It must be me and a nationalities thing — wow, maybe I’m some sort of literary xenophobe. I’ve gotten off to a bad start with the first and second Ellery Queen books, and failed to connect with ‘Sweden’s John Dickson Carr‘, and have now been left cold by the opening salvo in Dutchman Robert van Gulik’s long-running and much-loved Ming Dynasty-set mystery series. Is my oft-vaunted love of Paul Halter and huge enjoyment varioushonkakutexts just a bluff? Who do I even trust any more?
Things are going a bit Holmesian here at The Invisible Event for the next week or so: a post every other day on something Sherlock-oriented. Why? For the simple reason that I feel like doing it. I should probably wait for the BBC special at Christmas to theme it up a bit more, but Christmas is a busy time and so I’m doing it now instead.
I wouldn’t call myself die-hard Sherlockian enough to immediately sign of up for anything produced in that universe – material enough to consume more than one lifetime – but the character and context retain so much potential that I will dip in where I believe someone might do something worth checking out. The reference-filling short stories written by Adrian Conan Doyle both with and without the help of John Dickson Carr, the entertaining Professor Moriarty books by Michael Kurland, the tales by short story specialist Ed Hoch, Laurie R. King’s Mary Russell books, Caleb Carr’s The Italian Secretary, and Anthony Horowitz’s Holmes pastiche The House of Silk and universe-widening Moriarty (among others like Colin Dexter’s sole Holmes story ‘A Case of Mis-Identity’) all testify to the presence of life in the old dog yet, and Arthur Porges wrote a couple of pastiches I’d like to track down, so there’s still more to try.
I wouldn’t call myself die-hard Sherlockian enough to immediately sign 
The Invisible Event 