All have tales included, and you can see that a writer's position on the ladder of literary achievement is no guarantee of his success at penning a satisfying Sherlockian parody or pastiche. Wodehouse, Anthony Burgess, Kingsley Amis, Stephen King, Michael Moorcock, and Neil Gaiman. Among the bookstore brand names who have tried their hand at channeling the Baker Street sleuth: P.G. (By the way, have you met Sheerluck Combs? Shamrock Jolnes? Hemlock Jones? Holmlock Shears? They're all here, and more.)Īnother lesson is how illustrious the ranks of the literary Holmes-bodies are. Editor Otto Penzler has included spoofs of Doyle's detective from as early as the 1890s and 1900s, and from the likes of James M. That's one of the lessons gleaned from this stupendous collection of tales starring Sherlock and his many clones. The Great Detective is such an inspired creation – his phenomenal attention to detail and deductive faculties so highly developed as to make Holmes mythic – that he's drawn others to write about him, whether continuing his adventures or lampooning them, since about a minute after A Study in Scarlet hit print. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then the shade of Arthur Conan Doyle (ardent spiritualist that he was, he's bound to survive on some astral plane) must be the most flattered soul in the afterlife. The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories Edited by Otto Penzler
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