I found a very comprehensive website about old Sherlock. I don’t know how to make a link, but the address is www.sherlockian.net. I haven’t looked at everything, but some of it is pretty entertaining.
Do not under any circumstances read The Last Sherlock Holmes Story, by Michael Dibdin:: a nasty piece of 70s "revisionism" in which Holmes actually is Jack the Ripper - there, Ive spoiled it for you now. That one left a vile taste in my mouth for a week.
Heyyyyyyyyyy…I LIKE Michael Dibdin! Never read that particular book, though.
I almost forgot George MacDonald Fraser`s Flashman and the Tiger, a reworking of The Adventure Of The Empty House, in which Flashman encounters Holmes and Watson in the course of settling a score with Colonel Sebastian Moran: amusing, but a little thin - I think GMF is running out of ideas.
Stephen King, of all people, wrote a Sherlock Holmes story. I can’t remember the name of it, but it’s contained in his “Nightmares and Dreamscapes” collection of short stories. It’s interesting in that Watson, rather than Holmes, solves the mystery. But King got Doyle’s style down rather well, in my opinion.
For something slightly different, you could check out Michael Kurland’s Professor Moriarty books, The Inferal Device and Others and The Great Game. They are set in the same time period and have Holmes as a major character, but are from the POV of Moriarty and a close associate. Lots of fun.
Also of interest are John Gardner’s books about Moriarty, which if I recall are called Moriarty’s Return and Moriarty’s Revenge; they have a quite different view of Moriarty. (Note: that’s the British author John Gardner, not the late American author John Gardner. The British author also did some James Bond novels.)
The dumbest Holmes pastiche I ever read had Holmes as a time-traveller and Moriarty as his evil clone. Eeagh. There was also one called Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Holmes. Oddly enough, I haven’t seen a story in which Holmes hunts Griffin, the Invisible Man.
Manley Wade Wellman did a clever pastiche called Sherlock Holmes’ War of the World, bringing together Doyle’s two great heroes, Holmes and Professor Challenger, to battle H.G. Wells’ invading Martians. (This one had the odd idea that Holmes and Mrs. Hudson were lovers, if you can believe that.)
And of course there was the movie with George C. Scott and Joanne Woodward, They Might be Giants.
I’ve got quite a ollection of these. For my money The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes by Adrian Conan Doyle and John Dickson Carr is the best of the lot. liked Nicholas Meyer’s The even Per-Cent Solution, but it ain’t Doyle’s style. Although people have noted the sequel The West End Horror, no ne has yet mentioned the second sequel ** The Canary Trainer** (Sherlock Holmes meets The Phantom of he Opera). Not as good as he WEst End Horror.
The second best is, I think, The Giant Rat of Sumatra, written by Richard L. Boyer and published in 1976. Now long out of print, it is, as a Holmes-nut friend of mine said, “canonical”. Pretty much in Doyle’s style, too.
It seems as if every fictional r real character from he late 1800s/early 1900s has met Holmes in at least one pastiche. e’s met Dracula three times thatI know of, Jack th Ripper at least four, the Phantom of the Opera twice, Fu Manchu twice, Harry Houdini, O. Henry, Rassendyl from "THe Prisoner of Zenda, Dreyfus (o he Dreyfus Affair), Tarzan of the Apes, Professor Challenger, H. G. Wells’ Martians, and a host of others. Somebody’ even devoted a website to listin all of these fictional encounters – there are a lot more than I nw of. I thought, at one point, that t might be fun to have Sherlock Holmes meet the Elephant Man, but several eople have beaten me to that one already.
Nah. Holmes is in the public domain, although a handful of the later Holmes stories are still under copyright. Almost anything older than the early 1920’s is in the public domain, but the earlier stories introduced Holmes, Watson, Lestrade, Moriarty and his gang, the Baker Street Irregulars, and so on, so any of those elements are available for use. Maybe some of the older Holmes pastiches when originally written needed the heirs’ permission, but for several years it’s been completely unnecessary.
–Cliffy
Oh, thanks for reminding me of “Anno Dracula” by Kim Newman. Really good book which takes as its premise that Van Helsing, et. al. failed in their attempt to destroy Dracula, who goes on to turn and marry Queen Victoria. Sherlock Holmes is mentioned as someone who’s disappeared by the regime and his brother Mycroft appears as the leader of a secret society in service to Her Majesty. Definitely worth a read, as are the not-as-good sequels, “The Bloody Red Baron” and “Judgment of Tears” (a.k.a. “Dracula cha-cha-cha”).
Oops! I forgot to mention two books by Colin Bruce: THE EINSTEIN PARADOX AND OTHER SCIENCE MYSTERIES SOLVED BY SHERLOCK HOLMES and its followup CONNED AGAIN, WATSON!
I’ve only read the second one, but it’s good enough to raise my interest in tracking down the first. Basically, the idea is that the author, a physicist, uses Sherlock Holmes in stories the dramatize certain paradoxes and logical problems in a way that elucidates them for the reader.
As a result, the drama and romance of the stories tends to be minimal, as Holmes is mostly used as a mouthpiece to explain things. Nevertheless, CONNED AGAIN is a very interesting and entertaining book. For a more complete review of the book, use this link: http://nemo.spoutnic.com/page.asp?id=200
steve biodrowski
www.thescriptanalyst.com
CalMeacham writes:
> The second best is, I think, The Giant Rat of Sumatra, written by Richard L. Boyer and published in 1976. Now long out of print, it is, as a Holmes-nut friend of mine said, “canonical”. Pretty much in Doyle’s style, too.
The Giant Rat of Sumatra is my favorite of the Sherlock Holmes pastiches that I’ve read. (Incidentally, there are at least two other books with this title which are also Holmes pastiches.) I wasn’t very accurate in my estimate that I own 300 to 350 pastiches. Now that I count them, it’s only about 250.
I’ll throw in one for The Game is Afoot edited by Marvin Kaye. this one even includes a pice done by ACD as a fundraiser for an old club (rugby?) of his.
Again, Seven Percent Solution, the Moriarty books, and another one I read ages ago about Jack the Ripper whose title now slips my mind (no, not the one in which Holmes is revealed as the Ripper).
(I, too, have entire shelves devoted to Holmes and was most delighted when my two passions were finally linked in “Detected Detective: Shelock Holmes in Finnegans Wake”)
Cyn
Oh, and The Giant Rat of Sumatra is back in print. It’s in a omnibus edition with other Holmes pastiches by Boyer.
A few more to add which, I think, have not been mentioned yet.
Sherlock Holmes in orbit:
An anthology edited by Mike Resnick and Martin Greenberg.
The Quallsford Inheritance:
By Lloyd Biggle, Jr.
Son of Holmes:
By John T. Lescroart
Sherlock Holmes thrhugh time and space
Edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin Greenberg & Charles g. Waugh.
I won’t comment on the quality of the above except to say that I enjoyed them. YMMV
Cheers,
Jeff
I’d like to note that “Sherlock Holmes vs. Dracula” cited by Winterhawk11 is by Loren D. Estleman. It’s a quick read (I started my copy when I got on line at Toronto’s CN Tower, and finished it before I got on the elevator), but pretty good. More in Doyle’s style than “The Seven Per Cent Solution”. Estleman followed it up with the not-yet-mentioned Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Holmes.
Besides SHvD and Anno Dracula, you can also find Holmes and Dracula in Fred Saberhagen’s The Holmes-Dracula Files and in The West End Horror (in manuscript form only). Considering the nasty things Holmes had to say about belief in vampires in “The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire”, it’s surprising we have any such books at all.
Do you mean A Study in Terror by Ellery Queen?
Alex
Colin Dexter of Detective Chief Inspector Morse fame has written a Holmes pastiche, that I found very amusing. I don’t remember the title but it is included in a volume called Morse’s Greatest Mystery, and other stories.
Hmm…could be…I think it was. I read this last when I was about fourteen. The library that had both this and the second Gardner-Moriarty book fell victim to arson some years ago and I haven’t seen either book since. the latter made more impression, but I remember this being good as well.
A side note on Canary Trainer- I think it suffers from what stories like “Lion’s Mane” suffer from- a Holmes narrative.
Cyn