Lest we forget, I was not enamoured of Lyndsay Faye’s Sherlock Holmes novel Dust and Shadow (2009), but her characterisation was strong, people seem to rate her pastiches, and Holmes arguably finds his firmest feet in the short stories. And so to Faye’s anthology of Holmes stories The Whole Art of Detection [ss] (2017) do we turn today.
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One of only a handful of tie-in novels I’ve read, Adam Christopher’s The Ghost Line (2015) did an excellent job of tapping into the feeling of Elementary (2012-19), the US TV version of the updating of Sherlock Holmes. And so to Christopher’s second and final novel for the series, Blood and Ink (2016), do we turn today.
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A bit of pre-Christmas podcasting for you, as I sit down with Jack Anderson, author of The Return of Moriarty (2025) which, honestly now, is probably the very best Sherlock Holmes universe pastiche I’ve ever read.
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Donning my waders to enter the fetid waters of Sherlock Holmes pastichery, I was prepared to kiss a lot of frogs on the way to a prince or two. But with The Return of Moriarty (2025) by Jack Anderson I’ve stumbled over a very handsome prince indeed far sooner than I’d ever hope — put simply, it’s wonderful, and if you’re a fan of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Holmes universe then you need a copy of this book in your life.
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I stumbled over the Baker Street Irregulars: The Game is Afoot [ss] (2018) collection, in which thirteen authors offer wildly varying alternative versions of Sherlock Holmes, when searching for more criminous tales by Jonathan Maberry, one of the highlights of the C. Auguste Dupin-extending collection Beyond Rue Morgue [ss] (2013).
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On 18th August 2025, The Invisible Event will have been running for ten years. And while I’m not a big one for introspection — I read books, I write about those books, some people read what I’ve written, rinse, repeat — a decade feels like a notable achievement and so some introspection is going to be had, for today at least.
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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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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.
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I’ll level with you: I have never understood the obsession Sherlockians have with the Giant Rat of Sumatra.
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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.
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The Invisible Event 