There's No Case Like Holmes
Last night on #afp we fell into a discussion of Sherlock Holmes stories. Part of this revolved around Erasing Sherlock, an SF story in which a researcher from the future travels back in time to meet the real Sherlock Holmes and observe him in action. It was recommended by the_ladylark, but both random_c and I felt it failed to keep Holmes in character, among other flaws.
This started me searching Amazon for a collection I'd seen once of Holmes stories written as a tribute to Conan Doyle, many of them based on cases whose titles Watson teasingly mentions in his notes but never actually recorded. I did eventually find it - it was The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures - but given that there were well over 200 listings on Amazon I found it more easily by googling for "Sherlock Holmes Dave Langford", who contributed one story which I remembered reading, "The Repulsive Story of the Red Leech". The only other story I remember reading from it involved a crossover between Holmes and the SF of HG Wells.
Which in turn brings me to "A Study In Emerald", Neil Gaiman's crossover of Holmes with the C'thulhu mythos of HP Lovecraft. Neil talks about the inspiration for the story here, and the story itself is available as a PDF on his own website here. So I went off to read it, and was a little disappointed at the end that it hadn't gone into more detail about the Old Ones, but then the whole point of the Old Ones is that they're meant to be unknowable. And then a couple of other little details finally sunk in, and I realised it was all a sleight-of-hand trick so that when the real punchline came I was looking in entirely the wrong place.
But anyway, while flicking through Amazon I also discovered Night Watch by Stephen Kendrick, in which Holmes is called to investigate the murder of a priest during a conference of international religious leaders, during which he enlists the aid of the clergy in the form of a young Father Brown. This has the potential to be a very interesting meeting, given their very different natures; Holmes relentlessly pursues the facts and uses them to illuminate the character of the various players, whereas Father Brown, devoted student of human nature, is far more likely to allow the character of the players to illuminate the facts.
Kendricks has taken on a pretty ambitious task, composing a plot worthy of both these detectives, playing off their differences and strengths against eachother while keeping them in character all the way through. Will he be able to to pull it off?
Oh well...
*clicky clicky clicky*
I'll soon find out.