My all-time favorite pastiche: 'The Unique Hamlet,' by Vincent Starrett. Holmes and Watson are very well done, but there's just a touch of silliness to show the reader that Starrett isn't taking this quite seriously. One of my second favorites is by J. M. Barrie (the author of 'Peter Pan') called 'The Adventure of the Two Collaborators.' It is an unabashed parody of the Holmes stories, and wonderfully done!

One of the earliest volumes of Holmes pastiches to be published was The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes by Conan Doyle's son Adrian with assistance from mystery master John Dickson Carr. It is intersting to note that Hound of the Baskervilles is dated in two different years in two different stories. In "The Adventure of the Black Baronet", Hound is said to have occurred in 1889, wheras in "The Adventure of the Dark Angels" Hound is said to have taken place in 1886!

One of my favorite "mock Holmes" series has to be the parodies by mystery writer Robert L. Fish featuring "Schlock Homes" and his associate, Dr. Watney. Fish gives all his adventures clever titles playing on those of the original, and his plots are ingenious as Homes uses his deductive abilities to find the most bizarre explanations for the most commonplace of crimes. For example, in one case, Homes is approached by a businessman asking him to explain a warning note with the message "Your time is running out!" Homes ingeniously deduces that it is a magazine subscription renewal notice from a popular American periodical. In another adventure, Homes is trying to ferret out the location of a set of documents from an adversary. Taking a cue from the real Holmes in "Scandal in Bohemia", he attempts to fake a fire in the hope that his quarry will go directly to the location the papers are stashed in in an attempt to save them. This brilliant strategem leads Homes to deduce the papers must be hidden behind a fire extinguisher, since that is the first object the villian headed for when the alarm was raised! Lots of in-jokes that readers familiar with the original canon will get and enjoy. Fish's collection of Homes stories published in the early 1990s is a pretty hard book to find, but if you can find it, and you're a big Holmes fan, you might want to pick it up for a hearty chuckle.

My favorite Sherlock Holmes series outside of the canon is the Mary Russel series by Laurie R. King. I really like The Moor. I recommend them.

Anybody else read any of August Derleth's Solar Pons stories? This is one of the largest series of pastiches, although the stories are somewhat uneven in quality. For one thing, Derleth's Pons story "The Adventure of the Lost Locomotive" is a complete rip-off of Doyle's non-Holmes mystery story "The Lost Special".

I'd recommend the novel-length pastiches by Larry Millett ('Sherlock Holmes and the Red Demon', '...and the Ice Palace Murders', '...and the Rune Stone Mystery').
Basically, Holmes is retained - and brought to America - by a real-life Minnesota millionare. See Sherlock roughing it in a mining camp! Discovering severed heads in a block of ice! Discussing customers with the local madam! (Bonus sequence: Watson fending off the attentions of the 'girls' while Holmes chats in the other room.) Teaming up with the local saloon-keeping, bull-pup-owning-sleuth!
And the really nifty part is that it all works. Despite a shallowish Holmes in spots (and some torturous plotting) - Millett's caught the spirit of the thing. Terrific reading.

British mystery author June Thomsen has written several very good Holmes pastiches published in three volumes. The drawback is that these books are very difficult for U.S.A. readers to find, and very expensive when you do locate them.

Anyone read Sherlock Holmes: The Missing Years by Lamyang Norbu? I rather liked it, but the ending was... strange. Still, I thought it was pretty good.

Has anyone else read the Holmes pastiche that appeared in Analog a few years ago, in which an alien ship crashes in the countryside, the surviving alien kills a farm hand and takes residence in his body, and begins laying its eggs in the bodies of Whitechapel prostitutes, forcing Holmes to become Jack the Ripper?

It's been many years since I read the story, but I remember it being well done, evoking the voice of Watson effectively.

What do people think about the pastiches in star trek episodes, Message in a Bottle, and Elementary Dear Data.

I like the Moriarty character a good deal, so much so that I always picture Conan Doyle's Moriarty looking like Daniel Davis (I think that's the actor's name). I think in the books the professor was less of a perfect gentleman and more of a @$#%&*!, but then again, I prefer the sleek gentlemanly villain. Quite frankly, I think Data makes a lousy Holmes (Picard would have done it much better, this coming from a fan who's never been fond of Picard) and Geordi's Watson loses himself in melodrama, but the impersonations don't do any harm to either Data or Geordi's characters.

Anyway, I like "Ship In A Bottle" better plotwise. "Elementary, Dear Data" has a good concept behind it but fails to be anything more than your standard characters-in-funny-suits holodeck-gone-awry episode.

The Trek episodes focused much more on Moriarty than they did on Holmes himself. And this is another example of how Moriarty has been given a much fuller existence outside of Conan Doyle's stories. Remember, Moriarty only appeared in two of Doyle's stories, and one of those was as an incidental offstage character.

The Angel of the Opera by Sam Siciliano has Sherlock Holmes and a Gary-Sue character named Dr. Henry Venier going to Paris to solve the strange mystery of the Phantom of the Opera. Several of my friends are rather fond of it; I'll admit that its pretty good, but think it's a better Phantom homage than a Holmes homage.

My main problems with the story all center around its author's vision of Holmes and his world. Specifically, he streamlines Conan Doyle's character and makes him a lot less icy... if you'll pardon me, a lot less Spock-like. He also makes him more P.C. and gives him a tragic love-interest in his past. Now, I am the last person to criticize another author for making a few changes in Conan Doyle's famous character-- after all, I personally have ejected "The Mazarin Stone" and "The Three Gables" and half of "A Case of Identity" from my canon and declared that they never happened. The thing is, I never force my version of Holmes of anyone else, and Siciliano's leaves no room for other vision without being entirely to my taste.

At any rate, even counting for the differences in artistic vision, Siciliano does include several nits which are left unexplained even by his "Watson Was A Big Fat Liar" introduction.
1. Proper Names. Victorian men informally addressed each other by last name. The only person ever know to refer to the Great Detctive by his first name was his brother, who could not have called him "Holmes" with any dignity.

2. Language. Victorians spoke extremely formally. They addressed each other by title and did not use slang.

3. The doggie. Holmes expects to track the kidnapped Chstine Daae with the help of Toby. However, in order to do so, the doggie must first cross the path taken by the Phantom, and as Holmes already points out, there are ten enormous sub-basement levels which they have to search in order to come upon the Phantom's tracks. And they find the scent in a few minutes how?

4. No amount of "Watson Lied A Lot" will make me accept the idea that Sherlock Holmes, upon hearing that the Phantom is a really good musician, would automatically give the Phantom the benefit of the doubt and seek to shield him from all wrong. He is dealing with a proven murderer and his willing accomplice!

5. P.C. The ill-effects of smoking were not widely recognized until the 20th century. Vernier's tirade on the evils of smoking and Holmes' meek, "Perhaps I should give up tobacco," after running out of breath are jarringly anachronistic. As is the idea that Holmes should be moved to blows upon hearing racist sentiments from his host. He, a English gentleman at the height of the colonialism!

Artistically, Siciliano's Holmes-and-Vernier team simply does not work as well as the classic duo. Both characters share the author's drooling-Erik-junkie distaste for the Chagny brothers, mild contempt for Christine, and passionate worship of Erik and everything that he stands for. (They even manage to set him up with a beautiful blind virtuoso at the book's conclusion, leaving Christine and Raoul to "punish" each other.) There's no banter, no back-and-forth of any sort. It's just not as interesting and that's that.

And honestly, I just don't see the Phantom of the Opera as Holmes' dark double, and without that, the story leaves me kinda unsympathetic.

One of the unrecorded cases alluded to in Doyle's original stories, the case of "The Giant Rat of Sumatra" which is referenced in Doyle's original story "The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire", has been intriguing enough to be fertile ground for pastiche writers. In fact, no less than three different versions of this case have seen modern publication in recent years. The problem is that all these pastiches treat this as a case with Holmes and Watson, wheras the original "Sussex Vampire" story strongly indicates that the "giant rat of Sumatra" case was one Holmes was involved in BEFORE he met Watson!

"Sherlock Holmes in Dallas", by Edmund Aubrey (pen name of British author Edmund S. Ions) has some curious references to Dallas, Texas...a section of town which has been "dry" forever (no alcoholic sales permitted) is said to have liquor stores.Most other remarks or either vague or incorrect.For a "Reader's Digest" of the Warren Report of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy,the book is a condensed review as Holmes and Watson read excerpts from the report, which is the main content of narrative. Information on contacting Mr. Ions appreciated.

"Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Holmes", by Loren Estleman, is in my opinion, one of the better attempts at Sherlock Holmes pastiches. Mr. Estleman has very nearly, and very well done, copied the ACD style of voice, setting and action. There is a very good, long , and very well done, narrative of a chase scene, which is even more interesting if one follows the path on a London "Street Plan."

Mr. Estleman has also injected a bit of humor and by-play between Holmes and Watson to relieve the tension,to make an interesting bit of reading.It is also a bit interesting in that Estleman places Watson's University in Edinburgh, Scotland.

One of those books which you will not put down until you have finished it in one evening's reading.

Although a retelling of the Jekyll/Hyde story for the most part, it is mostly successful for sticking to the "where it always 1895" theme of "The Canon." Mr. Estleman, it is to be noted, has since gone into more modern settings for detective novels.

I wasn't terribly fond of Millett's books, they seemed too much like the author wanted to show off his (admittedly extensive) knowledge of the setting and in 'Ice Palace' Holmes spends a lot of time playing second-fiddle to a Gary Stu. If you're going for the Sherlock goes to America story, I liked 'The Surrogate Assassin by Christopher Leppek. It takes a few liberties with Holmes' family background (to say nothing of certain aspects of US history) but I thought it captured the feel of Doyle's work nicely.

"Sherlock Holmes in Dallas", by Edmund Aubrey (Pseudonym of Edmund S. Ions) is an account of Holmes and Watson investigating the 1963 assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. In the first place, it's a bit fanciful to put some 19th century sleuths into the 20th Century - Holmes and Watson would have been about 112 years old in 1963 - rather unlikely for a couple of centenarians to be traveling about ! In an exchange of e-mails Mr. Ions claims to have visited Dallas, but a reading would indicate that his fanciful and curious descriptions of Dallas in the novel were written from photographs and maps gleaned in the confines of the Universities of York and Cambridge, where Mr. Ions was a Professor of Political Sciences.

Just curious....Has anyone else ever read Edmund Aubrey's "Sherlock Holmes In Dallas" and would care to comment on same ?

I remember reading it many many years ago and not being that impressed with it, although I don't remember many details at all.

Free download of Doctor Who: All-Consuming Fire Part 1 with the code 221b:
http://www.bigfinish.com/offers/v/allconsumingfire

This is an adaptation of the New Adventures novel of the same name in which the Seventh Doctor meets Sherlock Holmes.

Although Holmes and Watson are portrayed by Nick Briggs and Richard Earl respectively who also played them in Big Finish's own Sherlock Holmes range, the adaptation of All-Consuming Fire is not design as a crossover between Big Finish's Doctor Who and Sherlock Holmes ranges.

I was rereading Gordon Dickson & Poul Anderson's Earthman's Burden which collects the earliest stories in their Hoka series.

The Hokas tend to act out fiction they find enjoyable, so of course there's a Sherlock Holmes story, "The Case of the Misplaced Hound". Very funny.

Reading it a very blatent nit jumped out at me. (Whether this was a mistake of the authors or the typesetter, I don't know.)

Alexander Jones and Greggson, I mean Geoffrey, head to Sherlock Holmes place 211 B Baker Street.
D'oh!

What about the spoof version by the News Huddlines cast? And the story at the end of the Lord Charles episode of 'Someone and the Grumbleweeds'?