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.