An Unconventional Holmes - Audiobook Tour and Giveaway

An Unconventional Holmes: Three Unnatural Cases
by Liese Sherwood-Fabre
Narration Performed by RJ Bayley
Genre: Mystery Short Story Collection 

Missing boys, an imposter husband, and a bizarre vampyre murder.

Sherlock Holmes ventures into the realm of the unnatural in these three cases: the disappearance of the Baker Street Irregulars, the true identity of a Great War veteran, and a vampyre’s grisly death. Crossing into the worlds of the Grimm Brothers and Bram Stoker, he seeks the clues needed to unravel the mysteries confronting him. Can Holmes’ conventional methods still function in the unconventional world?"
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"[Dr. Sherwood-Fabre] knows her Holmes characterization and her stories do not disappoint."


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​THE ADVENTURE OF THE COUNTERFEIT SQUIRE
(Based on the Grimm Brothers’ Tale of Rumpelstiltskin)
 
 
A scream alerted me to the intruder’s presence. I caught up to and passed the swarm of bees heading in the cry’s direction, only to stop when I reached the woman to wave her backwards. 
Between pants from the exertion, I shouted at her. “Get behind that rock wall.” 
She turned and rushed around to the road side of vine-covered enclosure. The honeysuckle and peppermint covering its stones deterred the insects from crossing over into the lane. 
            No longer sensing her presence, they returned to the hives I’d been tending and freed me to meet my unexpected visitor at my cottage’s border.
I quickly understood the bees’ interest. Her jasmine scent penetrated my hat’s protective veil, overpowering that of the smoke drifting from the cannister in my left hand. She wore one of those straight, loose garments that had come into fashion with the end of the Great War. Forest green. And a large-brimmed straw hat with a velvet ribbon. She raised her head slightly to peer at me from under its shadow.
“Sorry about that,” I said, lifting my veil to get a better look at her. “I’m—”
“Mr. Sherlock Holmes,” she said, holding out her hand. “Mrs. Heather Miller. I need you to find my husband.”
            I studied her for a moment. Her face presented a tension, a marked anxiety telling me this was no ordinary missing person case. All that aside...
            “I’m retired,” I said “There were more than one hundred and sixty thousand soldiers missing at the end of the war. The army would be a better place to start.”
            “How did you know my husband was in the war?”
“The poppy pin you’re wearing.”
            Her lips, painted the same color as the small brooch fixed above her right breast, formed an o. “What if I were to tell you the army won’t help me because they believe he has come home?”
            As if having developed a will of their own, my eyebrows rose, then dropped into a v. My interest piqued, I decided no harm existed in hearing her out.
“Why don’t you explain your problem over a cup of tea?” 
I gestured to my home, and a smile flitted across those poppy lips. We both knew she’d played out her bait and lured me in.
            

Liese Sherwood-Fabre has won awards for her thrillers, romance, and literary short stories, and NYT bestselling author Steve Berry describes her writing as "gimmick-free, old-fashioned storytelling."

In the second grade, she knew she was destined to write when she got an A+ for her story about Dick, Jane, and Sally's ruined picnic. After obtaining her PhD from Indiana University, she joined the federal government and had the opportunity to work and live internationally for more than fifteen years. She draws upon these experiences to endow her characters with deep conflicts and emotions.


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The Stories Behind the Stories

I suppose I could spin a tale about how I conceived these three stories from my own warped imagination, but I’d be lying—not about my warped imagination, but what inspired me. All three came as responses to calls from outside sources.
My local Sherlockian society (there’s probably one in your area)—The Crew of the Barque Lone Star—decided, as a lead-up to their fiftieth anniversary, to publish members’ creative works. The first two, A Grimm Holmes and A Grimmer Holmes, were to focus on Sherlock’s efforts to solve cases based on fairy tales. The final stories in both books were very creative, reaching far beyond the Grimm brothers.
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For myself, I stuck to two familiar tales—“The Pied Piper of Hameln” and “Rumpelstiltskin.” Of course, I had to weave a mystery related to the story for Sherlock to solve. Because the “Pied Piper of Hameln” involves children, I chose to use Holmes’ Baker Street irregulars (street urchins) in his case. I immediately imagined a situation where they go missing—and only he can find them. 

In “Rumpelstiltskin,” a woman will lose her son to a strange man if she can’t guess his name. My story revolves around determining the identity of a man who claims to be her husband—a WWI vet. If she doesn’t play along with his deception, he’s threatened to take her son—his right as the “father” of the child.

The final story’s inspiration came from a publisher’s call. Mocha Memoirs Press was seeking alternate universe stories about Sherlock Holmes. Again, the other contributors showed amazing imaginations. (Sherlock as a cyborg? You bet!). For myself, I have always been fascinated by vampires. I think I saw the old black and white Bela Lugosi Dracula films as many times as I did some of the old Basil Rathbone/Sherlock Holmes movies, thanks to a local TV program Dialing for Dollars. I conceived of a world dominated by vampires and a case of a murdered one. How can you kill the undead? And why? That’s the basis for “The Adventure of the Tainted Blood.”
The fun of these stories is to let your imagination open the world to other possibilities—a flute that can manipulate children, a man who can take on another’s identity, and a way to eliminate vampires without a stake. And then let the world’s greatest consulting detective apply his methods in those worlds.
Are you interested in alternate universes or crossover stories? What’s your favorite?

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