Baker Street Irregulars: Thirteen Authors with New Takes on Sherlock Holmes

by Michael A. Ventrella (Editor), Jonathan Maberry (Editor)

Overview

Sherlock Holmes is reimagined in this anthology of 13 new stories by contemporary authors including Gail Z. Martin and Jonathan Maberry.
 
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s immortal character Sherlock Holmes has been captivating mystery lovers since his first appearance on Baker Street in 1887. Now contemporary authors take the brilliant detective far beyond his usual stomping grounds in thirteen wildly imaginative stories.
 
In Ryk Spoor’s thrilling "The Adventures of a Reluctant Detective,” Sherlock is a re-creation in a holodeck. In Hildy Silverman’s mesmerizing "A Scandal in the Bloodline,” Sherlock is a vampire. Heidi McLaughlin sends Sherlock back to college, while Beth Patterson, in the charming "Code Cracker,” turns him into a parrot.
 
The settings range from near-future Russia to a reality show, a dystopian world, and an orchestra. Without losing the very qualities that make Sherlock so beloved, these authors spin their own singular riff on one of fiction’s truly singular characters.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781626818385
Publisher:	Diversion Books
Publication date:	04/30/2020
Series:	Baker Street Irregulars
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Jonathan Maberry is a New York Times bestselling author and five-time Bram Stoker Award winner. He writes in multiple genres including suspense, thriller, horror, science fiction, fantasy, action, and steampunk for adults, teens, and middle grade. His works include the Joe Ledger thrillers, Rot & Ruin, Mars One, and Captain America, which is in development for a feature film. He writes comics for Marvel, Dark Horse, and IDW and is the editor of such high-profile anthologies as The X-Files, V-Wars, Out of Tune, Baker Street Irregular, Nights of the Living Dead, and Scary Out There. Keith R.A. DeCandido was born, raised, educated, and still lives in the Bronx. Keith has published over thirty novels, most of them in the realm of media tie-ins. Several of his Star Trek novels have hit the USA Today bestseller list, and received critical acclaim from all over the map, both online and in print. He has also written in the worlds of Blizzard Games, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Command and Conquer, CSI, Doctor Who, Farscape, Gene Roddenberrys Andromeda, Marvel Comics, Young Hercules, and many more. Jody Lynn Nye is a New York Times bestselling science fiction and fantasy author who collaborated on seven Myth-Adventures books and an anthology with Robert Asprin and now writes both the Myth-Adventures and Dragons Wild series, including Robert Asprin's Dragons Run. Ryk E. Spoor, while earning his masters degree in Pittsburgh, became a playtesting consultant and writer for the Wizards of the Coast, the leading publisher of role-playing games and related novels. He now lives in East Greenbush, New York, working as a technical proposal writer for a high-tech R&D firm, and spending his non-writer time with his wife and sons. Spoor is the coauthor with New York Times bestselling author Eric Flint, of the popular Threshold series of science fiction novels. Spoor's solo novels for Baen include Paradigms Lost, Grand Central Arena, and Spheres of Influence. He is also the author of epic fantasy Phoenix Rising. David Gerrold is the author of the Hugo and Nebula Award-nominated The Man Who Folded Himself, When Harlie Was One, and the Chtorr, Dingillian, and Star Wolf series. He also wrote The Trouble with Tribbles episode of Star Trek, which was voted the most popular Star Trek episode of all time. He lives in Northridge, California. Heidi McLaughlin is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author. Originally from the Pacific Northwest, she now lives in picturesque Vermont, with her husband and two daughters. When shes isnt writing one of the many stories planned for release, youll find her sitting court-side during either daughters basketball games. Gail Z. Martin is the author of the Ascendant Kingdoms Saga, the Chronicles of the Necromancer series, and the Fallen Kings Cycle. She discovered her passion for science fiction and fantasy in elementary school. The first story she wrote, at age five, was about a vampire. Her favorite TV show as a preschooler was Dark Shadows. At age fourteen she decided to become a writer. She enjoys attending sf-fantasy conventions, Renaissance fairs, and living history sites.

Table of Contents

Introduction 5

"Locked" Mike Strauss 7

Sherlock is the host of a reality show

"Identity" Keith R. A. DeCandido 21

Sherlock is a young girl in modern New York City

"The Scent of Truth" Jody Lynn Nye 42

Sherlock is a doglike alien

"The Adventure of the Reluctant Detective" Ryk Spoor 57

Sherlock is not what he thinks he is

"A Scandal in the Bloodline" Hildy Silverman 93

Sherlock is a vampire

"The Fabulous Marble" David Gerrold 117

Sherlock is a bio-synthed, augmented, 7 percent human, upgraded, unmortal, consulting extrapoloid

"The Scarlet Study" Jim Avelli 132

Sherlock is a worker in a dystopian world

"Delta Phi" Heidi McLaughlin 156

Sherlock is an eighteen-year-old female college student

"Beethoven's Baton" Austin Farmer 182

Sherlock is a musician in Beethoven's orchestra

"The Adventure of the Melted Saint" Gail Z. Martin 200

Sherlock is a transgender detective in Charleston

"Automatic Sherlock" Martin Rose 228

Sherlock is an automaton in a near-future Russia

"The Hammer of God" Jonathan Maberry 246

Sherlock is a nun who works as a field investigator for the Office of Miracles

"Code Cracker" Beth W. Patterson 281

Sherlock is a parrot

About the Authors 299

Editorial Reviews

2017-01-23
When has Sherlock Holmes changed so much that he's no longer Sherlock Holmes? In this aptly titled collection, 13 new adventures of Holmes and Watson, more or less, push the envelope far beyond Baker Street.Not surprisingly, fantasy mavens Ventrella and Maberry (who alone published Kill Switch, 2016, etc.) have one and a half eyes out for outlandish, often futuristic incarnations of Holmes, and so do their contributors. Jody Lynn Nye's Holmes is a doglike alien "a bit addicted to shag"—carpet, that is. Jim Avelli posits a dystopian world in which Holmes is arrested for shooting his ex-wife, Irene Adler. Martin Rose presents a robotic Holmes, a failure as a medical surgeon, who gets a new lease on nonlife as a nosy detective. Editor Maberry's reimagining of Holmes as Mother Frey, who investigates miracles for the church, drives perhaps the deepest into fantasy territory. Meanwhile, back in the past, Austin Farmer puts Holmes and Watson to work as violinists in Beethoven's orchestra. In the present, Gail Z. Markus reinvents Sherlock as Shelley Holmes, a transgender Charleston sleuth who works for store credit at an antiques shop; Hildy Silverman reveals that Holmes and Watson (and Irene and Godfrey Norton) are vampires; Heidi McLaughlin makes Holmes an insecure college coed whose first case leads to her first kiss; Mike Struss imagines Holmes as a particularly annoying reality show host; and Ryk Spoor dramatizes Holmes and Watson's painful awakening to their status as fictional characters. In the three most successful stories, Beth W. Patterson makes Holmes an unusually reflective parrot, David Gerrold festoons his cyber-Holmes and -Watson with some hilarious acronyms, and Keith R.A. DeCandido scores with a surprisingly faithful update of one of Conan Doyle's most treasured tales. Less notable as independent creations than as provocations to think about Holmes and the Sacred Canon in innovative ways bound to lead to next year's anthologies.

Kirkus Reviews

01/02/2017
When an author writes a story featuring Sherlock Holmes as a “bio-synthed, augmented, 7 percent human, upgraded, unmortal, consulting extrapoloid,” as David Gerrold does in “The Fabulous Marble,” he sets the bar pretty high. Unfortunately, Gerrold fails to clear that bar. But, then again, none of the 12 other contributors to this anthology do any better. As Ventrella says in the introduction, the editors “invited some great writers to give us their interpretations with the only limitation being that we needed a mystery solved by a personality that was clearly Sherlock’s.” Readers get Sherlock as the host of a reality show, as a transgender detective in Charleston, and as a parrot. The results only demonstrate that putting Sherlock’s personality in such unusual forms isn’t as easy as it sounds. Even one of the more clever conceits—Austin Farmer making the sleuth a violinist in Beethoven’s Vienna orchestra in “Beethoven’s Baton”—is undermined by anachronistic language and an over-the-top denouement. Holmes purists should look elsewhere. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly