The
first copy was in paper, a very large book that fully justifies the title – 6 7/8
inches by 9 inches in size, and 789 pages long to accommodate a mammoth 83
stories. The printing is in double columns and the type is necessarily small.
In fact,
the type too small for my aging eyes, so I bought the Kindle edition as well. I
don’t regret having the physical book, though, because it’s a wonderful volume to
page through. And it looks so nice on my shelves.
Of
course, size isn’t everything. It’s the scope and quality that makes this book
valuable. It includes parodies and pastiches from the earliest days of the
Sherlock Holmes phenomenon to Neil Gaiman’s 2011 classic “The Case of Death and
Honey.”
Just
to drop names, a few of the writers represented here are Leslie S. Klinger, Laurie R. King,
Lyndsay Faye, Daniel Stashower, Anthony Boucher, Poul Anderson, Loren D. Estleman,
P. G. Wodehouse, Dorothy B. Hughes, Kingsley Amis, David Stuart Davies, Robert
L. Fish, Anne Perry, Stephen King, Colin Dexter, A. A. Milne, James M. Barrie,
and O. Henry.
The book is divided into a number of categories.
I’m particularly attracted to the category called “Holmesless.” These are
neither parodies nor pastiches, but stories that in some way are inspired by
the Canon. Holmes doesn’t actually appear in them, but his specter haunts them.
My favorite of these is “The Final Problem” by the
great Sherlockian Bliss Austin. Written as an entry for an Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine contest, the characters include two
real-life judges of the contest – Christopher Morley and Howard Haycraft – plus
the fictional character Ellery Queen. And Queen is murdered!
The story won a special prize in the contest.
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