Why A Sherlockian Pastiche?

Sherlock Holmes. Why did I choose to write about such a well-defined, well-loved, well-recognized character whom I didn’t create? A pastiche, if you will, but what is a pastiche after all but fan fiction? And I’m a fan.

Well, that’s why I chose to write a Sherlock adjacent series.

My series, An Irregular Detective Mystery, is most definitely about my own characters who interact with Holmes. The Doyle Canon is treated like historical documents (the term “Canon” here is to distinguish between Doyle’s original works and subsequent works by other authors using the same characters). You don’t veer from the truth by having Holmes have a daughter, son, wife, uncle – whatever! Or Dr. Watson having a love child. The Canon is sacrosanct. What was fair game were the other characters who just appeared in three stories with only one of them named. And those characters? Why, the Baker Street Irregulars.

Those were Sherlock Holmes’ gang of street urchins, and only the boss was named –Wiggins, no first name. I didn’t pick him to write about (he does show up as a supporting character in the second book in my series). I wanted my own homegrown characters, and so that became Tim Badger, a wily street kid, who, when he got too old, was no longer useful as the eyes and ears of Holmes. But he had ambitions. He decided that he learned enough about Holmes’ method of deduction that he, too, could be a detective for hire, and once he ran into another young fellow working hard at his many jobs, a black man named Ben Watson, he decreed it was Fate, and Badger and his own Watson could work together as detectives.

It turns out, they were miserable at it. Until Mr. Holmes himself stepped in with much needed financial help and a bit of mentoring.

Thus, an “Irregular” detective.

After I had finished my fifteen-book Crispin Guest Medieval Noir series, the strategy was to come up with a new series to take its place. I had two ideas I put into the crucible. One was a short-term series about Henry VIII’s real court jester Will Somers as the sleuth in my King’s Fool Mysteries, and the other was An Irregular Detective. My agent liked the former. I liked both. So I pitched the latter myself to my publisher and surprise, surprise, they loved it. I had two mysteries to write a year.

This is not for the faint-hearted.

But I found, even though I had thought about the Tudor series for some years, I really loved these two young blokes from London’s East End, and it was new for me to research the late Victorian period where there are photographs and newspapers and objects I can touch and buy for props for my events! The real thing! So different, and so fun.

I wanted a lot of humor in the series, mostly between Badger (so full of hubris and action) pitched against the more quiet and thoughtful Watson. Each with their own strengths and their own weaknesses that somehow balance out. Then add into it a love interest in the form of a female reporter (based on a real female reporter of the time) and it becomes more than the sum of its parts. If I enjoy writing them, you can be sure that readers will enjoy reading them, and they have.

What was fun about earlier in the time period was what were called “penny dreadfuls”, lurid adventure stories with lots of pretty young women in peril that sometimes involved ghosts and vampires.

Even Doyle used the supernatural to propel his plots in three stories: THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES, The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire, and The Adventure of the Creeping Man. But even though Doyle was a supernatural-loving fellow himself, a big believer in seances and–it must be said–fairies, he never allowed his logical creation to fall for it. There was always a down-to-earth explanation and Holmes was going to find it. And so, I started off my series with THE ISOLATED SÉANCE, where a universally disliked man during a séance, surrounded by his reluctant staff who probably all hate him the most, is murdered.

In my series, it is Watson who is the logical one and Badger is the superstitious one, always jumping to the first conclusion until his friend sorts him out.

That novel was followed by THE MUMMY OF MAYFAIR, where Badger and Watson are hired as security for a mummy unwrapping party (which is just what it sounds like. I’ll post another blog about that! Oh, those wacky Victorians!) and make a rather grisly discovery.

Then the upcoming THE MISPLACED PHYSICIAN (releasing in July) where DOCTOR Watson is kidnapped and Holmes is out of the country and can’t be reached! It’s up to Badger and Watson to save the day!

And currently, I am working on THE VAMPYRE CLIENT, where a man, accused of being a vampire, hires Badger and Watson to convince the local villagers that he is just an ordinary scientist…who studies bats. Until tragedy strikes. (Scheduled for an October 2026 release)

Pastiches or fan fiction isn’t new. In fact, it came on right away. Some with plays and some with their own stories throughout Europe that Doyle tried to suppress (copyright laws weren’t quite as developed as they are now). But he did approve of the first fellow to not only rewrite a Doyle play but to star in it, actor/writer William Gillette.

It was he who brought the calabash, that big curved pipe to the look of Holmes, because he felt that smoking a smaller pipe wouldn’t be seen by those folks up in the gallery. The deerstalker hat isn’t Canon either. That came from the illustrator Sidney Paget (the very first image in this post). It’s never mentioned in Doyle’s works.

Here is a YouTube video of the voice and bit of film from the silent film Sherlock Holmes, where Gillette enacts his famous role.

And so it shall continue. Sharp-eyed Sherlockians will find quotes pulled from the Doyle Canon, but even if you’ve never read a Sherlock Holmes story (and why haven’t you?), you won’t get lost. Mine are just a rollicking good Victorian time with some unassuming blokes making the streets of London safe again.