I have fond memories of The 7% Solution, so maybe we have similar tastes.
If you read Holmes pastiches you have to get used to them being not Doyle-like. Even so, I didn't care for Anthony Horowitz's The House of Silk, couldn't really see what the fuss was about and so haven't read his next one. Edward Hanna's The Whitechappel Horrors starts out fine but drags; it's probably 50 pages longer than it needed to be. Of the stories I've read in The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes (ed. Otto Penzler) some are fun, some silly.
Speaking of big books, The Big Book of Jack the Ripper includes a fun short novel, A Study in Terror by Ellery Queen, which has a similar subject to the Hanna, and which ties into a movie of the same title with John Neville as Holmes; both book and movie have echos a later movie, Murder by Decree with Christopher Plummer as Holmes and James Mason as Watson. (Tangential trivia, Frank Finlay plays Lestrade in both movies, which were made 14 years apart.)
My favorite pastiche, though, and the best Holmes adventure I've read not by Doyle is a slim volume from Michael Chabon, The Final Solution. It features a late-life Holmes, retired, without Watson, doubting his powers but drawn into a mystery concerning a small boy and a parrot. What I particularly like is Chabon and Holmes wrestling with aging while Holmes fights his doubts to true to see justice done. Chabon doesn't make an attempt to write like Doyle, and I think that's part of what made this book successful for me.
Lastly, a rare one, I think, Esther Friesner's Druid's Blood. This is not a great book but it is a clever fantasy romp. Unable to gain permission for using the Holmes/Watson names (as I understand) Friesner changed the names to suit her book. Queen Victoria is in trouble and needs help, and so Brihtirc Donne and his companion (who is also Victoria's companion, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more) Dr. John Weston come to the rescue; can't recall how, but I think Ada Lovelace gets involved, too. This is another where the writer doesn't try to ape Doyle and I think that makes it easier to enjoy it for what it is.
Geez, all that and I almost forgot: I second or third "A Study in Emerald"; I read 3 or 4 stories after that, all sort of the same, and never did go back. Not that I won't dip in again sometime, but I didn't feel compelled to finish the collection.
Randy M.
