Holmes was my first. All these years of reading mystery stories, which led to my annotating books by some of my favorite writers and creating stories of my own.
It began one Christmas when I unwrapped a copy of “Casebook of Sherlock Holmes.” Note the Conan Doyle collection, but a large-sized edition for young readers. It contained “A Study in Scarlet,” “The Hound of the Baskervilles” and a few of the better short stories. Come to think of it, some of the words were defined in the margins. Perhaps where I picked up my habit of annotating stories?
After that came the two-volume complete edition with a preface by Christopher Morley. There were long stretches of silence, broken by the occasional Rathbone movie filling TV time on Saturdays (this was before cable, kids). There were bright moments of original material, such as “The Seven-Percent Solution,” the Firesign Theatre’s “Giant Rat of Sumatra” and “The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother.” Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine would reprint the occasional story or pastiche, or a Holmes-inspired story, but that was it. For those of us living too far Baker Street, we had to be content with what we had, or adopted substitutes such as Nero Wolfe.
(“But what about Jeremy Brett?” I hear you cry. I never watched them. Never. Saw. An. Episode. Life during those years were personally hectic, distracting, busy and weird. I wasn’t watching much TV at all, much less Brett.)
Things picked up in the ‘90s. Carole Nelson Douglas adopted Irene Adler for a series of adventures and Laurie King introduced Holmes to Mary Russell, eventually marrying them off. Marvin Kaye published three clever and wide-ranging anthologies through St. Martin’s Press.
By the late 2000s, well, you know the rest. Robert Downey. Benedict Cumberbatch. “Elementary.” Fandom! Best of all, women are enjoying the stories and their enthusiasm can only be a good thing for all of us.
So I have a few Holmes-related projects in the works. In the meantime, there’s my Tumblr and Pinterest page, and the promise of more to come.