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As a fan of Sherlock Holmes and ACD’s work I just had a hard time with this writing. ACD wrote Sherlock Holmes to be mentally introverted. He saw things and understood things others could not. And it seems hard for me to imagine there were “rivals” of Holmes that possessed the same attributes.

I will be honest and say I skimmed over a few of the stories. I would start them and just couldn’t bring myself to read every word but I did skim it so I would know where the short story went.

Others I enjoyed for lack of a better word. I had to put aside my fandom of Holmes and ACD and read them for themselves which at times was difficult.

Disclaimer:
I received a complimentary copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

I struggled to get through this one. The first few stories were especially weak, which made it even harder to persist. The later stories were somewhat better, and I wish they would have been moved toward the beginning of the book to encourage interest in reading to the end, but I made it all the way through.

Perhaps these stories struggle because of our modern tv detective shows, which leaves us expecting more excitement or intelligence in our crime solcijty, or perhaps (and more probably) they're just not as good and lasting as Sherlock Holmes.

From the outset, these stories are considerably dated with the first mystery (The Great Ruby Robbery) being a case only because of how stupid and "flighty" women are to later in the book with "The Divination of the Zagury Capsules" where the lead detective has brought a "Hindoo snake charmer" home with him from India, complete with a basket of cobras, and is the real brains behind the operation since it appears evident the white detective wouldn't be able to find his own keys if he misplaced them.

Some stories are of course better than others. If you read all the way to the last few, they are slightly more interesting. In the middle, "The Duchess of Wiltshire's Diamonds" is interesting because the reader knows the crime (and the criminal) the entire time and just sees it happening. "The Ninescore Mystery" is also worth reading in that it has a female detective, and uses a mother's emotions to solve the case. "Cinderella's Slipper" is another one with a female detective who is obviously admired and respected for her intelligence, and this one felt like she actually had a mystery to solve. (Truth be told, I liked the stories with the women detectives more than the others for the most part.)

Unfortunately, most of these stories are pretty forgettable, and the reader can understand why they haven't been compiled before now and why most of their authors have been largely forgotten to history.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing with the ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review. It has not influenced my opinion.

You’ve heard of Sherlock Holmes the incomparable private consulting detective, but have you heard of his equally astute colleagues, the blind Max Carrados, the priest Father Brown, the Protestant Uncle Abner, the scientific Dr. Thorndyke, or the aristocratic Lady Molly? Those heroes and many others from the golden age detective fiction are showcased in this wonderful collection.
The variety in these stories makes it a very enjoyable read. Each story has its own unique flavor and hero. There are stories written from the first and third-person perspectives and even a crooks perspective. There are proud infallible detectives, humble lucky detectives, and even a few unlucky ones. Both men and women get a crack at solving some truly baffling mysteries. They must solve thefts, cons, disappearances, frames, and open murder. That gives us stories that range in feel from almost amusing to the rather gruesome.
Overall, it is a wonderful collection of mysteries that I highly enjoyed and would recommend to any mystery lover. There were a few curse words but otherwise is a wonderfully clean book.
I received this as a free ARC through NetGalley and Dover Publications. No favorable review was required, and it was my pleasure to provide my honest opinion.

Thank you to Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review this book. For those of us who are avid readers of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes mysteries this book will be a struggle to enjoy. 16 stories are presented here that, while not necessarily rivals of Holmes, one cannot help but be compared to that writting style. These stories are quite varied in what the mystery is but also varied in quality, as with most anthologies.

The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of 16 classic detective stories from the late 19th through the early 20th centuries. The detectives are not so much rivals of Holmes as contemporaries. The collection is centered around when the stories were written, but they come from a variety of regions. I’ve read a few of the authors before and a couple of the stories, but several were to me. There were even a couple of female detectives, unusual for the era.

As with most anthologies, I enjoyed some of the stories more than others. The book starts off with “The Great Ruby Robbery” by Grant Allen which was clever and funny, a good combination and a good way to open. “Cinderella’s Slipper” by Hugh C. Weir and his Miss Madelyn Mack also stood out for me. I met Max Carrados in “The Coin of Dionysius” by Ernest Braman. He’s a blind detective, which is unique. Another, this one from America, that I found interesting was “The Angel of the Lord” by Melville Davisson Post. It’s one of the first historical mysteries written, taking place in West Virginia just before the Civil War. Uncle Abner, the main character is a tough, Bible-believing, common-sense backwoodsman. Most of them focus more on the plot and clues than on the characters, which fits with the short page count for each story.

My least favorite of the bunch was “The Divination of the Zagury Capsules” by Headon Hill. Mark Poignand, the detective, keeps an Indian man and his cobras in a backroom. This man, Kala Persad, tells Poignand who the culprit is and then it’s up to Poignand to find the clues. Strange and clearly racist.

Overall, I enjoyed the collection, which is not surprising. The mysteries are tidy and most of the characters are interesting or quirky or both. I found a few new authors to read too, which is one of the main reasons I love mystery anthologies, whether they be vintage or modern.

Who are Holmes’ rivals? One could argue for different answers to this question: other investigators who are not part of the police force, other genius detectives or other detectives who have a faithful biographer who tells their stories. This collection went for: all of the above and also really all sorts of mystery stories written between the Victorian era and the 1910s (yes, the newest story is from 1914, definitely post-Victorian), including stories about people committing crimes and stories about useless policemen who need to have the solution stuffed in their face by someone else. There’s no recognisable order to the presentation of the stories. It’s not chronological or geographical (the foreword promises stories from all over the world which means UK, US and France) and not by any quirk of the sleuth, either.

There’s also only an introduction to the whole collection (that boils down to “ACD wasn’t the only writer of mysteries”) and nothing for the single stories that would put them in some context or give additional information about the author. Why is this Father Brown story in the collection and not a different one? Who is Headon Hill when he doesn’t write uncomfortably racist story about magical Indians? (Btw, a question to which Google only has a rather unsatisfactory answer). What is going on in that Max Carrados story? It would have been nice to have those questions answered in a few sentences but there is nothing. Though some more googling tells me that many of the stories are simply the first in the series with a particular sleuth which really just adds to the feeling that this was all put together rather sloppily. It’s not that those type of stories need to be read in order for full enjoyment.

Of course, there’s still the stories themselves and they are the usual mixed bag. There are well-known names and I admit that I even enjoyed some of those that were by authors I’m usually less fond of. (The Ninescore Mystery might truly be the first Baroness Orczy I didn’t dislike). There are also a few authors in there I have never heard of and those mostly fell in the categories “I have no intention of searching for more” and “I wish I could go back to not knowing about them”.

In the end, I’m again wondering Who is this book aimed at? Because if you’ve dug into Victorian (and Edwardian) detective fiction before, you’ll have heard of most of the authors before (and because so many are first in the series, chances are that you even know this exact story). And if you’re new to this kind of fiction, the lack of organisation and additional information can easily be confusing and overwhelming.

I liked this foray into detective fiction set contemporaneously with that of Conan Doyle's "Sherlock Holmes". It is hard for some to image that there was no other writers writing detective fiction at this time, and this small tome will introduce many to possibly new authors and protagonists. For those who are more widely read on the subject, it may be a more familiar - though still welcome - well-trodden path.

This book is a collection of 16 short story mysteries that were originally written between 1892 and 1914. Each story contained one clever person – a detective, private investigator, thief or murderer, or even a servant. The stories were supposedly inspired by Sherlock Holmes, and some of the private investigators did have similarities with him. Most of the stories told the mystery in a way that you could guess whodunit from the clues. I didn't find most of the mysteries difficult to solve, though the stories were fun to read anyway. Some of the series detectives were interesting enough that I will look up other stories by that author. The stories came from writers from all over the world: England, France, America, Australia, etc. There was no sex. There was only a few uses of bad language. Overall, I'd recommend this collection to people who enjoy old, clue based mysteries.

I received this ARC via Netgalley and Dover House Publications, in return for an honest review. This is a short story collection from the Victorian era by contemporaries of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his famous creation, Sherlock Holmes. The stories are set mainly in the United Kingdom but also in other parts of Europe and in the United States. You may recognize some of the authors, like G. K. Chesteron or Baroness Orczy, if you’ve previously read mysteries from that era. Hopefully, others will be a fun surprise. As usual in a mystery collection, you’ll figure out some, while other endings will be a surprise. I appreciated the editor’s efforts to include the few female authors from the era, as well as one story with a female heroine. This is a good collection to read mysteries from that era.

This is an excellent book with 16 clever short stories by 16 different Victorian authors inspired by Sherlock Holmes. Authors include Arthur Morrison, Grant Allen, L.T. Meade and Robert Eustace, Fergus Hume, Guy Boothby, Headon Hill, and Melville Post. Four of the authors were new to me. Although I had read four of the stories before, the rest were new to me. Three actually had a female detective, Pirkis' Loveday, Baroness Orczy's Lady Molly, and Hugh Weir's Cinderella's Slipper.

Some of the familiar male detectives include Barr's Eugene Valmont, Leblanc's Arsene Lupin, Chesterton's Father Brown, Futrelle's The Thinking Man, Freeman's Thorndyke, and Bramah's blind hero Max Corrados. Many of the stories have surprise endings. Freeman's story was unusual for a detective story because the murder is fully described at the beginning of the story, and then Thorndyke "discovers" the murder after a science lecture on sea worms.

Anyone who likes classic crime stories will enjoy this book.

An anthology of some great detective writers from the past. I have read many before but it was lovely to spend some time enjoying a meeting of old friends.
There are always real puzzles to these stories that gets one thinking of various outcomes, they are not just a quick read and no gain.
So pleased that some of these older stories are coming to the fore these days.

A collection (sixteen) of Victorian short story mysteries which were written in response to the exploits of Sherlock Holmes. The stories are not just set in England (though mainly) but Europe and the States. They are good introduction to these authors.
Overall I found them to be interesting and well written.

A fascinating and engrossing book that made me discover some less known mystery writer of the Victorian age.
I loved the stories and I want to read more by some of the featured writers.
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

These stories feature a contemporaries rather than rivals of Sherlock Holmes and were first published between 1892 and 1914. Some are more entertaining than others, as is customary in anthologies, but there was only one which I found crashingly dull. The style of writing may be off-putting, and a little at a time might be the best approach. My favourite was the Grant Allen tale which opens the selection.

This compilation is for the beginner, rather than the experienced reader of detective fiction, although a new reader might wish for a little biographical information and perhaps some guidance as to future reading. I am a relative newcomer, but had read nine of the sixteen stories elsewhere, as most of the authors, with the exception of the Meade/Eustace pairing, are fairly readily-available.

Recommendable as an introduction, but I would have welcomed more women both as writers and detectives.

Thank you to NetGalley and Dover Publications for the digital review copy.

Though he had some predecessors, Arthur Conan Doyle in many ways created the detective novel as we now know it and created a public appetite for these books that continues to the present day. At the same time, Doyle's Holmes inspired a range of experiments in this new genre—some still well-known, others better forgotten. The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes is a fun read because of all the what-ifs it opens up. What if detective fiction had gone in this direction? What if the public had responded more enthusiastically to this particular detective? Because it's an anthology, The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes will come as an uneven read—one just isn't going to like every story it offers. But as a corollary one is almost certain to like at least some of these stories. This is a delightful collection to browse in, to pick up repeatedly to see what catches one's attention at different moments. Whatever a reader's particular preferences in detective fiction, something is sure to appeal.

I received an electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley. The opinions are my own.

The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes is a well curated collection of 16 classic detective stories from the late 19th through the early 20th centuries. Released 18th Dec 2019 by Dover, it's 352 pages and available in paperback format.

These are classics and many will already be familiar to connoisseurs of detective fiction. The anthology contains stories by Baroness Orczy, R. Austin Freeman, G. K. Chesterton, Maurice Leblanc and 12 others, all strong writers; there's not a stinker in the bunch. One aspect of this collection which I liked a lot was that usually the selected stories are linked more tightly geographically; American, British, Antipodean, or what have you. These stories are selected from all regions and backgrounds, including a new-to-me Uncle Abner story by Melvin Post.

This would make a superlative rainy day read, or a good source of further reading for fans of the genre who might not be familiar with all the Victorian detective authors. It's great that these stories are being preserved and presented to new generations of fans.

Four stars.