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Dec. 30th, 2011 08:42 pmFriends, I have credits to spend on paperbackswap and I am in a Mood. Talk to me about Holmes pastiches.
I read a lot of Holmes pastiches in middle and high school. Some of them were awful, some of them were awesome, many of them were cracked-out crossovers* - I do not remember most of their titles. What are your favorites?
I recall liking Nicholas Meyer's books a good deal - at least The Seven Per-Cent Solution (my copy says "Sherlock Holmes and Sigmund Freud, together again for the first time" on the back, which is charming). I have The West End Horror, so I must have liked it. (Of The Canary Trainer, we do not speak.) I haven't read John Gardner's Moriarty books in years but they have a glossary and are about Moriarty, so they're going to get revisited once I'm done with the Kim Newman book. I have this weird-ass book called Exit Sherlock Holmes that I know I bought in Delaware and has thus moved across the country with me in which I seem to recall Holmes being a time-traveler from the future. Yes. The Last Sherlock Holmes Story was interesting, if depressing. Dust and Shadows was good. House of Silk was okay, if a bit stilted in its prose in places (and all the villains turned weirdly smug and willing to explain after they were caught, which was odd). Had a nice Lestrade, though, and the one scene with Moriarty was lovely.
Speaking of Lestrade, I did rather enjoy M J Trow's first Inspector Lestrade novel and it introduced me to Struwwelpeter, but the rest of the series is quite silly and none of the mysteries actually make any sense. I read the first few Mary Russell novels because deciding that I didn't really care for them.** I tried to read Carol Nelson Douglas' Irene Adler series, but they didn't really work for me.
Do you have any you would particularly recommend? I am open to pretty much anything, up to and including the completely wacked-out.
*As far as I recall: one Jekyll&Hyde (Dr Jekyll and Mr Holmes), two Draculas (The Adventure of the Sanguinary Count, The Holmes-Dracula Files), two Phantom of the Opera (Angel of the Opera, I remember liking, and of The Canary Trainer we do not speak), one Fu Manchu (that I wish to god I remembered the title of, because I vaguely recall it being kinda awesome). There may have been others, but these are the ones that left impressions. Well, there's A Night in the Lonesome October, but that's less of a Holmes pastiche and more of a book that Holmes happens to appear in.
**This is less because of the Mary Sue thing and the extreme age difference between Russell and Holmes and more because Holmes-in-Sussex-without-Watson depresses me immensely.
I read a lot of Holmes pastiches in middle and high school. Some of them were awful, some of them were awesome, many of them were cracked-out crossovers* - I do not remember most of their titles. What are your favorites?
I recall liking Nicholas Meyer's books a good deal - at least The Seven Per-Cent Solution (my copy says "Sherlock Holmes and Sigmund Freud, together again for the first time" on the back, which is charming). I have The West End Horror, so I must have liked it. (Of The Canary Trainer, we do not speak.) I haven't read John Gardner's Moriarty books in years but they have a glossary and are about Moriarty, so they're going to get revisited once I'm done with the Kim Newman book. I have this weird-ass book called Exit Sherlock Holmes that I know I bought in Delaware and has thus moved across the country with me in which I seem to recall Holmes being a time-traveler from the future. Yes. The Last Sherlock Holmes Story was interesting, if depressing. Dust and Shadows was good. House of Silk was okay, if a bit stilted in its prose in places (and all the villains turned weirdly smug and willing to explain after they were caught, which was odd). Had a nice Lestrade, though, and the one scene with Moriarty was lovely.
Speaking of Lestrade, I did rather enjoy M J Trow's first Inspector Lestrade novel and it introduced me to Struwwelpeter, but the rest of the series is quite silly and none of the mysteries actually make any sense. I read the first few Mary Russell novels because deciding that I didn't really care for them.** I tried to read Carol Nelson Douglas' Irene Adler series, but they didn't really work for me.
Do you have any you would particularly recommend? I am open to pretty much anything, up to and including the completely wacked-out.
*As far as I recall: one Jekyll&Hyde (Dr Jekyll and Mr Holmes), two Draculas (The Adventure of the Sanguinary Count, The Holmes-Dracula Files), two Phantom of the Opera (Angel of the Opera, I remember liking, and of The Canary Trainer we do not speak), one Fu Manchu (that I wish to god I remembered the title of, because I vaguely recall it being kinda awesome). There may have been others, but these are the ones that left impressions. Well, there's A Night in the Lonesome October, but that's less of a Holmes pastiche and more of a book that Holmes happens to appear in.
**This is less because of the Mary Sue thing and the extreme age difference between Russell and Holmes and more because Holmes-in-Sussex-without-Watson depresses me immensely.
