 2011] Return to the Welcome page. Personal BSI weekend highlight Everybody has their own. For mine, I offer Roger Donway’s toast to The Second Mrs. Watson, given at the BSI Special Meeting’s dinner at The Coffee House club on the evening of January 6th, Sherlock Holmes’s birthday. Everyone present was in stitches -- some with indignation, others with glee. (I admit to the glee in my own case.) Roger has provided for this appearance in print his source-notes for the toast, for the benefit of other scholars of the Canon. [January 13, 2011] Return to the Welcome page. Charles Henry, BSI Ray Betzner sends the obituary for Chuck Henry, who was “The Lion’s Mane” in the BSI since 1980. Chuck died on December 30th at the age of 95. Though a man of science, Chuck Henry was also something of a latter-day Victorian zany in the BSI, with moustaches that made Grover Cleveland’s look modest, and a sense of humor that I confess always made it impossible for me to picture him without a pith helmet, or think of him without recalling Groucho Marx’s “Hurray for Captain Spaulding” in Animal Crackers. He will be missed by all who knew him. [January 10, 2011] Return to the Welcome page. Randy Cox review of Baker Street Irregular Retired reference and government documents librarian at St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minn., Randy is also “The Conk-Singleton Forgery Case” in the BSI, and has been kind enough to review my novel in Dime Novel Round-Up, a periodical that covers a body of popular literature in which he is one of the world’s true experts. The following paragraph has been added to the reviews section of this site’s page about the novel, but Randy’s entire review may be read here. This is truly a page-turner, but at a more deliberate pace than is usually associated with that term. Once caught up in the events, the reader does not want to miss a single incident, a single line of prose, a single word of dialogue. Once finished there is a temptation to turn back to the beginning and experience the ride all over again. [January 1, 2011] Return to the Welcome page. Robert Clyne, BSI Peter Blau advises me of the death on December 12th of Robert C. Clyne of Wilton, Conn. Bob Clyne was one of several Fordham University graduates from Brooklyn who formed The Diogenes Club of Brooklyn in 1949 and went on to be invested in the BSI, in his case as “The Opal Tiara” in 1959. (See Irregular Crises of the Late ‘Forties, pp. 463-64.) His hometown newspaper’s obituary notes his devotion to the BSI. [December 29, 2010] Return to the Welcome page. EQMM review of Baker Street Irregular Now in subscribers’ hands, on sale soon, and at the BSI annual dinner next month, Jon Breen’s “Jury Box” review in February’s Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine: **** Jon Lellenberg: Baker Street Irregular, Arkham House/Mycroft & Moran, $39.95. The outstanding item in our annual birthday round-up is the latest novel about eminent fans of the Baker Street sleuth. Though it follows fictionalizations as excellent as Anthony Boucher’s The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars (1940) and Arthur H. Lewis’s Copper Beeches (1971), this quite different novel may be the best of them all. In an espionage saga extending from 1933 to the early years of the Cold War, New York lawyer Woody Hazelbaker helps settle the affairs of mobster Owney Madden, joins the BSI, and participates in intelligence activities before, during, and after World War II. Clearly based extensively on fact (and a whole second volume is projected to document and clarify), this extraordinary historical novel is recommended to anyone interested in the run-up to World War II in the United States and the role of codebreaking in the defeat of Germany and Japan. Excellent talk in place of physical action gives a much more authentic feel than the cinematic choreography of lesser novels. Historical characters abound from FDR and Churchill to the founding Irregulars, many of whom (notably radio commentator Elmer Davis) had an important role in the war effort. Also appearing is prolific British thriller writer Dennis Wheatley, who would have appreciated how Lellenberg draws several plot strands together for a startling ending. [December 14, 2010] Return to the Welcome page.

The Editor’s Gas-Bag

(with a wink at Philip Shreffler, Donald Pollock,

Steven Rothman, and other editors of the Baker Street Journal.)

Allen Mackler, BSI:

At last August’s Sherlock Holmes Collections weekend at the University of Minnesota, significant attention was paid to the late Allen Mackler (“Sarasate”), including tributes by Dr. Paul Martin (“Dr. Leslie Armstrong”) and me at the installation at the Wilson Library of the marvelous 221B sitting-room Allen had created in his Minnesota home and left to the Collections. It is largely thanks to another fabulous bequest by Allen that the new permanent E. W. McDiarmid Curatorship for the Sherlock Holmes Collections has been created. Before moving to Minnesota Allen lived in Washington D.C. and worked at its NPR affiliate WETA-FM, with his own weekly “Collectors Forum” program featuring music from his immense personal collection of vintage 78rpm classical records. On one occasion he presented “Sherlock Holmes and Music,” and E. W. McDiarmid Curator Timothy Johnson has just added a recording of that program to the University Libraries’ media section.
[February 10, 2011]

Return to the Welcome page.

Detective Fiaschetti:

Some interesting Irregular comments from Burt Wolder, Peter Ashman, Clifford Goldfarb, Daniel Stashower, Susan Dahlinger, Russell Merritt, and Peter Blau have been appended to the article described two entries below, go here and scroll down to the end.

[February 10, 2011]

Return to the Welcome page.

Coming up next week, Tuesday February 15th:

From Dr. Wesley Britton of spywise.net:

Next Tues., Jon Lellenberg, literary agent of the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle estate, will discuss Doyle and his most famous creation on Dave White Presents. Jon will also talk about a remarkable group known as the Baker Street Irregulars and his new novel—BAKER STREET IRREGULAR—a blend of fact and fiction, mystery and espionage. And a touch of Mr. Holmes as well . . .

The new edition of DWP debuts Tues. Feb. 15 at 7:30 p.m. Eastern, then 7:30 Pacific over www.KSAV.org

On Wed. Feb. 16, the program will become available for download anytime you like a

www.audioentertainment.org/dwp

I’m interviewed for thirty minutes about the BSI and my novel, followed by other features on what is a 90-minute biweekly program in all. Even if you can’t catch it that night, it can be accessed at the second website above any time from the following day on.

[February 8, 2011]

Return to the Welcome page.

Something brand-new about Christ Cella’s Speakeasy.

Something original, unknown to De Waal, and also to Irregulars -- the tough cop who protected Christ Cella’s speakeasy during Prohibition when Christopher Morley and his kinsprits were cooking up the BSI there, and what he thought of Sherlock Holmes -- a minority report from around that table in Cella’s kitchen, published by one of the original Baker Street Irregulars!

[February 6, 2011]

Return to the Welcome page.

Now in the Essays section:

Just added, my Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collections Newsletter article of last month about “Julian Wolff and Still Waters,” with the kind permission of McDiarmid Curator Timothy Johnson and newsletter editor Julie McKuras. In addition to what it has to say about Julian Wolff personally, I think more recent arrivals to the ranks of the BSI may be surprised to learn how succession occurred in an earlier era, even if Julian bears responsibility for how this has changed, and not to the BSI’s betterment. The Sherlock Holmes Collections Newsletter is invaluable reading for all interested in the world of Sherlock Holmes, and if you don’t receive it already, contact the editor at Mike9750@aol.com.

[January 29, 2011]

Return to the Welcome page.

Another highlight of the BSI weekend.

It is the custom at BSI dinners to read Elmer Davis’s Constitution & Buy Laws, first devised in 1934 (though occasionally tampered with along the way to today). At the January 6th BSI Special Meeting held at The Coffee House in New York City, the Davis Documents were read by Karl Meyer (“Fritz von Waldbaum”), as eloquently as you’d expect from a former New York Times editorial writer and distinguished historian of The Great Game.

This year we also took advantage of the presence of Richard B. Bernstein, author of The Founding Fathers Reconsidered, Amending America, Thomas Jefferson, and other works of constitutional history, which he teaches at New York Law School, and asked him to follow the reading with an explication of Davis’s remarkable text. With his permission we present it here. It was well received, to say the least.

[January 21, 2011]

Return to the Welcome page.

Woody Hazelbaker’s “great Hiatus”:

The BSI weekend is behind us, and some new Links of the Week are now up, but it’ll be a while yet before Woody Hazelbaker’s World resumes with new installments. For the next few weeks, my time must go to finishing a new Conan Doyle book project for the British Library to publish in the autumn -- an annotated edition of his first attempt at a novel, The Narrative of John Smith, written 1883-84 and never published. Once more Dan Stashower and I are teaming to annotate the text, and write a critical introduction for it. As a novel, it’s clear why it wasn’t published, but as a view into Conan Doyle’s mind when he was a young (23, 24) struggling physician in Southsea struggling to become a writer as well, it is very revealing, with many autobiographical references and foreshadowing of literary works to come, including A Study in Scarlet which he would write just a year or two later in the spring of 1885.

[January 16, 2011]

Return to the Welcome page.

Umm, no, but thanks for the thought . . . .

Marian Misters of Sleuth of Baker Street bookshop in Toronto writes in its Merchant of Menace newsletter, about my BSI historical nvel Baker Street Irregular: “The descriptions of the characters that meet for lunch on a regular basis to discuss Sherlock Holmes (as well as drink as much as they do!) is brilliant. To paint the detailed, lively picture that the author does must mean that he was present at the discussions! Of course, that would make him near a hundred! (I know he’s not that ancient!)”

[January 15, 2011]

Return to the Welcome page.

Personal BSI weekend highlight

Everybody has their own. For mine, I offer Roger Donway’s toast to The Second Mrs. Watson, given at the BSI Special Meeting’s dinner at The Coffee House club on the evening of January 6th, Sherlock Holmes’s birthday. Everyone present was in stitches -- some with indignation, others with glee. (I admit to the glee in my own case.) Roger has provided for this appearance in print his source-notes for the toast, for the benefit of other scholars of the Canon.

[January 13, 2011]

Return to the Welcome page.

Charles Henry, BSI

Ray Betzner sends the obituary for Chuck Henry, who was “The Lion’s Mane” in the BSI since 1980. Chuck died on December 30th at the age of 95. Though a man of science, Chuck Henry was also something of a latter-day Victorian zany in the BSI, with moustaches that made Grover Cleveland’s look modest, and a sense of humor that I confess always made it impossible for me to picture him without a pith helmet, or think of him without recalling Groucho Marx’s “Hurray for Captain Spaulding” in Animal Crackers. He will be missed by all who knew him.

[January 10, 2011]

Return to the Welcome page.

Randy Cox review of Baker Street Irregular

Retired reference and government documents librarian at St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minn., Randy is also “The Conk-Singleton Forgery Case” in the BSI, and has been kind enough to review my novel in Dime Novel Round-Up, a periodical that covers a body of popular literature in which he is one of the world’s true experts. The following paragraph has been added to the reviews section of this site’s page about the novel, but Randy’s entire review may be read here.

This is truly a page-turner, but at a more deliberate pace than is usually associated with that term. Once caught up in the events, the reader does not want to miss a single incident, a single line of prose, a single word of dialogue. Once finished there is a temptation to turn back to the beginning and experience the ride all over again.

[January 1, 2011]

Return to the Welcome page.

Robert Clyne, BSI

Peter Blau advises me of the death on December 12th of Robert C. Clyne of Wilton, Conn. Bob Clyne was one of several Fordham University graduates from Brooklyn who formed The Diogenes Club of Brooklyn in 1949 and went on to be invested in the BSI, in his case as “The Opal Tiara” in 1959. (See Irregular Crises of the Late ‘Forties, pp. 463-64.) His hometown newspaper’s obituary notes his devotion to the BSI.

[December 29, 2010]

Return to the Welcome page.

EQMM review of Baker Street Irregular

Now in subscribers’ hands, on sale soon, and at the BSI annual dinner next month, Jon Breen’s “Jury Box” review in February’s Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine:

**** Jon Lellenberg: Baker Street Irregular, Arkham House/Mycroft & Moran, $39.95. The outstanding item in our annual birthday round-up is the latest novel about eminent fans of the Baker Street sleuth. Though it follows fictionalizations as excellent as Anthony Boucher’s The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars (1940) and Arthur H. Lewis’s Copper Beeches (1971), this quite different novel may be the best of them all. In an espionage saga extending from 1933 to the early years of the Cold War, New York lawyer Woody Hazelbaker helps settle the affairs of mobster Owney Madden, joins the BSI, and participates in intelligence activities before, during, and after World War II. Clearly based extensively on fact (and a whole second volume is projected to document and clarify), this extraordinary historical novel is recommended to anyone interested in the run-up to World War II in the United States and the role of codebreaking in the defeat of Germany and Japan. Excellent talk in place of physical action gives a much more authentic feel than the cinematic choreography of lesser novels. Historical characters abound from FDR and Churchill to the founding Irregulars, many of whom (notably radio commentator Elmer Davis) had an important role in the war effort. Also appearing is prolific British thriller writer Dennis Wheatley, who would have appreciated how Lellenberg draws several plot strands together for a startling ending.

[December 14, 2010]

Return to the Welcome page.