VIDEO: Sherlock Holmes Pastiches

Something a little different today, but still on topic. All but one of these (R. Holmes & Co.) I've covered here on The Battered Tin. Enjoy.

The Last Sherlock Holmes Story (1979)

A Holmes-Ripper pastiche with the most shocking solution of them all! First published in hardcover in 1978. This is the first Ballantine paperback.

LONDON 1888: 

MANIAC STALKS WHITECHAPEL!

Three female paupers of dubious morals are gruesomely murdered. Their corpses are horribly mutilated. Instantly, London is thrust into a state of terror. A monstrous ghoul is prowling the night, untouchable by Scotland Yard. 

Baffled and desperate, the yard turns to Sherlock Holmes. Holmes challenges this diabolical adversary in the most extraordinary case of his career.

Title: The Last Sherlock Holmes Story
Author: Michael Dibdin
Year: 1979
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Purchase: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

The quest for a second Solution

As I revealed in my last post, my first experience of Sherlock Holmes in print was not the Canon, but a pastiche, The Seven Per-Cent-Solution by Nicholas Meyer. Of course, in the 1970s this was a pretty good choice of pastiche, so I might not be as ashamed of this as I'm pretending to be.

After reading the Meyer, I did begin to pick up the Doyle collections and started to give the Canon a proper read. But I craved another post-modern pastiche novel in the style of Solution. Luckily, because of the success of the Meyer book (which was also made into a film), my local Waldenbooks had quite a few of these to choose from. The first two I came away with were The Last Sherlock Holmes Story by Michael Dibdin and Exit Sherlock Holmes by Robert Lee Hall.

What drew me to these two paperbacks was the cover art. These are exactly the kinds of covers a budding young Sherlockian would be attracted to (I still like them). Also, The Last Sherlock Holmes Story promised an encounter with Jack The Ripper, so that was pretty irresistible.

While these did not live up to the level of The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, I still enjoyed them both. They are well-written adventures with their own revisionist "twists." (SPOILERS AHEAD.) In The Last Sherlock Holmes Story, the great detective turns out to actually be Jack The Ripper(!). In Exit Sherlock Holmes he's revealed to be a time traveler.

While I didn't really care for the twist in Last (Holmes cannot be a murderer), the time travel element in Exit Sherlock Holmes is handled better than you would expect, and I've always though this novel would make an interesting Sherlock Holmes film.

Title: The Last Sherlock Holmes Story
Author: Michael Dibdin
Year: 1979
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Purchase: Amazon.

Title: Exit Sherlock Holmes
Author: Robert Lee Hall
Year: 1979
Publisher: Playboy Press
Purchase: Amazon.