Adventure of the Five Sherlocks

 As most of you know, not only am I a huge fan of the Sherlock Holmes stories and films, I have written a fair share of stories featuring the Great Detective myself. I was also the first to introduce Sherlock Holmes to fantasy writer HP Lovecraft and his cadre of monster-gods, which I did in 1983 with "The Adventure of the Ancient Gods." I've published two collections of Holmes-related tales and provided a handful of stories for anthologies edited by others. The latest example of the latter is "The Adventure of the Five Sherlocks" in Mystery Magazine (formerly Mystery Weekly Magazine), a Canadian periodical, for its October 2022 number.

Mystery Magazine
October 2022
Special Sherlock Holmes Double Issue

I had provided two stories for previous issues, in 2017 and 2019. Both were tales having do with Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, one set in the period between Holmes' apparent death and his return, the other narrated by a Bertie Wooster-like character. When editor Kerry Carter contacted me recently and asked if I had anything to contribute, I considered another foray into the Mythos, but I really wanted to do something completely different, especially since I am now working on my third and final collection of Sherlock Holmes stories, this time taking him into HP Lovecraft's Dreamlands, a wild ride to be sure.

Quite some time ago, I wrote the opening paragraphs to a story titled "The Adventure of the Five Sherlocks." As is often the case with me, I had the opening and I had the final lines of the story, but everything in-between was a little vague. Had Kerry not emailed me, who knows how long my protagonists would have sat in that chamber after their monthly dinner wondering what was going to happen next? Kerry's request spurred me to finish it in a couple of months.

The main characters are Basil Rathbone, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Jeremy Brett, all actors known for, among other accomplishments, portraying the Immortal Detective on the screen. In case you're wondering, no, the story is not set in the past, when they were all contemporaries of each other, but, rather...later. Yes, I know they are all dead, but in the context of the story that really does not matter.

While I admire all of them for their acting skills and the entertainment they brought me over the years, I must admit Basil Rathbone is my favorite Sherlock Holmes, and that bias probably shows in the story as events unfold. What can I say? We all remember our first as being the best--Sean Connery as Bond, Roger Moore as The Saint, David Suchet as Hercule Poirot, John Nettles as DCI Barnaby, and Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes. 

The plot of the story is a bit "out there," but I don't want to go into it, lest too much be given away about the mysterious disappearance of Gaius Julius Caesar, the noblewoman who arrived with her barbarian bodyguards,  and the mysterious girl who spoke an unknown language. Suffice it to say that it will entertain both Sherlock Holmes fans and movie buffs. If you want (should you decide to read it), you can even imagine the events of the story unfolding in glorious black and white, as the best films do.

I am not alone in this special issue of Mystery Magazine. I am joined by sixteen others, all presenting new adventures of Sherlock Holmes. It is quite the value. If mysteries are your thing, you might want to consider a digital subscription to the magazine, which will save you quite a bit.

"Holmes, I do not think we are in London anymore."

So, what am I reading at the moment? Well, among many other things a delightful Sherlock Holmes pastiche entitled Sherlock Holmes in Oz by my good friend Gary Lovisi. Yes, as odd as that sounds, Sherlock Holmes, that master of logic and deduction, finds himself in the Wonderful World of Oz, complete with Munchkins, the Yellow Brick Road and, of course, a certain Wicked Witch. A word of warning, however, Gary has based his story on the original 1900 book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, so don't expect Holmes to break into song with choruses of Munchkins or search for the Ruby Slippers. Those are all products of Hollyweird, not L. Frank Baum's febrile imagination. Adding to the invocation of the original book are the wonderful illustrations by Lucile Cali which are based on the period images by W.W. Denslow.

The story begins in London with a new menace taking shape in the East End, an insidious drug involving Red Poppies. Some of the police detectives refer to the addicts as Opium Zombies, resulting in the acronym...well, you get the idea. We also get a flashback to an old case of Holmes', "The Sign of Four," the story in which Dr Watson met of the first of his many wives of indefinite number. Despite this new and pressing case and pressure from Scotland Yard for Holmes' help, the Great Detective decides to help his good friend and biographer Dr John Watson find his great-niece Dorothy, who has gone missing from the plains of Kansas after a great storm.

Gary does a great job of depicting Holmes and Watson, though his vision of Holmes is of a more caring and compassionate man than the one depicted in Watson's jottings. It must be remembered, however, that Watson was writing for a more Penny Dreadful audience, so presenting Holmes as a soulless machine was good for business. It is more likely that Gary's characterization is closer to that of the real Sherlock Holmes. Yet, for all the infusion of humanity, Sherlock Holmes loses nothing of his deductive powers and keen intellect.

While the story contains many fantastical elements (it is Oz after all), I think Gary does very well in maintaining a suspension of belief while adhering to the tenets of the Canon. He does this through spot-on characterization, good plotting, authentic period dialogue, the drawing in of other authorities (such as Professor Challenger), and the ability to present even the most outlandish situations in a calm and logical light. I enjoyed the book very much  and recommend it both Sherlock Holmes and Wizard of Oz fans. It is published by Wildside Press and is available there, on Amazon, and other bookselling venues, in both print and digital formats.

I have known Gary Lovisi for a long time. He is a great writer and editor, is the the owner of the legendary Gryphon Books, is an expert on Sherlock Holmes, and frequently contributes to books and magazines about book collecting and pulp fiction, most recently Ed Hulse's The Art of Pulp Fiction. 

Sherlock Holmes vs Cthulhu

A few years ago I posted a blog about when I introduced Sherlock Holmes to HP Lovecraft in The Adventure of the Ancient Gods. If you're interested in reviewing it, you can click on the link in the title and be taken there. However, if you're interested in reading the story, you may have a bit of a problem. Copies of the original fanzine, Holmesian Federation #4 are very difficult to find and can be costly; copies of the chapbook published by Gary Lovisi's Gryphon Books are likewise hard to find and can be even more expensive, especially if it's the first edition with my name misspelled on the cover. Purchasing the book, along with any of my other Sherlock Holmes books published by Gryphon is no longer an option, thanks to a visit by Hurricane Sandy in 2012. That incident led me to republish a later book, which introduced Sherlock Holmes to HG Wells' Time Traveler as Sherlock Holmes: The Coils of Time & Other Stories. The "other stories" in the book were all new ones I had written after 2005, all either about Holmes directly, in homage to Holmes, or about other characters in the Canon.

In the two years that have passed since that first Holmes collection, I've written two steampunk novels, four volumes in a continuing series about the Three Dog Detective Agency, and edited a collection of my SF, fantasy, mystery and horror stories from 1970-2000. But I've always wanted to bring back "The Adventure of the Ancient Gods," as well as "The Terror Out of Time," a sort-of Cthulhu Mythos tale teaming Sherlock Holmes with Professor Challenger, Conan Doyle's scientific adventurer, in Edwardian London. That goal has finally been achieved with the publication of Sherlock Holmes: Cthulhu Mythos Adventures. In addition to the two stories mentioned, we have "The Whitechapel Terror," in which Holmes is helped by Brigadier General Knight (one of my other series characters) and a most unlikely hero named Sherrington, a sort of Woosteresque chap; "The Woods, The Watcher & The Warding," where Holmes and Watson venture into legend-haunted Hammershire County to come to the aide of Lestrade and a man who may be guilty, but not of what everyone thinks; "The Adventure of the Shattered Men," in which Holmes makes a solo trip to a isolated island in the North Sea to help an old friend who fears the wind; "Lestrade & the Damned Cultists," where the redoubtable Scotland Yard inspector finds himself bedeviled by occult forces, aided only by his own skill as a detective, the dubious assistance of Detective Sergeant Jacket, and come characters met along the road; and "The Whisperer in the Highlands," where a very young Sherlock Holmes comes to the aide of an old Scottish professor of geology (also the narrator of the tale) who is plagued by nightmares and a voice that whispers. In the first collection, Holmes was often off stage or merely an inspirational spirit, but in this new collection Sherlock Holmes plays a key role in every story. Hopefully this will be a treat for both fans of HP Lovecraft and Sherlock Holmes.

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