A Classic of the Canonical World

                       

Before there was the Internet, there was Classic Specialties.

For almost 30 years, the Cincinnati-based mail order house operated by Carolyn and the late Joel Senter in the late 20^th and early 21^st Century was the place to go for all things Sherlockian.

I thought of that recently when I encountered in my office one of their six-page catalogs, which sold for $1. Oh, the treasurers! Where else would you go in those days to find all in one place Holmes-themed scarves, ties, sweaters, lamps, and the beautiful “Empty House” stained glass panel above?

Most nostalgic of all, page 6 offers audio cassettes sets of radio adaptations of The Adventures and all four novels. Audio cassettes!

Learn more about Classic Specialties here and about Joel Senter here

McCabe & Cody Unpack a Trunkful of Mystery

Publication of a new book is always a joy—even when it’s number 22.  

The Magician’s Trunk, just out with a spectacular cover, is counted by my publisher as the 13^th McCabe & Cody book, but it’s really the 15^th—two of the books are collections of shorter stories. The series began with No Police Like Homes in 2011. I’ve also written seven other mystery novels: two School for Sleuths adventures, two Sherlock Holmes pastiches, and two Enoch Hale historical adventures written with Kieran McMullen.

The new book, not surprisingly, is about a magician’s trunk. It once belonged to the conjuror known as Great Blackstone, and more recently to the late Septimus Pogue, Sebastian McCabe’s friend and mentor. Now it has been willed to Mac—if he can find it. The trunk winds up being at the center of two murders, and the second only happens after the first one is solved. Are two murders related?   

To get to the bottom of the matter(s), the mystery-writing professor and his best friend and brother-in-law, Jeff Cody, have to sort through a collection of character that includes an animal channeler, a city council candidate who wants to ban electric scooters at night, a witch, and a former funeral home partner. And all that is before the TV show Midwest Murders comes to town—and with it a woman out of Jeff’s past!

I’m happy to say that the 2025 McCabe & Cody, Ding! Dong! The Witch is Dead, is already written. And as for the 2026 entry, Too Many Suspects . . . excuse me, I have to get back to plotting it.

An Easter Egg So Big I Missed It

 

Frederic Door Steele illustration of Barker in "Retired Colourman"

“You see, Watson, it was perfectly obvious from the first,” Holmes says in “The Red-Headed League.” But Watson is not the only one who overlooks the obvious.

I recently wrote a blog post about all the Sherlockian Easter eggs in Will Thomas’s Barker & Llewelyn series in which I managed to miss the most obvious connection of all. And then Will called my attention to “The Adventure of the Retired Colourman.”

“It was undoubtedly the tall, dark man whom I had addressed in the street,” Watson tells Holmes in that story. “I saw him once more at London Bridge, and then I lost him in the crowd. But I am convinced that he was following me.”

“No doubt! No doubt!” Holmes replies.  “A tall, dark, heavily mustached man, you say, with gray-tinted sun-glasses?”

“Holmes, you are a wizard. I did not say so, but he had gray-tinted sun-glasses.”

“And a Masonic tie-pin?”

“Holmes!”

Tall? Check! Mustache? Check! Tinted glasses? Check! A Mason? Check! These are all characteristics of “private inquiry agent” Cyrus Baker.

And Holmes later says, “You had not met Barker, Watson. He is my hated rival upon the Surrey shore. When you said a tall dark man it was not difficult for me to complete the picture.”

Unfortunately, I am not Sherlock Holmes. But now that the picture has been completed for me, I will re-read the Barker & Llewelyn books with a new pleasure.   

A Series Packed with Sherlockian Easter Eggs

 

I just finished reading or re-reading all 15 of Will Thomas’s Barker & Llewelyn detective novels straight through in order. Man, what a ride!

The series is set in the late Victorian era and follows the adventures of two “private enquiry agents,” the Scottish Cyrus Barker and the Welsh Thomas Llewelyn. Barker’s eccentricities and Llewelyn’s brisk prose make comparison to Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe novels and novellas inescapable. (One major difference is that, unlike Wolfe and Archie, Barker and Llewelyn age as the series progresses.)

 But I was struck by all Sherlockian Easter eggs. After the first few books, I started writing them down. Some of them are:

• Barker talking to Llewelyn echoes Holmes to Watson at least twice: “I never get your limits” in Anatomy of Evil and “You scintillate this morning” in Old Scores.
• In another familiar line, Barker says “It’s a bonny thing” in Heart of the Nile, just as Holmes does in “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle.”
• Liam Grant frequents the Alpha Inn, “on the other side of Montague Street,” in Old Scores and Dance with Death just as Henry Baker did in the aforementioned “Carbuncle.” (In Heart of the Nile, however, the name is given as the Museum Tavern, which many scholars believe was the inspiration for the Alpha. I’ve been there, though only on the outside.)
• Dr. Anstruther in Hell Bay is either the doctor that Holmes said could take over Watson’s practice in “The Bascome Valley Mystery” or has the same name.
• Dr. Vandeleur is coroner throughout the series, sharing a name the killer in The Hound of the Baskervilles used as an alias.
• Barker's office is just past Cox and Co. Bank in Blood is Blood and many other stories, that being the bank where Watson’s battered tin dispatch box famously resides (“The Problem of Thor Bridge.”) 
• In n Death and Glory, the KKK sends watermelon seeds in an envelope, an action strongly reminiscent of “The Five Orange Pips.”  

There are other callbacks, but you get the idea. Is that a reason to read these books? Yes—it’s just not the only reason. The Barker and Llewelyn stories are highly entertaining and well worth the time, with interesting characters and compelling story lines.  

Sherlock Holmes A to Z

This year marks the 30^th anniversary of the publication of a book that probably isn’t on your bookshelves but should be.

Matthew E. Bunson’s Encylopedia Sherlockiana : An A to Z Guide to the World of the Great Detective tends to be overshadowed by Jack Tracy’s better known though similarly named The Encyclopaedia Sherlockiana. Even Bunson, in the introduction to his 1994 book, calls Tracy’s 1978 predecessor “brilliant.”

“Unlike that excellent tome, however,” he adds, “this encylcopedia is concerned not only with the Canon, but with the hundreds of related issues and topics that have been part of the evolution of Sherlockiana in the years following the cessation of Dr. Watson’s published accounts.”

One of the things I love about it is the charts. “The Disguises of Sherlock Holmes,” which I looked up recently when I was writing a talk, lists in chart form all said disguises and what stories they appeared it. (Tracy doesn’t have any entry on disguises.)

Other charts, just to cite a few examples, cover “Inspector Lestrade on Film and Television,” “Sherlock Holmes and Science Fiction,” “Major Plays Featuring Sherlock Holmes,” “Watson on Film and Television,” and the 8-page “Sherlock Homes in Film,” which spans the silent Sherlock Holmes Baffled to Without a Clue.

In his introduction, John Bennett Shaw called Encylopedia Sherlockiana “a well-planned and much needed book.” I quite agree. And at this point, 30 years on, an update would be a wonderful thing.

A Surprisingly Good Ripper

 

Just because a movie flopped, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t good. Case in point: A Study in Terror, the original Sherlock Holmes vs. Jack the Ripper film. Although it failed to fill theaters when released in 1965, it holds up well all these decades later.

Thirty members and potential members of the Tankerville Club of Cincinnati (which has active participants from five states) viewed the film along with three shorter presentations at our Sherlockian Film Festival last Saturday. The historic Parkland Theatre, which the club rented for the occasion, was built as a vaudeville theater in 1881, the year Holmes and Watson met. Importantly, it also has a pub attached for pre-screening socializing.

Reaction to the film was highly positive, and vocally expressed through cheers and laughter (and not of derision). A Study in Terror has a good plot that is reasonably true to the characters, with many lines of dialogue drawn directly from the Canon.

John Neville and Donald Houston were fine as Holmes and Watson, and seeing a young Judi Dench was a treat. But Robert Morley was the greatest Mycroft ever! Physically, he looked the part but he also oozed the superiority one would expect of the elder Holmes. He was also the first to play Mycroft on the big screen.

Mike McSwiggin, Second Most Dangerous Member of the Tankerville Club, organized the film festival and procured an incredibly pristine version of A Study in Terror (don’t ask me how) that added to the joy. 

Your mileage may vary, of course, and this film may not be to your taste, but it seemed to be the hit of the day. 

The other features each had their attractions -- Christopher Plummer in "Silver Blaze," Douglas Wilmer in "The Beryl Coronet," and most notably Daffy Duck and Porky Pig as Dorlock Homes and Dr. Watson in the classic cartoon “Deduce You Say!”

Plotting My Mysteries with Sherlock Holmes

Recently I had the honor of being asked to give a Zoom talk on mystery plotting to Capital Crime Writers, based in Toronto. Art Pittman invited me specifically because of my association with the world of Sherlock Holmes as well as the more than 20 mystery novels I’ve written.

And that set me to thinking about how my mystery writing about an amateur sleuth has been influenced by the greatest detective of all. T.S. Eliot wrote that “Every writer owes something to Holmes.” I owe him a lot.

I don’t recall what won my heart when I borrowed The Boys’ Sherlock Holmes (an anthology) from the Cincinnati Public Library at the age of 9 or 10. But as an adult I can recognize that the Holmes stories excel in character, writing, plot, and setting.

It’s the unique character of Sherlock Holmes that has made his name and his markers—the deerstalker, the pipe, and the magnifying glass—instantly recognizable throughout the world 137 years after his debut in A Study in Scarlet.  But the sturdy and reliable Dr. Watson is an equally memorable character, and my narrator Jeff Cody probably wouldn’t exist without him. In addition, Professor Moriarty, the Napoleon of Crime, was fiction’s first master criminal.

But Arthur Conan Doyle’s writing in the Holmes stories is also first-rate, whether it’s descriptions of weather, immortal maxims such (“You see, but you do not observe”) or great dialogue (“That was the curious incident.”) Conan Doyle is also a writer of great beginnings and great endings; see “His Last Bow” for peerless examples of both.

I’m sure that my four Holmes pastiches (two novels and two short stories) and my three other novels that feature Holmes fall far short of that standard. “We can but try—the motto of the firm,” as Holmes said in “The Creeping Man.”

But most of my fictional efforts have been concentrated on the Sebastian McCabe & Jeff Cody series, with my 15^th book about them—The Magician’s Trunk— coming soon. All of their adventures are baskets full of Sherlockian Easter eggs. That’s most obvious in the titles and plots of No Police Like Holmes, Holmes Sweet Holmes, The 1895 Murder, The Disappearance of Mr. James Phillimore, and No Ghosts Need Apply, but is true of the other books as well.

Right now, with the 2025 book already written (Ding Done! The Witch is Dead), I’m plotting Mac and Jeff’s 2026 outing. And I’m inspired by a line in “The Red Circle.” When Holmes meets Mr. Leverton, of Pinkerton’s American Detective Agency, he greets him by asking, “The hero of the Long Island cave mystery?” Well, this is a mystery indeed—because Long Island has no caves. How did that inspire a McCabe & Cody mystery set in the small town of Erin, Ohio?

Stay tuned and find out in the book that will be called Too Many Suspects.

Sherlockians on the Turf in Chicago

Sherlockians "on track" after the 65th running of the Silver Blaze racea

Saturday saw the 65^th running of the Chicago “Silver Blaze” race, now jointly sponsored by the Torists International and the Watsonians, two scion societies of the Baker Street Irregulars. It’s the longest running such race in the country. And no trainers were killed in the process.

Race day details at Hawthorne Race Court were flawlessly presided over by Phil Cunningham of the Watsonians, ably assisted by his wife Loraine. The crowd included a healthy contingent of Illustrious Clients from Indianapolis, who designated the event as their annual field trip. The Silver Blaze race was the third of the day. Whichever horse won, neither Ann nor I bet on him.

Weekend festivities for Sherlockians gathered in Chicagoland began the night before with an informal cocktail hour gathering at a Marriott hotel, followed by a dinner meeting of the Torists International at Palermo’s of 63^rd, where the food and hospitality were top-notch. Co-Chief Stewards of the Torists, Linda Crohn and Jon Shimberg, had everything incredibly well organized.

Dinner speaker Monica Schmidt put John Straker on the metaphorical couch with her talk on “A Horse of a Different Color: The Double Life of John Straker.” I was honored to be one of three Sherlockians offering toasts, along with Louise Haskett (to Mrs. Straker) and Dino Argyropoulos (to Silver Blaze).

My toast was to “The Dog in the Night-Time,” and here it is:

What did the dog in “Silver Blaze” do to warrant fame? Absolutely nothing! And yet allusions to this inactive canine are to be found in legal writings, crime fiction, and popular culture.

That master researcher Ira Matetsky reports well over a hundred U.S. court decisions mentioning “Silver Blaze” or a metaphorical non-barking dog—a number that continues to grow each year.

And as early as 1928, in his “Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories,” S.S. Van Dine listed among the clichés to be avoided, “The dog that doesn’t bark and thereby reveals the fact that the intruder is familiar.”

Fast forward 66 years to a cartoon published on January 28, 1994. Charlie Brown is reading aloud to Snoopy from “Silver Blaze.” After he hears, “the dog did nothing in the night-time,” Snoopy thinks to himself, “My favorite part.”

Five generations of Sherlockians have agreed—it’s our favorite part, too. So let us raise our glasses to that idle, unnamed, and yet renowned dog who did nothing in the night-time.

The Torists meeting concluded with Ann Lewis singing “221B” to a tune of her own composition. It was beautiful, and incredibly moving—one of many highlights of a five-star weekend.

The Pleasure of Re-Reading

However, you define great literature, one its hallmarks is re-readability.

I recently re-read the first (1927) and the last (1958) of the Freddy the Pig books, a series about which I’ve written on this blog before. Those tales of the Bean Farm’s talking animals may not be literature as snobs define it, but they are wonderful. It was interesting to see how consistent the books are—and how much I still enjoy them.

Rex Stout once said about a third of his reading was re-reading. I can’t say that, but I do enjoy re-reading favorite books. And yet, that can change.

I still enjoy Stout’s Nero Wolfe books. Ditto Ellery Queen (even when I see their flaws) and Agatha Christie. I blush to admit that I re-read two of my own mystery novels recently and read favorite passages out loud to my long-suffering wife. On the other hand, I find that I have lost my taste for John Dickson Carr.

In the field of detective fiction—if you consider it fiction—surely the most re-readable body of works is the four novels and 56 short stories of the Sherlock Holmes Canon. I’ve been reading them for 60 years, and each time is a delight. For me, that’s the one fixed point in a changing age.    

More on Freddy the Pig:

https://bakerstreetbeat.blogspot.com/2013/12/fredddy-gateway-drug.html

https://bakerstreetbeat.blogspot.com/2013/04/holmess-greatest-disciple.html

https://bakerstreetbeat.blogspot.com/2012/04/sherlockian-adventures-of-freddy-pig.html

https://bakerstreetbeat.blogspot.com/2019/04/freddy-and-me-and-baker-street-journal.html

Holmes, Doyle, & Fun in Dayton

Fun and Affordable -- that the annual Holmes, Doyle, & Friends Conference in Dayton, which was held last Saturday, March 23. I'm still basking in the afterglow.

The "Dayton Symposium," as it is often called, has been held under various names, in various places, and under various sponsorships since 1981, making it the granddaddy of all Sherlockian conferences that is still going strong. The Agra Treasurers of Dayton have been the sponsors since it became Holmes, Doyle, & Friends a decade ago. 

Full disclosure: I'm the Programme Chairman, which means that I get to round up the eight speakers. It's a fun job. The speakers are the heart of the conference, although the vendors are almost just as important. Each speaker gets 20 minutes to speak and 10 to answer questions. The day really moves along.

There's a bit of a family feeling as well because some of the participants have been coming from far-flung parts of the United States for years. As a surprise this time, we celebrated Chicago Sherlockian  Bob Sharfman's 88th birthday with a cake during the afternoon break.

If you've never been to a Sherlockian conference, HD&F is a great place to start. And if you're already on the circuit, Dayton should be one of your stops. The 2025 conference will be held sometime next March. Stay tuned! 

Bob Sharfman and Ann Lewis with Bob's cake