A Study in Silence

The Diogenes Club is the queerest club in London […] No member is permitted to take the least notice of any other one. Save in the Stranger’s Room, no talking is, under any circumstances, allowed, and three offences, if brought to the notice of the committee, render the talker liable to expulsion.

Sherlock Holmes in The Greek Interpreter by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Holmes’s deductive skills are put to the test in my latest contribution to The MX Anthology of New Sherlock Holmes Stories, when he has to investigate a death in the reading room of the Diogenes Club. The club, with its strict rules, seemed the perfect place to showcase his observational abilities, as he is confronted by a room full of silent and uncooperative witnesses.

This is my seventh contribution to the world’s largest collection of Sherlock Holmes pastiches, which raises money to support the work of the school at Undershaw, the former home of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. For the latest three volumes (XXXI - XXXIII), editor David Marcum has collected another 62 traditional pastiches written in the style of Conan Doyle by some of the leading Sherlock Holmes writers.

The Commotion at the Diogenes Club appears in volume XXXII of The MX Anthology of New Sherlock Holmes Stories, and all three new volumes can be pre-ordered in paperback, hardback and electronic formats through Kickstarter. The campaign can be found at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mxpublishing/the-mx-book-of-new-sherlock-holmes-stories-xxxi-to-xxxiii/, and runs until 25 April 2022, with the books due to be published by May 2022.