Sherlock Holmes by other authors?

[ficbot]

I have enjoyed HarryT's excellent Sherlock Holmes omnibus and am curious about Sherlock Holmes stories by other authors. There was a nine-story collection called 'The Oriental Sherlock Holmes' that I picked up in Amazon's big sale today and I am curious what else is out there. There is something on Amazon called 'The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories' that looks good but is $10. Worth it? And can anyone recommend anthologies (not just lone short stories for $0.99 but whole books) that are worth reading? I am not interested in authors similar to Conan Doyle in this case (e.g. Futrelle, LeBlanc) but rather of stories actually about Holmes and Watson solving cases, where Conan Doyle is not the author.

[DuaneAA]

Have you tried the series by Laurie R. King starting with the Beekeeper's Apprentice? They are set after the original stories so Holmes is in his upper 50's - early 60's. It is told from the perspective of a young girl who becomes his assistant. Watson is in them, but more as a secondary character. I think I read some of them a number of years ago. I just a couple of month's ago got the audiobook version of the first book from audible.com and it was a very enjoyable listen. I think this series does a good job of capturing the spirit of the originals with witty dialog, plots with lots of clues and misdirection, and the use of disguises.

Duane

[ATDrake]

At novel length, I'd have to say some of the very best faux-Holmes are done by Nicholas Meyer (yes, the movie director), who wrote the thoroughly brilliant The Seven Per-Cent Solution, which was also made into a movie, and two other novels which are fairly good, though not nearly in the same league.

Canadian SF writer Robert J. Sawyer's You See But You Do Not Observe is a really good short story which he makes available for free online reading at his website. It's won a number of awards.

Neil Gaiman's A Study in Emerald (downloadable from his website in PDF) is a marvelously inventive Lovecraft/Holmes mythos mash-up. If you happen to like such, I notice that the anthology it was originally published in, Shadows Over Baker Street, is now available as an e-book (but rather pricey, and the overall contents are really only worth MMPB equivalent, IMHO).

Titan books have been re/e-printing various Holmes/public domain mash-ups. Quality varies, but some are quite good, and I've read and reviewed (no spoilers) a few in my book list for the 100 books reading challenge.

Available for a very affordable price is Nightshade Books' anthology The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which reprints some of the better previously published sf/fantasy/horror takes on Holmes. It's DRM-free for only $6 from Baen and you can buy it in a bundle of other unrelated Nightshade books for an amortized cost of $5. Also, you can try before you buy the downloadable sampler "Selections from" which lets you read a handful of the stories in the format.

A possible low-cost one to try (have not read it myself) is Sherlock Holmes in America, only $1.99 on Kindle at the moment (not sure if this is special CyberMonday sale or "regular" markdown promotion part of "The Big Deal sale", good until Dec 3rd according to the Amazon ad blurb). This has stories by a number of people who also write longer-length Holmes pastiches, so could be useful for sampling. I was thinking of getting it myself when it was on 99 cent sale a few months ago, but forgot about it until the price had gone back to $9.99. Though personally, I'm going to wait to see if it drops back down, since Skyhorse seems to be running intermittent 99 cent sales on their titles (unless it's an Amazon event thing, in which case it'll probably show up on sale again in the future).

[carpetmojo]

An interesting idea - that the character is, it seems, more important than the story ?

Not one I'd support, but could lead to any number of strange results......

[Zetmolm]

The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz is the first non-Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes novel that is approved by the Conan Doyle estate. Horowitz has done an excellent job. All the elements that you expect in a Sherlock Holmes novel are there. Highly recommended!

[astrangerhere]

I also reccomend Night Watch by Stephen Kendrick for a mashup of Holmes and a very young Father Brown.

I also thoroughly enjoyed Dust and Shadow by Lyndsay Faye. It is an account of Holmes attempting to solve the Ripper killings and in the process becoming suspsected of the murders himself.

I second the reccomendations for A Study in Emerald and the Seven Percent Solution. I am currently reading House of Silk and have not yet formed an opinion.

[WillAdams]

Fred Saberhagen's _The Holmes-Dracula File_ --- not sure if it's available as an ebook or no.

[CRussel]

Another vote for the Laurie R. King series with Mary Russell. There are now 11 of them, and they're really good.

[Billsuits1]

I guess I am in the minority since I can't stand the Laurie King books. They are just too long, chock full of plots about his wife and all her problems in her past. Plus I can't see Sherlock ever letting anyone do the detective work. Even Watson mostly just did observations and reported back to him.I never bought them but borrowed from my library and happy I did not waste the money except as a tax payer.

I would not recommend "Sherlock Holmes and the Giant Rat of Sumatra.' Sherlock says in one of the stories that the world is not ready for the tale. It still isn't. Only interesting thing is that Watson has sex with a woman.

There are some books that have Sherlock traveling up to Minnesota, but I would not recommend them. The ones I have read involve these bizarre, movie like chase scenes.

[dgillette.rm]

I will add my vote for both the Nicholas Meyer and the Fred Saberhagen. I am not aware that either of them are available as ebooks. I read them all about the time the movie "The 7 Percent Solution" came out. OK movie, but as usual, the book is much better.

[DuaneAA]

I had forgotten about Saberhagen's Dracula-Holmes crossover story. It must be at least twenty years since I read it and I wonder how well it still holds up. At least period pieces seem to last better than sci-fi or contemporary stories. Also, I just looked and 'The Holmes-Dracula File' is available in the Kindle format from Amazon.

Duane

[ATDrake]

Saberhagen's Seance for a Vampire, which is in the Holmes-Dracula series is available in th Further Adventures ebook reprints by Titan mentioned above. And I think another story or two may be available in one of the omnibus collections of his work by Baen.

But yeah, I don't think the Meyer books are available as e-. Which is a shame because they're really good.

[tecweston]

I tried reading Caleb Carr's "The Italian Secretary," as it came highly recommended from a friend. But I couldn't get into it, because it's a ghost story, and Holmes professes a belief in ghosts in the beginning of the story to Holmes. It seemed so out of character for Holmes to say such a thing. Also, the great thing about Sherlock Holmes stories is that the mystery always seems so unexplainable until the very end, when Holmes lays out all the facts for you and you realize you could have figured it out yourself because you had all the same facts he did. But once you introduce the paranormal into the mix, none of it really matters, because there's always a way to explain the unexplainable as "ghosts did it."

[ficbot]

Thank you! I have bookmarked this thread for future reference and bought one book so far.

[Namekuseijin]

Originally Posted by carpetmojo

An interesting idea - that the character is, it seems, more important than the story ?

Not one I'd support, but could lead to any number of strange results......

it led to pulp fiction, comic books and perpetual series with fanfic and profits.


That said, wasn't the new Sherlock Holmes movie based on a new book by a new author? I wonder if he paid something to the leec, I mean, heirs to Holmes...