Sherlock Holmes and the Real Thing (2025)

Another Sherlock Holmes novel (No. 7) from the great Nicholas Meyer. I just hope the book is better than what appears to be an AI-generated cover. This is Nicholas Meyer for crying out loud! He and we deserve "the real thing."

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson delve into the world of art forgery in this new historical mystery from the author of Sherlock Holmes and the Telegram from Hell.

London, 189–: The great city is brought to a standstill by a series of blizzards and Sherlock Holmes is bored to distraction. It would take a miracle to bring a case to the detective’s door...

What arrives is not promising: a landlady who complains her artist tenant is behind on rent. Not exactly the miracle for which Holmes was hoping. But, next thing you know, there are several corpses and Sherlock Holmes and his biographer, John H. Watson, MD, find themselves drawn into one of the most bizarre cases of the great detective’s career. And into the cutthroat big business of Art, where chicanery and mendacity (and cut throats) proliferate.

What makes a work of art worth killing for? Is it the artist, his mistress, his dealer, or his blackmailer? The cast of characters is large. But are they perpetrators, accomplices, or victims? And just who is Juliet Packwood, with whom Watson has become infatuated?

Oh, and there’s one other problem: Is this a genuine Holmes case or a clever forgery? Is this the real thing?

If you can’t tell the difference, what is the difference?

Title: Sherlock Holmes and the Real Thing
Author: Nicholas Meyer
Year: 2025
Publisher: Mysterious Press
Purchase: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

Sherlock Holmes and the Telegram from Hell (2024)

Nicholas Meyer is back with his sixth Holmes novel. 

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson cross the Atlantic at the height of World War I in pursuit of a mysterious coded telegram in this new mystery from the author of The Return of the Pharaoh.

June, 1916. With a world war raging on the continent, exhausted John H. Watson, M.D. is operating on the wounded full-time when his labors are interrupted by a knock on his door, revealing Sherlock Holmes, with a black eye, a missing tooth and a cracked rib. The story he has to tell will set in motion a series of world-changing events in the most consequential case of the detective’s career.

Amid rebellion in Ireland and revolution in Russia, Germany has a secret plan to win the war and Sir William Melville of the British Secret Service dispatches the two aging friends to learn what the scheme is before it can be put into effect. In pursuit of a mysterious coded telegram sent from Berlin to an unknown recipient in Mexico, Holmes and Watson must cross the Atlantic, dodge German U-boats and assassination attempts, and evade the intrigues of young J. Edgar Hoover, while enlisting the help of a beautiful, eccentric Washington socialite as they seek to foil the schemes of Holmes’s nemesis, the escaped German spymaster Von Bork.

Sherlock Holmes and the Telegram from Hell plunges Holmes into a world that eerily resembles our own, where entangling alliances, treaties, and human frailty threaten to create another cataclysm.

Title: Sherlock Holmes and the Telegram from Hell 
Author: Nicholas Meyer
Year: 2024
Publisher: Mysterious Press
Purchase: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

No Holidays for Sherlock Holmes (2024)

A collection of new Holmes short stories themed around holidays with an introduction by Nicholas Meyer.

From the creative team that brought you the Sherlock Holmes: A Year of Mystery series comes an all new anthology featuring Sherlock Holmes stories that connect to holidays throughout the year. 

This anthology features some of the best known Sherlock Holmes authors today including David Marcum, Katy Darby, Geri Schear, Shelby Phoenix, Steve Herczeg, Will Murray, Greg Maughn, S.F. Bennett, Kevin Thornton, Derrick Belanger, Lee Shackleford, Hassan Akram, David Stuart Davies, and Gustavo Bondoni 

Plus, a cover by The Strand and Sherlock Holmes: a Year of Mystery artist Jeffrey McKeever! 

Introduction by Nicholas Meyer, author of The Seven Percent Solution.

Title: No Holidays for Sherlock Holmes
Author: Richard T. Ryan (editor)
Year: 2024
Publisher: Belanger Books
Purchase: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

The West End Horror (1977)

First released in hardcover in 1976, this is the mass market paperback edition of Nicholas Meyer's second Holmes novel, The West End Horror. The cover has a cut out window that opens up to a full illustration showing the book's major players (below).

THE GAME'S AFOOT AND HOLMES IS GIVING CHASE!

March 1895. Menace stalks the renowned West End. A maniac more terrifying than Jack the Ripper is on a rampage through London's glamorous theater district.

What baffles Scotland Yard is elementary to the great detective–until Holmes finds himself in the clutches of the grisly murderer!

With the ever faithful Dr. Watson by his side, Baker Street's legendary sleuth sets out to snare the  elusive killer with the help or hinderance of  struggling writer George Bernard Shaw, Gilbert and Sullivan, a controversial wit named Oscar Wilde and London's novelist woman, actress Ellen Terry.

Title: The West End Horror
Author: Nicholas Meyer
Year: 1977
Publisher: Ballantine
Purchase: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

The Return of the Pharaoh (2021)

An all-new Sherlock Holmes pastiche from the pen of the great Nicholas Meyer will be released on November 9, 2021. This time Holmes and Watson meet Howard Carter in Egypt. This will be Meyer's fifth Holmes novel following: The Sever-Per-Cent Solution, The West End Horror, The Canary Trainer, and The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols. 

In Nicholas Meyer's The Return of the Pharaoh, Sherlock Holmes returns in an adventure that takes him to Egypt in search of a missing nobleman, a previously undiscovered pharaoh's tomb, and a conspiracy that threatens his very life.  

With his international bestseller, The Seven Per Cent Solution, Nicholas Meyer brought to light a previously unpublished case of Sherlock Holmes that reinvigorated the world's interest in the first consulting detective. Now, many years later, Meyer is given exclusive access to Dr. Watson's unpublished journal, wherein he details a previously unknown case. 

In 1910, Dr. John Watson travels to Egypt with his wife Juliet. Her tuberculosis has returned and her doctor recommends a stay at a sanitarium in a dry climate. But while his wife undergoes treatment, Dr. Watson bumps into an old friend--Sherlock Holmes, in disguise and on a case. An English Duke with a penchant for egyptology has disappeared, leading to enquiries from his wife and the Home Office. 

Holmes has discovered that the missing duke has indeed vanished from his lavish rooms in Cairo and that he was on the trail of a previous undiscovered and unopened tomb. And that he's only the latest Egyptologist to die or disappear under odd circumstances. With the help of Howard Carter, Holmes and Watson are on the trail of something much bigger, more important, and more sinister than an errant lord.

Title: The Return of the Pharaoh
Author: Nicholas Meyer
Year: 2021
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Purchase: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1977)

This is the 1977 movie tie-in edition of Nicholas Meyer's bestselling Holmes pastiche, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution. The movie starred Nicol Williamson as Sherlock Holmes, Robert Duvall as Dr. Watson and Alan Arkin as Sigmund Freud.

Little could Dr. Watson believe that the pathetic figure huddle before him was the great detective Sherlock Holmes. Alas it was his old friend Holmes, but a Holmes in bondage – not to any arch villain – but to a 7% solution of cocaine and sterile water. Driven by the drug to wild ravings, Holmes had to be duped into rehabilitation – before it was too late....

Title: The Seven-Per-Cent Solution
Author: Nicholas Meyer
Year: 1977 (first published 1974)
Publisher: Ballantine
Purchase: Amazon.

The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols (2019)

A new Sherlock Holmes novel by Nicholas Meyer is headed to bookstores in October 2019. The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols will be Meyer's fourth Holmes outing following The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, The West End Horror, and The Canary Trainer.

With the international bestseller The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, Nicholas Meyer brought to light a previously unpublished case of Sherlock Holmes, as recorded by Dr. John H. Watson. Now Meyer returns with a shocking discovery―an unknown case drawn from a recently unearthed Watson journal. 

January 1905: Holmes and Watson are summoned by Holmes' brother Mycroft to undertake a clandestine investigation. An agent of the British Secret Service has been found floating in the Thames, carrying a manuscript smuggled into England at the cost of her life. The pages purport to be the minutes of a meeting of a secret group intent on nothing less than taking over the world. 

Based on real events, the adventure takes the famed duo―in the company of a bewitching woman―aboard the Orient Express from Paris into the heart of Tsarist Russia, where Holmes and Watson attempt to trace the origins of this explosive document. On their heels are desperate men of unknown allegiance, determined to prevent them from achieving their task. And what they uncover is a conspiracy so vast as to challenge Sherlock Holmes as never before.

Title: The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols
Author: Nicholas Meyer
Year: 2019
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Purchase: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1986)

First published in 1974, this is a 1986 paperback edition of Nicholas Meyer's bestselling Holmes novel, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution. Over two million copies in print then, and it's still in print today.

SHERLOCK HOLMES AND SIGMUND FREUD
TOGETHER AGAIN FOR THE FIRST TIME!

First discovered and then painstakingly edited and annotated by Nicholas Meyer, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution related the astounding and previously unknown collaboration of Sigmund Freud with Sherlock Holmes, as recorded by Holmes's friend and chronicler, Dr. John H. Watson. In addition to its breathtaking account of their collaboration on a case of diabolic conspiracy in which the lives of millions hang in the balance, it reveals such matters as the real identity of the heinous professor Moriarty, the dark secret shared by Sherlock and his brother Mycroft Holmes, and the detective's true whereabouts during the Great Hiatus, when the world believed him to be dead.

Title: The Seven-Per-Cent Solution
Author: Nicholas Meyer
Year: 1986 (first published 1974)
Publisher: Ballantine
Purchase: Amazon.

Read: The case of the non-canonical seduction.

The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (2016)

Nicholas Meyer's bestselling Sherlock Holmes pastiche novel The Seven-Per-Cent Solution published as a graphic novel by IDW.

The best-selling Sherlock Holmes novel by writer/director Nicholas Meyer is adapted in this graphic novel by writers Scott Tipton and David Tipton with artist Rob Joseph. The real story behind Sherlock Holmes’ final confrontation with Professor Moriarty is at long last revealed! Who is the real Moriarty? Why did Holmes disappear for so long? The game is afoot!

Title: The Seven-Per-Cent Solution

Author: David & Scott Tipton, Nicholas Meyer

Year: 2016

Publisher: IDW Publishing

Purchase: Amazon.

LINK: Interview with Nicholas Meyer

My favorite Sherlock Holmes website, I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere, has a terrific podcast interview with Nicholas Meyer, who wrote the seminal Sherlock Holmes pastiche novel, The Seven Per Cent Solution (which launched my interest in Holmes), as well as the screenplay for the film version.

Meyer is a excellent conversationalist and tells fascinating stories about his adventures in the world of Sherlock Holmes and Hollywood, so click the headline to have a listen at IHOSE.

The Canary Trainer (1993)

Nicholas Meyer's third original Holmes novel finds Sherlock at the Paris Opera House tangling with a familiar Phantom.

Located by a computer in the bowels of a major university where it had collected dust for over half a century, this missing manuscript by the biographer of Sherlock Holmes reveals for the first time a hitherto unknown episode in the life of the Great Detective. 

Holmes, master sleuth, was also an accomplished violinist. Following his discharge from therapy with Sigmund Freud (see The Seven-Per-Cent Solution), we now learn that he journeyed to Paris and there found employment as a pit musician at the Paris Opera. 

The year is 1891, Paris is the capital of the western world, and its opera house is full of surprises. First and by no means least is the sudden reappearance of the great love of Holmes's life, an accomplished singer from Hoboken, New Jersey. 

Second is the series of seemingly bizarre accidents—each more sinister than the last—allegedly arranged by the "Opera Ghost, " an opponent who goes by many names and is more than equal to Holmes. 

Alone in a strange and spectacular city, with none of his normal resources, Holmes is commissioned to protect a vulnerable young soprano, whose beautiful voice obsesses a creature no one believes is real, but whose jealousy is lethal. 

In this dazzling, long-awaited sequel to The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, the detective pits wits against a musical maniac, and we are treated to an adventure unlike any other in the archives of Sherlock Holmes.

Title: The Canary Trainer
Author: Nicholas Meyer
Year: 1993
Publisher: W.W. Nortin & Co.
Purchase: Amazon.

The West End Horror (1976)

Nicholas Meyer's follow-up to his best-selling first Holmes novel, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution.

March, 1895. London. A month of singular occurrences in the West End. First there was the bizarre murder of theatre critic Jonathan McCarthy; the police were baffled. Then came the lawsuit against the Marquess of Queenbury for libel; the public was scandalized. And what of the ingenue at the Savoy, discovered with her throat slashed? Or the police surgeon who disappeared talking with him two corpses from the mortuary?

Some of the theatre district's most fashionable and creative luminaries (as well as a number of more marginal participants) were involved or affected by these events: a penniless stage critic and writer named Bernard Shaw; Ellen Terry, the gifted actress and loveliest woman in London; Gilbert and Sullivan; a suspicious box office clerk named Bram Stoker; and aging matinee idol, Henry Irving; an unscrupulous publisher calling himself Frank Harris; and a controversial wit by the name of Oscar Wilde. 

Scotland Yard is mystified by what appear to be unrelated cases, but to Holmes the matter is elementary: a maniac is on the loose.

Title: The West End Horror
Author: Nicholas Meyer
Year: 1976
Publisher: E.P. Dutton & Co.
Purchase: Amazon.

The case of the non-canonical seduction

Here's another reason that I have no business starting a Sherlock Holmes blog, but I suppose I need to confess this upfront. My first experience of Holmes was not the Canon. In fact, I came to Doyle late. My first experience of Sherlock Holmes in print was a pastiche novel, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution by Nicholas Meyer.

In my defense, this is a great novel. It was a sensation of its day and a New York Times Bestseller. And while there had been Sherlock Holmes pastiche novels before this book, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution was the one that kicked off the tidal wave of Holmes mash-up pastiche adventures that continue to this day. (The mash-up here being Sherlock Holmes and Sigmund Freud.)

Part of what made this book special was that Meyer wrote it as John Watson and presented it as a lost adventure with himself credited only as "editor." Today that is almost the standard way to present a Holmes pastiche, but this was a pretty original idea back in 1974 when the book came out. I'm not Holmes expert enough to know whether Meyer was the very first person to write a Holmes novel in the voice of John Watson, but he might have been. He also brilliantly turns the Moriarty story on its head and shows us Holmes as a drug addict, but you know all this.

Pictured above is my cherished signed first edition hardcover. No, it's not Doyle, but I think Meyer's book could be the most significant non-canonical work of them all. It certainly seduced me into the world of Baker Street.

Title: The Seven-Per-Cent Solution
Author: Nicholas Meyer
Year: 1974
Publisher: E.P. Dutton & Co.
Purchase: Amazon.

Also see: The West End Horror (1976)