There have been a lot of Sherlock Holmes pastiches over the years. One particular recent series that is interesting is “The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” from Titan Books.
Almost all of the books in this series are reprints. Many have Sherlock Holmes teamed up or meeting famous people. Rather than trying to do separate postings on each one, I am going to cover the whole series so far, and as a bonus, I’ll cover a few additional works from Wordsworth Editions.
■ “Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Holmes” and “Sherlock Holmes vs. Dracula,” by Loren D. Estleman. Both of these books are different. Estleman has basically taken the original works and re-written them to include Holmes into the narrative. A very different way of approaching this.
■ “Seance for a Vampire,” by Fred Saberhagen. Yes, another Holmes and Dracula novel. But this is different, and it works against it. The book is part of an overall series by Saberhagen on Dracula (eighth in a series of 10), and actually the second that deals with Holmes and Dracula. So, not having read the first Holmes-Dracula story, I was a bit confused by this one, as well as the author’s take on Dracula. I really wish Titan had reprinted the prior story first, then this one, or added an intro to explain things to the readers.
■ “The Angel of the Opera,” “The Web Weaver” and “The Grimswell Curse” by Sam Siciliano. The author of these works takes a different tactic in them. He has the idea that Holmes and Watson were not that close, and that the Watson-written tales gave a very inaccurate portrayal of Holmes. So, instead, these works teams Holmes with his cousin, who is also a doctor, who narrates the stories (and thus giving a more “true” portrayal of Holmes). The first has Holmes dealing with the Phantom of the Opera. The second has him deal with a women who is the real Moriarty (the one we “met” in the tales is a work of fiction by Watson). The third one has not been published as yet, so can’t comment on it.
■ “The Ectoplasmic Man,” by Daniel Stashower. Teams up Holmes with Houdini.
■ “The Giant Rat of Sumatra,” by Richard Boyer. The story of the “giant rat of sumatra” was one hinted at in the original Holmes stories, but never revealed. There are about three such attempts at writing the story, and this is one of them.
■ “The Man from Hell,” by Barrie Roberts. This I found an interesting work. It is done in the style of some of classic works of Sherlock Holmes, in which the mystery behind a killing is in the past, and so in the middle of the book we get that story.
■ “The Peerless Peer,” by Philip Jose Farmer. This is PJF’s tale of Holmes and Watson meeting up with Tarzan (and meeting with a few other pulp characters along the way). Long out of print due to copyright issues, this is a welcome return. Titan started to reprint some of PJF’s works, but this one is part of the Further Adventures series.
■ “Scroll of the Dead,” and “The Veiled Detective,” by David Stuart Davies. DSD has written and edited many works on Holmes. I found “Scroll” to be an average tale. “The Veiled Detective,” however, tries to give a very different “origin” to Holmes and Watson. Purist may or may not like it.
■ “The Seventh Bullet,” by Daniel Victor. Has Holmes working to solve the real murder of an American muckracking journalist, David Graham Phillips.
■ “The Stalwart Companions,” by H. Paul Jeffers. This story teams Holmes with Teddy Roosevelt while Holmes is living in America before he becomes a consulting detective. Roosevelt basically takes the place of Watson in this adventure.
■ “The Star of India,” by Carole Rugge. Deals with royal jewels and Professor Moriarty.
■ “The Titanic Tragedy,” by William Seil. As is clear, this one is Holmes and Watson on the Titanic. At this time I have not read it.
■ “The Whitechapel Horrors,” by Edward Hanna. As the title suggests, this one has Holmes and Watson going after Jack the Ripper. The author doesn’t state who he think the Ripper was. This work seems a labor of love for the author.
■ “Sherlock Holmes and the War of the Worlds,” by Manly Wade Wellman and his son Wade Wellman. I think this was probably my first non-Conan Doyle Holmes I ever read, back in high school. I think I read it more as an SF fan then a Holmes fan. As the title indicates, it pits Holmes against the Martian invasion, along with Conan Doyle’s Professor Challenger (I think this was my first introduction to that character). While interesting, there were some non-canon elements, like making Mrs. Hudson younger than I think she should be, and hinting at a romance between her and Holmes.
Wordsworth Editions, an English publisher, has been putting out a lot of interesting works of late, some of it proto-pulp or “English pulp” if you will. Under the editorship of David Stuart Davies, they have a whole line of “Tales of Mystery and the Supernatural” that should be checked out.
A group of Sherlock Holmes stories I’ve read by Davies should be noted.
■ “Sherlock Holmes and the Hertzau Affair” has Holmes dealing with the characters from the “Prisoner of Zenda” stories.
■ “The Shadow and the Rat” and “The Tangled Skein” are in one volume. “The Shadow and the Rat” is another “giant rat of Sumatra” story. I thought the villain introduced was very interesting. “The Tangled Skein” is another Holmes vs. Dracula story that is also a sequel to “The Hound of the Baskervilles.”
If you are a Sherlock Holmes fan, you should check these out.
David Stuart Davies also edited a pretty good Holmes pastiche collection for Wordsworth called Sherlock Holmes: The Game’s Afoot.
Didn’t have that collection in time to add to this review. I do plan on further articles on Holmes pastiches.