Having given up on no fewer than three Sherlock Holmes pastiches in this final entry for my Tuesday undertakings this month, I return to the source: what was for me the book that got me reading stories about Holmes not written by people called A. Conan Doyle or J.D. Carr, The House of Silk (2011) by Anthony Horowitz.
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#1295: No Police Like Holmes – The Devil’s Blaze: Sherlock Holmes 1943 (2022) by Robert J. Harris
A second Sherlock Holmes pastiche from the pen of Robert J. Harris, The Devil’s Blaze (2022) sees him once again take his cue from the Second World War setting of the Basil Rathbone films rather than Arthur Conan Doyle’s original Victorian milieu.
Continue reading#1292: No Police Like Holmes – The Giant Rat of Sumatra (1976) by Richard L. Boyer
I’ll level with you: I have never understood the obsession Sherlockians have with the Giant Rat of Sumatra.
Continue reading#1289: No Police Like Holmes – Dust and Shadow (2009) by Lyndsay Faye
It is no doubt fitting that the last Sherlock Holmes pastiche I read saw our Great Detective tackling a copycat of the Jack the Ripper killings in 1942, given that the next one I would go on to read would see him tackle the actual Ripper killings in 1888.
Continue reading#1248: Sherlock Holmes Pastiches – Your Recommendations Appreciated
Back in November, purely due to the coincidence of reading two novels featuring a character called Holmes in quick succession, I devoted Saturdays to a series of five posts on Sherlock Holmes pastiches and adjacent…ephemera. And it got me thinking: I would like to read more good Sherlock Holmes pastiches.
Continue reading#1240: “Our investigation is foxed and bewildered because everybody is thinking of Christmas.” – Crimson Snow [ss] (2016) ed. Martin Edwards
Having looked at Silent Nights [ss] (2015), the first collection of Christmas-themed short stories in the British Library Crime Classic collection a fortnight ago, I move on to Crimson Snow [ss] (2016), the second such collection, edited once again by Martin Edwards.
Continue reading#1231: “These are booming times for crime.” – A Study in Crimson: Sherlock Holmes 1942 (2020) by Robert J. Harris
I’m not quite the target audience for a Sherlock Holmes pastiche taking its motivation not from Arthur Conan Doyle’s original canon but instead the 20th Century Fox films and subsequent radio serial starring Basil Rathbone — being as I’ve neither seen nor heard them — but the notion intrigued me enough to give A Study in Crimson (2020) by Robert J. Harris a go.
Continue reading#1225: “Our path may be a murky one, but our enemy has shown himself.” – Moriarty (2014) by Anthony Horowitz
Last Saturday I wrote about Holmes and Moriarty (2024) by Gareth Rubin, and that got me thinking about Anthony Horowitz’s second novel in the Sherlock Holmes universe, Moriarty (2014), which I first read ten years ago.
Continue reading#1222: “When the world is burning, you pass the pail to whoever will take it.” – Holmes and Moriarty (2024) by Gareth Rubin
I’m a fan of Sherlock Holmes, and I’m a fan of a good Sherlock Holmes pastiche, so when Holmes and Moriarty (2024) by Gareth Rubin floated across my radar as being endorsed by the Conan Doyle estate as, possibly, the new official Sherlock Holmes novel…colour me intrigued.
Continue reading#1193: “We are lacking data. Without data we cannot infer.” – Elementary: The Ghost Line (2015) by Adam Christopher
Another month, another Sherlock Holmes pastiche, this time from the very enjoyable US TV series Elementary (2012-19). My belated discovery of two novelisations in that universe was a source of immediate interest, and so The Ghost Line (2015) by Adam Christopher found its way onto my TBR.
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