The following review was written by Brian Le Messurier and it was published in Transactions of the Devonshire Association (Vol. 141, pp. 450-451, 2009):

Paul Spiring (comp.), Aside Arthur Conan Doyle: Twenty Original Tales by Bertram Fletcher Robinson (MX Publishing Ltd, 335 Princess Park Manor, Royal Drive, London N11 3GX, 2009), 230 pages, numerous illustrations.  Softback.  ISBN 9781904312529.  £12.99. 

This book is an A4 compilation of 20 articles written in the early years of the twentieth century by Bertram Fletcher Robinson, and published in seven different periodicals.  Fletcher Robinson was a good friend of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and the two are known to have collaborated in certain literary matters.  My 1996 paperback Penguin edition of The Hound of the Baskervilles is prefaced with a note by Conan Doyle which states: ‘This story owes its inception to my friend Mr Fletcher Robinson, who has helped me both in the general plot and in the local details.’  It is stated by the compiler of this book, Paul Spiring that it is probable that the two men first met at the Reform Club in London in the mid-1890s.  The friendship was cemented (Doyle’s phrase) in the summer of 1900 when they found themselves on the same ship, the Briton, returning from South Africa to the UK.  The following spring they took a golfing holiday together at Cromer in Norfolk, and there Fletcher Robinson regaled Conan Doyle with stories of a large ghostly hound which was seen near his home in Devon.  Doyle followed this by a visit to Dartmoor where they were driven around by Fletcher Robinson’s coachman, Harry [Henry] Baskerville.  And thus The Hound of the Baskervilles was born.  Initially published in monthly instalments, the first episode appeared in the August 1901 edition of The Strand, and the magazine’s circulation rose by 30,000 copies a month! 

Perhaps encouraged by his collaboration with Doyle, Fletcher Robinson, a journalist with the Daily Express, set to work with his pen, and until his death in 1907 produced numerous articles for a wide range of long-forgotten periodicals.  It is a selection of these which form the material of this book, reproduced as they originally appeared, with illustrations where appropriate.  And it is the illustrations which, while giving the essays the period character they need, have reproduced least well and give the book an amateurish feel.  Several of the chapters are taken from The Lady’s Home Magazine, and relate in a style similar to a Sherlock Holmes story [The Chronicles of Addington Peace].  Fletcher Robinson had the following printed beneath his name at the head of each monthly article: ‘Joint author with Sir A. Conan Doyle in his best Sherlock Holmes story The Hound of the Baskervilles.  These are the strange and startling experiences which befell that famous detective, Addington Peace.  They are told in a most convincing manner, and should on no account be missed.’  Addington Peace worked for Scotland Yard’s CID, and his Watson-like biographer was an artist called James Phillips.  These stories were later (1905) revised and published as a book with the same title and two additional stories. 

Paul Spiring is a chartered biologist and physicist and works in Germany.  He has produced a fascinating book of stories by one of Devon’s lesser known authors and encompassing history, crime, travel and the supernatural with several set in the Westcountry.  He has provided the interested reader with copious notes concerning the origin of the articles and the location of other stories not reprinted in this book.