Sherlock Holmes has been sleuthing the literary landscape nearly 150 years. The stories that were originally carried in The Strand Magazine made the jump to the silver screen with Basil Rathbone and then to the popular television series. The Canon has never been out of print, enchanting and enthralling successive generations with tales of mystery and deduction. If I ever attempted to review Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes tales, I’d have the Baker Street Irregulars chasing me much like the villagers chasing Frankenstein. And rightfully so.

That said, Leslie S. Klinger’s The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes is the work of a lifetime. Mr. Klinger’s first two annotated volumes contain the fifty-six Sherlock Holmes stories. He’s a Baker Street Irregular as well as one of the world’s leading authorities on Sherlock Holmes. Volume Three contains the four novels, A Study In Scarlet, The Sign Of The Four, The Hound Of The Baskervilles and The Valley Of Fear. There are nearly 1000 different annotations, some from established sources and many that have been newly discovered. The numerous illustrations and photographs average one every other page and provide a glimpse into Victorian and Edwardian England. Mr. Klinger’s scholarly selection and arrangement brings Sherlock Holmes to view beyond The Canon. We see him in the background minutiae to which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle leaves as clues to the Holmes biography.

The magic of The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes is breathtakingly simple. You can sit with this sumptuous volume on your lap and start gazing at the illustrations. Suddenly you’re reading the annotations and it’s not long before you’re reading the stories themselves. The real test for The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes is certainly not the stories it contains or the accompanying notes. The litmus is one tough question: How does this annotated Sherlock Holmes stand against previous annotated versions? No annotated volume, regardless of author and body of work, is ever truly complete. Passing years bring new research, fresh perspective and different information that cause annotated editions to grow in quality. Within the first two lines of the preface, Klinger cites the 1967 two volume The Annotated Sherlock Holmes edited by William S. Baring-Gould. He acknowledges the depth of Baring-Gould’s work as the cornerstone of every Sherlockian library. Baring-Gould’s volumes, even though they kicked up a bit of controversy among Sherlockian scholars remained in print for nearly thirty-five years. There is a massive amount Sherlockia among those who enjoy the stories and go into the scholarship of The Canon. One avenue is the consecutive dating of each story, which is difficult being there are 56 stories and four novels that span the life of Sherlock Holmes. An entirely different avenue of research has grown in this area alone. Klinger includes a concise chronological table of the life and times of Sherlock Holmes that places events not only in order but in context. This expansive table juxtaposes Holmes life and cases with Dr. Watson’s and, further, with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. And if this isn’t enough, events in England, in Europe and the world are also included. The reader is treated to much more than an overview of Sherlockia, he can select his own point of total immersion. It’s almost as though Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s pen has been hemorrhaging new and different ideas from beyond the grave through the minds of all those who’ve read The Canon. Is it bewildering? Not really. It is, as Mr. Klinger demonstrates, The Canon as biography rather than fiction.

In this way, Leslie S. Klinger brings Sherlock Holmes to a new generation and this is the annotated edition that will thrill them in the year 2006 much the same as the London reading public was thrilled in 1906 with the release of a new magazine bound Holmes story. In a 1929 preface to a volume of Sherlock Holmes stories, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle said: “I trust that the younger public may find these romances of interest, and that here and there, one of the older generation may recapture an ancient thrill.” Leslie S. Klinger’s The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes fully delivers on the profound trust handed down by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

It is the cornerstone of modern Sherlockian libraries.