Story Profile: “The Bitter Gravestones”
In The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories, Part XXX: More Christmas Adventures (1897-1928), edited by David Marcum (November 2021), the Sherlock Holmes pastiches are all Christmas-themed. One of my stories, “The Bitter Gravestones” is included.
The story was inspired by a thought I had. What would happen if someone was so angry at a deceased person that he would actually have an angry insult carved on the dead person’s tombstone? What would lead someone to such virulent extremes? What would happen if somebody else saw such venomous things etched into a gravestone?
In this story, a young boy comes to Holmes for help. When this boy, the heir to a considerable country estate, discovers several gravestones with absolutely malicious things on them in the isolated family plot, and finds that one relative he never heard of before died every year at around the same time for the last several years, he’s concerned, and passes his suspicions on to Holmes.
It’s a story of anger, revenge, and a Christmas miracle at the end.
–Chris Chan
Chris Chan’s first novel, Sherlock’s Secretary, was released on November 3rd. His Agatha-nominated book Murder Most Grotesque: The Comedic Crime Fiction of Joyce Porter was published by Level Best Books on September 7th. His first non-fiction book, Sherlock & Irene: The Secret Truth Behind “A Scandal in Bohemia” is available for sale at Amazon.com and the MX Publishing website, as well as at Book Depository (with free worldwide shipping there). It is also available in a Kindle edition.
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