Holmes's Greatest Disciple?

 "I got the idea from a book I found in the barn, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. It's the best book I've come across in a long time, and you'll admit I know something about literature."

-- Freddy the Detective, 1932

Over the weekend I had the immense pleasure of re-reading Freddy the Detective. lt's the third book in the 26-book Freddy the Pig series, and the one in which Freddy really broke out as the main character.

If you are fortunate enough to have already encountered Freddy, you know that he is no ordinary pig. He is also a magician, a bank president, a poet, a newspaper editor, a cowboy . . . I could go on. He is the ultimate Renaissance pig. But every adventure involves a bit of a mystery that Freddy has to solve.

When he and his partner, the sensible cow Mrs. Wiggins start their firm of Frederick & Wiggins Detectives, Freddy he creates a big a sign which ends, "Not a loss to a client in more than a century." Mrs. Wiggins objects, noting, "We haven't been in business but a week." "What difference does that make?" Freddy fires back. "It's true isn't it?"

Freddy gets more than just the idea of being a detective from Sherlock Holmes. He also adopts many of the Master's most successful techniques, such as :

• Shadowing suspects;
• Following a trail;
• Looking for parallel cases that might suggest a solution (for Freddy, this means re-reading The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes); and
• Disguise.

Freddy is particularly well known for disguise. The classic volume Murder Ink, perpetrated (i.e., edited) by Dilys Winn, contains an article on Freddy by Herb Galewitz called "The Ultimate Disguise Expert." A two-page spread on "The Many Disguises of Freddy the Pig" isn't actually limited to disguises. Some of the Kurt Wiese drawings show him in roles, not disguises. So we see him as a football player, a little old lady, a reporter, a sailor, a third baseman, and a magician.

Yes, among his many disguises was a sailor and a little old lady. And he is hardly ever unmasked as a pig. That proves that he was a magician!

Who is your favorite fictional disciple of Sherlock Holmes?