Sherlock Holmes in the Peculiar Persecution of John Vincent Harden

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The only bad thing about the canonical Sherlock Holmes stories is that there aren’t enough of them. The original four novels and fifty-six short stories (leaving out Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s two plays and several other small writings about Holmes) comfortably fill a single large volume.

Since just this isn’t enough and nature abhors a vacuum, it’s no wonder that the remarkable Philip K. Jones has compiled a database of some 8,000 pastiches and parodies of the Sherlock Holmes stories. Seemingly any Sherlockian with writing genes eventually takes up the challenges to write a new Holmes story.

And having an incentive doesn’t hurt.

In 1988, Mysteries from the Yard Bookstore in Yellow Springs, Ohio, held a contest for the best original Sherlockian pastiche. The prize was a $100 gift certificate at the bookstore. I found that irresistible.

To write a Sherlock Holmes pastiche is to walk in the footsteps of a giant, which is daunting. But from having read the real thing many times, and a host of both good and bad pastiches, I had some strongly held notions about how to go about the task. You can find them in an essay on “Writing the Holmes Pastiche” in my book Baker Street Beat.

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