The Dead Witness, Edited by Michael Sims

Just as Irene Adler was always "the woman" to Sherlock Holmes, so Holmes is always "the detective" to fans of 19th-century crime fiction.

There were, however, a host of rival masterminds. The richly enjoyable score of sleuths gathered here range from half-native Canadian gumshoe November Joe, who like Holmes, sometimes lets the perpetrator go free ("If the police can catch you for themselves, let 'em") to Loveday Brooke, whose habit of "dropping her eyelids over her eyes till only a line of eyeball showed" presaged the laser focus of Sarah Lund.