Sherlock in the Seventies (2021)

Let's kick off 2026 with something a little different. This is not a pastiche, but it is a Holmes book I'm currently reading and greatly enjoying. Having grown up with '70s Holmes, I was worried there wouldn't be much new here for me, but I was wrong. This author really knows his Holmes and movie history. I'd love for him to tackle some other decades.

Every era has had the Sherlock Holmes it wanted or needed—except the 1970s. In that wild decade, all bets were off . . .

The popular image of Sherlock Holmes in any given period derives as much from the actors who portrayed the detective as it does from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original stories and Sidney Paget’s famous illustrations. In earlier and subsequent decades this image was defined by a single stage or screen actor (from William Gillette and Basil Rathbone to Jeremy Brett and Robert Downey Jr.), but the nine Sherlock Holmes films made in the ’70s re-imagine the detective in starkly divergent ways, from the boldly inventive to the flat-out irreverent. Holmes is variously portrayed as gay (Robert Stephens), crazy (George C. Scott), pompous (Stewart Granger), petulant (Gene Wilder), vulnerable (Nicol Williamson), camp (Roger Moore) wrong-headed (John Cleese), silly (Peter Cook), and socially conscious (Christopher Plummer). Yet all these films contribute in their own way to casting new light on the legend. In Sherlock in the Seventies, Derham Groves offers an entertaining and absorbing account of these films, packed with shrewd analysis and insights, background details, numerous illustrations, and behind-the-scenes anecdotes.

Title: Sherlock in the Seventies
Author: Derham Groves
Year: 2021
Publisher: The Visible Spectrum
Purchase: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

The Solar Pons Companion (2017)

The seventh volume in DIPs "The Complete Adventures of Solar Pons" also contains essays by Basil Copper and the history of his involvement with "the Sherlock Holmes of Praed Street."

I am not writing new Solar Pons stories. My Solar Pons material was authorised and commissioned by Arkham House Publishers, Inc. back in the 1970s, and was written then but, owing to changes at Arkham House, they were never published by that imprint. 

The tales remained in limbo for something like twenty years before the originals began to be published by Fedogan & Bremer of Minneapolis. All date from the 1970s and early 1980s so perhaps original copyright lines should have been printed together with the new publication dates which would have obviated all misunderstandings. 

So, the present volume and all the Pons tales from my pen were commissioned and authorised by the then editorial and legal personnel at Arkham House and by the estate of the late August Derleth, who was a great friend of mine and very enthusiastic about my work. 

–Basil Copper

Title: The Solar Pons Companion
Author: Basil Copper & Stephen Jones
Year: 2017
Publisher: Drugstore Indian Press
Purchase: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1975)

This is non-fiction, but still worth the share. This is the 1975 paperback edition of Vincent Starrett's classic study of Sherlock Holmes with an introduction by Michael Murphy.

This work has long been out of print. In fact, those few copies found in the last decade have often brought prices usually attached to rare books and curiosa. The original edition was first published by Macmillian in 1933. Mr. Starrett revised and enlarged the work for a University of Chicago edition in 1960. This is the first paperback edition. Throughout the world this book is still recognized as the definitive study of Sherlock Holmes.

Title: The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes

Author: Vincent Starrett

Year: 1975 (first published 1933)

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Purchase: Amazon.