Which post-Doyle Sherlock Holmes stories are worth reading?
December 7, 2012 4:18 PM   Subscribe

What are the best non-Doyle Sherlock Holmes stories, collections, and novels?
posted by jsturgill to Media & Arts (20 answers total) 46 users marked this as a favorite
 
I read A Study in Sherlock earlier this year and really enjoyed it.
posted by Aznable at 4:26 PM on December 7, 2012 [2 favorites]


Nicholas Meyer's The Seven-Per-Cent Solution is generally well regarded (also made into a film of the same name).
posted by RichardP at 4:30 PM on December 7, 2012 [3 favorites]


I'm not sure if it fits, but I recently read The Beekeeper's Apprentice, which I was expecting not to like at all, but ended up really loving.
posted by thylacinthine at 4:37 PM on December 7, 2012 [6 favorites]


The ones that have been suggested to me are The Seven Percent Solution and The Last Sherlock Holmes Story.
posted by gerryblog at 4:38 PM on December 7, 2012


You can't beat Neil Gaiman's A Study in Emerald.
posted by Faint of Butt at 4:40 PM on December 7, 2012 [7 favorites]


Michael Chabon's The Final Solution: A Study in Detection
posted by Iris Gambol at 4:40 PM on December 7, 2012


Ditto the Laurie King books that thylacinthine pointed to.
posted by Bruce H. at 4:47 PM on December 7, 2012 [3 favorites]


August Derleth's Solar Pons series is the best Holmes pastiche I've read. There are six books of short stories and one novel. While they're not uniformly awesome, they scratch the right itch.
posted by vathek at 4:53 PM on December 7, 2012 [1 favorite]


The other Nicholas Meyer novels are also excellent, both The West End Horror and The Canary Trainer.
posted by like_a_friend at 5:16 PM on December 7, 2012


Lyndsay Faye's Dust and Shadow. Anthony Horowitz's The House of Silk.

Donald S. Thomas has several volumes of Holmes short stories that are quite good.

"The Last Sherlock Holmes Story" is an interesting story and technically impressive, but grim and (I think) cheating.

The collection Gaslight Grimoire has lots of good Holmes pastiches, including "A Study in Emerald" which is awesome, a good Moriarty story by Kim Newman, and Holmes/Peter Pan by Barbara Hambly.

The "Holmes On the Range" books by Steve Hockensmith, about cowboy/private eye brothers in the 19th century Wild West who are devotees of Holmes, may be a little farther afield but really good reads.

I think Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong, by Pierre Bayard, is a lot of fun but you have to like French literary criticism. W. S. Baring-Gould's biography of Holmes is also tremendous fun, if you like "the Sherlockian game" of pretending Holmes is real. (I am a sucker for this to the point of excitedly telling my husband that the big battle paintings we're looking at are 'by Sherlock Holmes's great-uncle!')

Carole Nelson Douglas's Irene Adler books are fun. M. J. Trow's Inspector Lestrade books are okay. I don't love either of the Mrs. Hudson series, but Laurie R. King wrote a very nice story with her as the sleuth.
posted by Sidhedevil at 5:36 PM on December 7, 2012


I'm actually teaching a course on Sherlock Holmes adaptations next semester, so I've got pastiches on my mind:

1) Seconding Dibdin's The Last Sherlock Holmes Story, Chabon's The Final Solution, and Gaiman's "A Study in Emerald."

2) Mitch Cullin's A Slight Trick of the Mind.

3) Stephen King's "The Doctor's Case" (totally atypical King). It's been reprinted several times, including in the anthology The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (which also has "A Study in Emerald").

4) Kim Newman's Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D'Urbervilles (the canon rewritten from Col. Moran's perspective--very funny).

5) Titan Books has been releasing an entire series of Sherlock Holmes pastiches under the umbrella title of "The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" (some of them reprints). The quality is up-and-down, but it's worth looking into.

6) Of older pastiches, Adrian Conan Doyle's collaboration with John Dickson Carr, The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes, is a classic example.

7) Sherlockian.net has a big list of pastiches and parodies. But there's an even bigger one here.
posted by thomas j wise at 6:09 PM on December 7, 2012 [1 favorite]


I thought The Doctor's Case by Stephen King had the correct tone when I first read it and it had held up well when I reread it recently.
posted by 1f2frfbf at 6:10 PM on December 7, 2012


I loved A Slight Trick of the Mind. It’s not a faux Holmes mystery, it’s a very different fiction with Holmes as the main character.
posted by bongo_x at 6:11 PM on December 7, 2012


Laurie R. King's Sherlock Holmes series ends up being what I compare all other versions against. So nthing that suggestion.
posted by vegartanipla at 6:32 PM on December 7, 2012 [1 favorite]


I very much like the Laurie R. King Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes books others have mentioned. The audiobooks are very well done, too.
posted by Lexica at 8:11 PM on December 7, 2012 [1 favorite]


I love Sherlock Holmes, and I was very excited when this book came out.

Dust and Shadow: An Account of the Ripper Killings by Dr. John H. Watson with Lyndsay Faye

I think Lyndsay Faye did a great job on capturing the spirit of Doyle in her book, I really hope she will put out another one.
posted by edmcbride at 6:53 AM on December 8, 2012


another vote for Laurie King - Mary Russell is the bee's knees!
posted by jammy at 7:27 AM on December 8, 2012


The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes explores Holmes' "missing years" in Tibet, and is a ripping good tale.
posted by ecourbanist at 4:19 PM on December 8, 2012 [1 favorite]


Also came in to say The House of Silk. The language is fairly well done. I enjoy the Mary Russell books but I don't think they are very Holmesian, so it depends how close you want to get to the original.
posted by paduasoy at 2:15 AM on December 9, 2012


You can't beat Neil Gaiman's A Study in Emerald.

Which is part of an excellent anthology called Shadows Over Baker Street, a collection of stories melding the worlds of Doyle and Lovecraft. A mash-up that works way better than it should.
posted by Roommate at 10:25 AM on December 10, 2012


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