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Sherlock without Arthur

By Andrew Hazard

"Marry him or murder him or do whatever you like." Arthur Conan Doyle’s glib reply to a theatrical director who wanted to bring Sherlock Holmes to the London stage highlights an essential truth: right from the get-go, other people cared about the character David Grann calls a “Victorian superhero” far more than his creator did. “Sherlockians” started writing stories featuring Holmes while Conan Doyle was still alive–homages or pastiches or fan fiction or what have you. These are some of the best.

  • The Seven-per-cent Solution

    1993 by Meyer, Nicholas

    Following a cocaine-induced breakdown, Sherlock Holmes winds up in Vienna under the care of Sigmund Freud. Of course, he also needs to solve a mystery that could plunge all Europe into war. Whatever one thinks of Meyer’s, well, Freudian, take on Holmes’s psyche, the very fallible, very human Great Detective–as well as his propensity to interact with real historical figures-set the tone for the next 50 years.

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  • The Beekeeper's Apprentice

    1994 by King, Laurie R.

    Sherlock Holmes may be eternal, but Arthur Conan Doyle was certainly a man of his time. If he’d ever thought to give Holmes a protégé, they wouldn’t have been American, Jewish, and female like Mary Russell. But why couldn’t Holmes continue to evolve as a person during his long years of retirement on the Sussex Downs? And why couldn’t a changing world produce a new kind of hero?

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  • The Fifth Heart

    2015 by Simmons, Dan

    In 1893 Paris, expat novelist Henry James is stunned to recognize Sherlock Holmes, whom the world believes to have perished two years earlier at Reichenbach Falls. Holmes reveals the shocking truth: that he faked his death after his superior analytical powers led him to the inescapable conclusion that he is a fictional character! The mismatched duo departs for America, where the answers to mysteries criminal and existential can be found at Chicago’s Columbian Exposition.

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  • Mycroft and Sherlock

    2018 by Abdul-Jabbar, Kareem

    1872: Mycroft Holmes must find out who’s conducting deadly experiments on apprentice chimney sweeps while saddled with 18-year-old Sherlock, who has all the intellect but none of the street smarts of his adult self. Abdul-Jabbar and Waterhouse reimagine the relationship between the brothers Holmes, making Mycroft the more empathetic (and generally likeable) of the pair. And kudos for (finally!) presenting non-white characters as simply part of the fabric of Holmesian London rather than colorful exotics.

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  • The Final Solution: A Story of Detection

    2004 by Chabon, Michael

    In a quiet corner of the English countryside during World War II, a very old man must fight against his failing mind and body to solve a commonplace murder with uncommon aspects. The killer seems to have been after a parrot prone to spouting long sequences of German numbers, owned by a young refugee boy rendered speechless by trauma. But there are hints of a greater, darker mystery hanging over it all...one that may be beyond even Holmes’s ability to fathom.

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  • A Study in Scarlet Women

    2016 by Thomas, Sherry

    Having contrived to get thrown out of polite society; Charlotte Holmes must find a way to support herself using talents that aren’t valued in a woman. I laughed out loud at both the ingenuity with which Charlotte and her new friend Mrs. Watson–a former actress/adventuress in the Irene Adler mold–create an unseen consulting detective named “Sherlock Holmes” and Thomas’s paradoxical fidelity to the Conan Doyle stories.

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  • The Whole Art of Detection: Lost Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes

    2017 by Faye, Lyndsay

    Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes output came to 4 novels and 56 stories. In other words, short fiction may be Holmes’s ideal format. This collection offers deep cuts that hardcore Sherlockians will appreciate and gives secondary characters, from Mrs. Hudson to Lomax the sublibrarian, their turn in the spotlight. Even Lestrade, that much-maligned copper, gets to shine.

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  • Observations by Gaslight: Stories from the World of Sherlock Holmes

    2021 by Faye, Lyndsay

    Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes output came to 4 novels and 56 stories. In other words, short fiction may be Holmes’ ideal format. Like the collection above, this one also offers deep cuts that hardcore Sherlockians will appreciate and gives secondary characters chances to shine.

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  • A Study in Emerald

    2018 by Gaiman, Neil

    The unimaginable has happened: a Royal has been murdered, and The Queen herself (itself?) is concerned. Given that this appropriately eerie graphic adaption of Neil Gaiman’s story takes place in an England ruled by interdimensional interlopers from the imagination of H.P. Lovecraft, it’s easy to miss the incongruities piling up until the big reveal at the end, which will send you back to the beginning to find all the clues lying in plain sight.

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  • Inside the Mind of Sherlock Holmes

    2023 by Lieron, Cyril

    Sherlock Holmes doesn’t see the world the way most people do. His mind is less calculating machine than “mental attic” full of facts that may be of use in his profession, with chemical apparatus where ideas percolate. It also befits the surface chaos but underlying patterns of the London he inhabits, where it pays to know things like which cemetery has a blossoming yew tree. The only problems are some oddities arising from the inexplicable decision to translate the French original into American English.

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  • From Holmes to Sherlock

    2017 by Boström, Mattias

    You may have first encountered Sherlock Holmes as “Basil of Baker Street” in The Great Mouse Detective. That Disney cartoon is one of countless instances of people other than Conan Doyle putting their own stamp on the character, all the way back to illustrator Sidney Paget giving the Great Detective his trademark deerstalker cap. By 1901, Conan Doyle admitted that Paget's idea of how Holmes looked had usurped his own in the minds of readers.

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  • Love & Other Crimes

    2020 by Paretsky, Sara

    Sara Paretsky isn't the first Chicago writer to tackle Sherlock Holmes (that distinction probably belongs to Vincent Starrett, whose The Unique Hamlet appeared in 1920), but her "The Curious Affair of the Italian Art Dealer" is a hoot, giving Amelia Butterworth--a "nosy spinster" detective created in 1897 by Anne Katherine Green--a chance to best the showboating Holmes. I felt this list wouldn't be complete without it.

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