Omaha Sherlockian Society

The society usually has a dinner meeting at a local restaurant with a private meeting room. For several years the society met at Jerico's, a nice restaurant reasonably central to the members. Their meeting room has been updated and is now quite suitable for the meeting, which usually takes place in October to celebrate the origin of the society.

This year the pandemic made it difficult to meet in October, November, or December 2021 because of the unavailability a suitable meeting place. We decided to wait until January 2022, assuming we could easily find a place to meet. And we did – Jerico's, on January 15th. But member concerns about the increase in cases of the virus caused the meeting – which was this year to also celebrate Sherlock's birthday – to be cancelled.

During the meeting we discussed the first story in The Sign of Seven edited by Martin Rosenstock (ISBN 9781785659034, E-ISBN 9781785659041, published by Titan Books), specifically Death of a Mudlark by Stuart Douglas.

The link to the Zoom meeting is expired. A waiting room protocol is employed, and after you click on the link, there may be a short delay before you join the meeting.

The meeting will start about 10:00 AM, but you can join after about 9:30 AM.

We met, as usual, using Zoom and discussed the second and third stories in The Sign of Seven. Eleven members participated.

During the Zoom meeting, we discussed the fourth and fifth stories in The Sign of Seven, specifically The Dark Carnival by Andrew Lane and The Monkton House Mystery by David Stuart Davies. Twelve members participated in the discussion.

We met for the first time since February 13, 2020 in person. The meeting was expected to be at the W. Clarke Swanson Branch of the Omaha Public Library. Unfortunately, they didn't have our room reservation recorded, but they helped us negotiate using a meeting room at the Milton R. Abrahams Branch. So after arriving at one branch, we decamped to another. We did have a successful meeting, although there were a few audio problems with the one Zoom participant. There were seven members physically present at the meeting. We discussed the next to the last story in The Sign of Seven, specifically The Adventure of the Koreshan Unity by Amy Thomas. Some members had not completed reading the last story in that collection (Our Common Correspondent by Lyndsay Faye), so we decided to defer discussion of it until the June meeting.

There was a discussion about how we should proceed in future meetings. One member suggested we revisit the stories and books of the Canon, but with a different focus, perhaps primarily considering the literary attributes. The fifteen books in the Inspector Lestrade series by M. J. Trow were mentioned as possibly being of interest as well. But the group finally decided on reading The Beekeeper's Apprentice: or, On the Segregation of the Queen by Laurie R. King. This is the first book in a 17 book series, but no decision was made on considering any further books from the series.

We met again in a hybrid setting at the Milton R. Abrahams branch of the Omaha Public Library at 10:00 AM. There were eleven members attending in person, and four additional members attending via Zoom. We had the usual introductory discussions, and Carl Wirth presented a number of books and pastiches, as well as a number of recently issues of some monthly newsletter-style publications. A number of these were selected by members for loan. Mention was made of another new female Sherlockian author, Bonnie McBird; we may give more consideration to some her works in the future.

We briefly mentioned the last story in The Sign of Seven but a few members indicated they thought it wasn't too bad; at least it was worth reading, and was rated highly (among the other six in the book) by some members. The majority of the meeting was spent discussing the Laurie King novel The Beekeeper's Apprentice: or, On the Segregation of the Queen . Many members noted that it was definitely written in a different style than that expected of Watson. Many other details and situations in the novel were discussed.

Near the close of the meeting we discussed how to proceed at the next meetings. It was decided that, at the beginning of the next meeting (which will be on July 9th at 10:00 AM at the Sorenson branch of the Omaha Public Library), Terry will lead a discussion of how to approach the group's next iteration of the Canon. Then we will discuss the second novel in the Laurie King series, A Monstrous Regiment of Women .