It starts off rather poorly, I thought. While many people are fans of Neil Gaiman, I am not one of them, and while I was amused by his notion of Queen Victoria as a Great Old One, the story didn't work very well. Too cute-sy (especially the introductory fluff at the begining of each section where he borrowed from a famous fictious character of. Dr. Jeckyl selling a laxative? C'mon, that's just silly), and I don't think he took the whole thing very seriously.
Another early low-light was a story by Steve Perry, who in my opinion, is among the world's most awful writers. I'm not even sure he writes stories, so much as comes up with a way of describing super-women (he even did this in his Star Wars novel, creating a female sex-bot/assassin droid). Which I guess is an improvement over just bimbos, but still comes off as very 12 year old boy-ish. His story in this basically consists of Sherlock Holmes staring at a woman's chest for 20 pages. (There is a connection to the Mythos. The 'heroine' is to the Mythos what Buffy is to vampires). He also names it like it was a Perry Mason story, not Sherlock Holmes. Ugh.
However, just about when I was about to throw the book into the fireplace in disgust, the stories got a lot better. (Thankfully, as it's a library book. Though my fireplace isn't real, either.)
Probably my favorite was "A Case of Insomnia" by John Vourlis, in which an entire town is well, sleepless. Also very good and memorable was "The Mystery of the Hanged Man's Puzzle", which is hard to describe without giving away the premise, but starts with a curious map given to Holmes by a condemned man.
Still, many of the stories are merely re-writes of existing Mythos tales, at least the plot. If you are a HPL fan, you can probably spot them right away. Great Race of Yith, mind transferrence, etc, though a few have some twists.
Also, and this isn't really a plus or minus, some of the stories are at odds with Call of Cthulhu's depiction of the Cthulhu mythos. For instance, in the game itself, the "Voorish Sign" is a very simple thing used to help with magic. In a story in this, it's apparently completely different and much more dreadful. Similarly, in one of the stories, the Elder Sign is not something that keeps out Mythos critters, but is apparently something negative.
One story is based on HPL's Herbest West, Reanimator story, and although it has a really nice twist at the end, seems to borrow some imagery from the dreadful movies (rather than from the actual story, which is really quite good).
While I'm not nearly up on my Holmes lore as I am on Lovecraft, several famous characters from the stories show up. Moriarty, of course (I think he shows up a couple of times), Holmes' smarter brother, Mycroft. Also this woman he apparently had something of a thing for, Irene Adler. And of course, Watson is in just about every story. Also, some historical figures show up. H.G. Wells, most notably.
All in all, while it has its literary flaws, it's a great resource for Call of Cthulhu GMs, especially those actually running games in that era, as there are literally dozens of adventure/scenario ideas in it. And you can borrow characters to use as NPCs as well. So while you might not want to buy it, if you are a Cthulhu fan, it's definitely worth borrowing from your library.
