Fourteen alternative takes on the Great Detective — editor Sebastian Wolfe is unable to distinguish “parodies, pastiches and burlesques” from each other — fill out The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes [ss] (1989). No, not the Ellery Queen one. This is different.
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I thoroughly enjoyed the very readable set of stories collected in Baker Street Irregulars: The Game is Afoot [ss] (2018), which gave a variety of almost crossover mystery interpretations to the Sherlock Holmes/Dr. Watson pastiche. So I’m back for the original volume in this brace to see what other twists have been put on that classic and enduring setup.
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Hand on heart, I honestly believed I had read The Infernal Device (1978), the first of five books about Professor James Moriarty written by Michael Kurland, before now. Hell, I have talked about this book at length with various people, recommending it to them in very strong terms. So to pick it up and discover that, nope, I have never encountered this particular story — and that it’s so dull I was forgetting swathes of it as I read it, not that it mattered — was something of a shock.
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A collection of 11 non-canonical takes on Sherlock Holmes by eleven different authors, The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes [ss] (1985) has lingered long on my shelf, and its day in the sun is finally here.
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In a pure coincidence of timing, I read the first of Andrew Lane’s Young Sherlock Holmes novels, Death Cloud (2010), at about the time a series based on the books was announced by Amazon. The trailer, however, seemed to share ‘teenage Sherlock Holmes’ with the books — “teenage” in Hollywood meaning “played by someone who’s nearly 30 years old” — and nothing more, so let’s get onto the second volume today instead.
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A final non-canonical Sherlock Holmes story this month, with Death Cloud (2010) by Andrew Lane being aimed at the 8 to 12 year-old market and setting up some Minor Felonies posts for Tuesdays in January.
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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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The Invisible Event 