What became of Sleuth Publications?

September 3, 2006 9:09 AM

Does anybody know what happened to the company Sleuth Publications, which made the excellent "Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective" boardgame?

I know the company made some other things as well, but I'm particularly fond of the paragraph-based mystery genre that SHCD seemed to pioneer. Does anybody know if any of the owners/founders of that company went on to do anything else? (And aside from Gumshoe, any suggestions for games like it, of a similiarly high excellence level?)

Also, some of the later expansion packs have become extremely rare - fetching as much as $100 on ebay. When does material like that enter the public domain?

posted by jbickers to sports, hobbies, & recreation (4 comments total)

I'm reasonably sure they went out of business about 15 years ago, but I can't find a citation online.
posted by cerebus19 at 9:22 AM on September 3, 2006

Well, OK, I can find some citations to them being long out of business, but not to exactly when or under what circumstances it happened.
posted by cerebus19 at 9:35 AM on September 3, 2006

I don't know, myself, but a good resource for questions about games is always boardgamegeek.com. You might look around there or ask in their forums.

Here's their list of games published by Sleuth, with some relevant user-forum comment threads at the bottom of the page. Click on the name of each game to go to its own page, which often includes user-submitted reviews or suggestions for similar games.
posted by LobsterMitten at 10:31 PM on September 3, 2006

Hmm ... well, what about the public domain question? Since these documents are so hard to find - and so excellent, and of such interest to the Sherlockian community - when (if ever) would it become legal/ethical to reproduce for the fan community?
posted by jbickers at 6:53 AM on September 7, 2006