The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories

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A VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD ORIGINAL, OCTOBER 2015

Introduction and compilation copyright © 2015 by Otto Penzler

All rights reserved. Published simultaneously in the United States in hardcover by Pantheon Books and in trade paperback by Vintage Books, divisions of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Ltd., Toronto.

Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Crime/Black Lizard and colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Owing to limitations of space, permissions to reprint previously published material appear on
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The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The big book of Sherlock Holmes stories / edited and with an introduction by Otto Penzler.

pages cm

1. Holmes, Sherlock—Fiction. 2. Private investigators—England—Fiction. 3. Detective and mystery stories, English. 4. Detective and mystery stories, American. 5. Watson, John H. (Fictitious character)—Fiction. I. Penzler, Otto, editor.

PR1309.D4B54 2015 823′.108351—dc23 2014047958

Pantheon Hardcover ISBN 9781101870891

Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Trade Paperback ISBN 9781101872611

eBook ISBN 9781101872628

Cover painting © Thomas Gianni

Cover design: Joe Montgomery

www.weeklylizard.com

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To provide a little guidance through this massive tome, I've divided the stories into several categories but admit, immediately, that the effort is of questionable validity, as many of the stories fall into more than one subdivision. (A. A. Milne and P. G. Wodehouse, for example, will be found in the “Literary Writers” section, but since they wrote parodies, they could be found there just as easily.) It's not unlike making lists of foods that are delicious and foods that are fattening: there will be overlap. The two most reasonable choices are to ignore the categorizations altogether or to suggest that you don't take them very much to heart and just enjoy the stories.

It seems that no author could resist writing parodies of Holmes and Watson—not even their creator.

These are the most popular and frequently reprinted Sherlock Holmes stories of all time.

Compelled by either whim or serious affection, many literary lions have tried their hand at writing a Holmes adventure. Sometimes they produce a pure pastiche, echoing the tone of Conan Doyle, and sometimes the notion of a parody is irresistible.

Holmes became such a towering literary presence within a few years of his first appearance that parodies were being published in newspapers and magazines at an alarming rate. Most of them were truly dreadful, no more than burlesques based on a single joke that often wasn't very funny. Some of the earliest (all are from the nineteenth century), and best, are included here, in chronological order—as good a way as any to be presented.

Even when he's not physically present, the personality and aura of Holmes cannot be ignored, filling the room with his spirit.

We associate Holmes with a certain place and time, mainly London “where it is always 1895,” as Vincent Starrett wrote so simply yet eloquently. However, Holmes appears in various guises, places, eras, and even spiritual levels in a wide range of stories. Also, while the essence of Holmes's genius lies in his observations and deductions, all based on razor-sharp logic, there are things that may not be rationally explained.

The list of eminent men and women who have demonstrated great affection for “the best and wisest man whom [they] have ever known” (to quote Dr. Watson) is without limit. Although they enjoyed successful careers in other fields, they often kept Holmes by their sides, and those with sufficient talent provided evidence of that kinship by putting pen to paper.

Writing a pastiche of a well-known detective, true in tone and with a puzzling mystery, is extremely difficult. Writing a parody is a good deal easier—as the focus can be on a single element of that figure rather than on a range of characteristics—but writing a genuinely funny one may be the most difficult literary feat of all. Sadly, as you will see, not every writer in this section was up to the challenge, but they are included here because several have historical significance. Thankfully, the worst of the parodies are mercifully short.

Many of today's most successful mystery writers, most of whom have their own series detectives, have on occasion broken away from the work for which they have had their greatest success to write a new Sherlock Holmes adventure. The good news is that they achieved their goal with greater than expected excellence.

It is not only today's mystery writers who have turned their creativity to producing Sherlock Holmes stories. Many of the classic writers of an earlier time have also taken the challenge of adding an adventure to the list of the great detective's cases.