These three short stories, which at first seem to be connected only by the fact that they are solved by Holmes are however something much more.

The first story takes Holmes and Watson to the latter's old school. There, one of the students has drowned and it is quickly ruled out as an accident, but one of the teachers, a former schoolmate of Watson's, does not believe it, so he has come to London to tell the police about his suspicions, but chance brings him into contact with Watson, who leads him to Holmes.
In another story, an overconfident businessman comes to Holmes to insist that he must take his case because he believes someone is trying to drive him crazy. The next morning, the businessman is dead, allegedly from fright.
The third story leads Holmes and Watson to investigate the strange death of a scholar in Surrey County. The man was found in the forest and the initial decision was that the death occurred as a result of an attack by wolves or wild boars. But there are no wolves in England, and the local family doctor whispers to the scholar’s protégé that the corpse did not have animal teeth marks, but human’s.
When Holmes has examined the residents, the surroundings in all three cases, he comes to the conclusion that if he had been more attentive in the first case and if he had not believed in the second case that the bad had received a worthy punishment, this third case would not have happened at all. Even Holmes can error!
A brilliant historical crime that ties artfully Doyle’s and Lovegrove's Holmes stories. Linguistically, the story is also true to the era, full of words whose meaning must be looked up in the dictionary.
A nice nod to the classics.

If I can’t have more Sherlock Holmes stories from ACD, I’m glad I can at least get them from James Lovegrove. Lovegrove’s collection of SH stories are some of the best I’ve read, and will continue to be automatically on my TBR list. The Three Winter Terrors is an excellent book, incorporating three separate but ultimately connected tales. Each is well done, as is the whole.

I’m a bit of a scaredy-cat and shy away from stories that delve into the supernatural realm, even the slightest bit, so I almost didn’t read this book. I’m very glad I did, however, and didn’t find it to be too much for me.

I’m a huge Sherlock Holmes fan, and this read felt like something straight from Sir Conan Doyle. 3 winters tales to get your teeth stuck in to and plenty of mystery

I just got sherlocked with the book. It was so cool. The characters and premise were just as good. Apart from some minuscule boredoming moments , on the whole it was highly entertaining and equally enticing. It stands up to the genre and the title.

The Three Winter Terrors are 3 interlocking stories featuring Sherlock Holmes and the loyal Dr Watson, the stories take place across about a 5 year period; the link is a family who appear in each of the tales Well written in the style of Conan Doyle a must for fans of Holmes.

A marvellous collection of three linked stories set in England at the tail-end of the Victorian Era and starring the stubborn and perceptive Sherlock Holmes and his faithful friend and sidekick, Dr. Watson, as they painstakingly try to elucidate some rather unsavory criminal shenanigans involving ancient curses, witchcraft, supernatural happenings and cannibalism among others.
A captivating and very entertaining fictional trip
as we follow our genial and determined heroes carrying out a very impressive investigation with all the rigoroussness, tenacity and diligence they have been famously known for over the years.

Blessed with a dazzling cast of characters and lots of sparkling wit, this charming and amusing whodunit definitely deserves to be read & enjoyed without any moderation whatsoever!

Many thanks to Netgalley and Titan Books for this terrific ARC

The Three Winter Terrors are three entertaining linked stories.

I rarely miss a Sherlock Holmes pastiche and enjoyed this one.
Read in Oct.

NetGalley/Titan Books. Sherlock Holmes. Oct. 12, 2021. Print length: 320 pages

1889. The First Terror. At a boys’ prep school in the Kent marshes, a pupil is found drowned in a pond. Could this be the fulfilment of a witch’s curse from over two hundred years earlier?
1890. The Second Terror. A wealthy man dies of a heart attack at his London townhouse. Was he really frightened to death by ghosts?
1894. The Third Terror. A body is discovered in the dark woods near a Surrey country manor, hideously ravaged. Is the culprit a cannibal, as the evidence suggests?
These three chilling and strangely linked crimes test Sherlock Holmes’s deductive powers, and his scepticism about the supernatural, to the limit. This author has nailed Doyles writing style and if I didn't know better I would swear this book had been written by him. These are three stories that eventually connect but not in a way you will ever see coming. I really loved this book and can't wait to read more by Lovegrove. Thank you NetGalley for the advanced readers copy for review.

THANKS TO NETGALLEY AND THE PUBLISHER FOR THIS REVIEW COPY IN EXCHANGE FOR AN HONEST REVIEW.

This book has three stories. 1889. The First Terror is about a susceptible death of a boy in Watson's old school. The story was interesting, and the whole atmosphere pulled me into the book. The mystery was well kept. Although, the writing style wasn't my cup of tea.

1890, the Second Terror covered the death of a rich and corrupt man. His death was rather indirect and felt natural. The way sherlock solved the case was quite interesting, but I found my attention wavering. several times,

1990, the Third Terror connected the characters from the last two stories and several new characters. It is the story I liked least and skimmed a lot. The ending was unexpected and intelligent.

I enjoy the book but also struggle to read it. It is the writing style I try to avoid.

My thanks to Titan Books for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘Sherlock Holmes and the Three Christmas Terrors’ by James Lovegrove in exchange for an honest review.

I was aware that James Lovegrove had written a number of historical mysteries featuring Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson though I hadn’t to date read any of them. So this seasonally themed collection of three linked stories proved a good introduction.

Holmes is known for his scepticism about anything related to the supernatural; yet each of these three cases, dubbed by Dr. Watson as the Three Terrors, has a sinister aspect that may well challenge Holmes’ attitudes towards the unseen. The cases take place over a period of five years.

1889 The First Terror: could a drowning at a boys’ prep school be linked to a 200-year-old witch’s curse?

1890. The Second Terror: could a wealthy man have been frightened to death by ghosts at his London townhouse?
 
1894. The Third Terror: could the ravaged body found in the dark woods near a Surrey country manor be the victim of a cannibal?

In each case Sherlock Holmes brings his powers of deduction to bear on the facts. I won’t mention what links the stories in order to avoid spoilers but I thought that it was quite clever.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and was impressed by Lovegrove’s storytelling. I felt that he perfectly captured the ambiance of Conan Doyle’s original stories.

After this positive experience I certainly will be reading more of his tales of Sherlock Holmes.

What a great book! This book definitely is one to read for Sherlock Holmes fans. The author does an outstanding job of staying true to the original novels and the story is quite intriguing. I had to finish this in one day, I could not put it down!

Thank you to #NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

A quick and easy read that I found myself picking up after a long day to unwind. The characters are beautifully written and I came to love them within the first few pages and was rooting for them all the way to the end. At times I wanted to stop reading because I just wanted the experience to go on for longer.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

When I saw this book on Netgalley I requested because…. well of course I did! It is James Lovegrove’s Sherlock Holmes…

And what can I say? He has done it again! Lovegrove really has mastered Conan Doyle’s style and just writes the best Holmes stories. This time we follow Holmes and Watson throughout three interlinked stories. The blurb states they all have a supernatural element… but the third one deals with a cannibal. Anyway… the stories themselves are all great reads, but having them link together makes them even better.

Although I am not a fan of short story collections, these ones were the perfect length. They were long enough to create an interesting case, but short enough to read in a single sitting. The writing was although reminiscent of the classics, also effortless and just easy to read.

My only complaint? The first case was just too easy… to me it was obvious what happened as soon as the body was described. Also, there is a certain clue which Sherlock misses/deems to be irrelevant. Yet I picked up on it, making one of the big reveals not surprising whatsoever. Sure it feels great to outsmart Sherlock, but I would rather have been amazed.

Still, I had a great time with this book and would highly recommend it to anyone who fancies a good Sherlock Holmes story.

Eagerly waiting for the new James Lovegrove Sherlock Holmes book each winter has started to become a tradition of mine, as for three years now readers have been treated to a wonderfully told wintery tale staring the world's greatest detective and his ever present companion; though this year is slightly different. We don't just get one mystery to keep up entertained, we get three.

Sherlock Holmes & The Three Winter Terrors is set across several years, where Holmes and Watson are called in to investigate three cases that have ended in death. The first one, set in 1889, sees Watson returning to his past as he and Holmes travel to the school he used to attend, where a young student was found drowned in the lake on the grounds. Whilst everyone else thinks that this was simply a tragic accident, that the boy went swimming and met a horrible end, one of the teachers, an old friend of Watson's, believes that there may be a more nefarious answer.

The second case, set just a year later in 1890, sees Holmes being approached by a wealthy businessman who wants to hire him to look into strange, ghostly appearances that have been happening in his home. He claims that sooty footprints have been found, hand prints left in strange places, ghostly flames that suddenly vanish, and mysterious smoke that seems to have no source. Not convinced that there's much of a mystery here to investigate, and rather put off by the man's rudeness, Holmes agrees to at least check into it. However, when he arrives at the family home the next day he's shocked to learn that his client is now dead. Suddenly sure that there's more going on that there appears, Holmes sets out so solve what he believes may be a murder.

The final case, set four years later in 1894, after Holmes' miraculous return from the dead, Holmes and Watson are approached to look into the murder of an academic who was found dead on the edge of the forest that surrounds his country home. Whilst everyone thinks it was the result of an animal attack the doctor who examined the body claims to have found human teeth marks on the corpse, leading people to suspect a strange man living deep in the woods with a tragic history may be responsible. Holmes sets out to find out the real answer, before a potentially innocent man falls victim to mob justice.

On the surface there's not much to connect these three cases, except the fact they all take place over the winter months. One is set in a school and sees Holmes investigating an accident. Another is set in the heart of London and may involve ghosts. And the last took place in a quiet country village and might have been committed by a cannibal. You'd be forgiven for thinking that this is nothing more than a collection of three stories without much in common, and that would still be a perfectly fine book; but Lovegrove does something great to tie these cases together. They all keep involving the same family. This isn't just three random cases, but one family's continued misfortune over the years.

It's a great conceit, and one that make this more than just three random stories. We've seen Holmes and Watson meeting people more than once over the years, and there have been sequels to certain of the original stories that see characters and ideas returning; but this might be one of the few times where the two investigators keep coming back to the same family time and time again. This alone makes the book an interesting addition to the ever expanding Holmes canon; but the cases themselves as so wonderfully good too.

James Lovegrove does an excellent job of giving the reader enough clues to be able to figure out everything we need to get to the same answers as Holmes, and there were times that I began to piece things together alongside the detective. However, there's always that moment where I'd thought I'd gotten the answer but found that I'd gone down the wrong line of thought, not because of some hidden detail that I wasn't aware of or some last minute revelation, but because I'd overlooked something or judge something wrong. Whenever this happened and Holmes gave the correct answer I couldn't help but shake my head at my own conclusions and marvel at the answers I was given.

This is a large part of why I really enjoyed this book, why I enjoy all of Lovegrove's Holmes stories. He just knows how to write the perfect mysteries. It doesn't feel like someone trying to emulate the original stories, it simply feels part of that world. He also knows how to make the characters feel more than just caricatures or impressions of the originals. They have personality and charm that feels real, that's true to the source material. James Lovegrove is easily one of my favourite Holmes writers.

This is the third year in a row that I've gotten to sit down in the darker, colder months of the year with a wonderful Sherlock Holmes book. It's something that I look forward to, and this year hasn't spoilt that experience at all; if anything it's been an absolutely wonderful one. I can't wait to see what we get next.

this was a wonderful Sherlock Holmes novel, it had what I enjoyed about the franchise and made it work for the modern era. The characters were great and I enjoyed going through this mystery.

The game is afoot!

I have a deep love for Sherlock Holmes stories.  My dad gave me my fist Sherlock book, The Sign of Four, when I was about 10 years old. Those stories were one of the reasons why I love mysteries and that they are usually my go-to comfort reads (strange, I know).  So when I can find an author that writes really good Sherlock stories, I'm a fan, and James Lovegrove writes some of the best Sherlock stories around.

This installment covers three of Sherlock's cases, all set during winter.  I don't want to post any spoilers, so I will only say that each story interconnects, which is always fun.  Told by the esteemed Dr. Watson, Lovegrove is able to perfectly capture the tone and setting of the Sherlock universe while making the writing itself accessible to modern readers.  Each of the mysteries is logical and the resolutions make sense.  There are no sudden twists that come out no where.  In fact, Holmes tells Watson ( and the readers) everything that he needs to know to solve the case.

Simply put, I loved it! Lovegrove's Sherlock Holmes' stories are always great and this new one keeps that streak going.  On a side note, Lovegrove has written a side series called Sherlock Holmes and Cthulhu Casebooks. As a Lovecraft  and Holmes fan, the melding of these two universes made me so happy. If you love weird stories & Sherlock Holmes, you definitely want to check them out.

"A beautifully presented sinister seasonal mystery from the acclaimed author of Sherlock Holmes and The Christmas Demon.

1889. The First Terror. At a boys' prep school in the Kent marshes, a pupil is found drowned in a pond. Could this be the fulfilment of a witch's curse from over two hundred years earlier?

1890. The Second Terror. A wealthy man dies of a heart attack at his London townhouse. Was he really frightened to death by ghosts?

1894. The Third Terror. A body is discovered in the dark woods near a Surrey country manor, hideously ravaged. Is the culprit a cannibal, as the evidence suggests?

These three chilling and strangely linked crimes test Sherlock Holmes's deductive powers, and his scepticism about the supernatural, to the limit."

I like when stories work for Halloween OR Christmas! Bring on the ghosts!