The Adventure of the Frankenstein Monster (2006)

Here's an irresistible pairing for Halloween week. Sherlock Holmes investigates the monster of Frankenstein. It's alive!

Victor Frankenstein creates life from the dead, alone, in his Geneva laboratory. His friend, Clerval, becomes concerned for Victor's health when he is suddenly missing and travels to London, England, to consult 'privately' with his old schoolmate Dr. John Watson. Hearing a strange lie about events told to Watson, Sherlock Holmes takes it upon himself to delve into the strange particulars of the matter. Holmes, Watson and Frankenstein embark on a fantastic journey across the frozen wastelands of icy terror and helplessly observe as all around them meet their most gruesome death at the hands of the Frankenstein Monster.

Title: The Adventure of the Frankenstein Monster

Author: Don W. Baranowski

Year: 2006

Publisher: Infinity Publishing

Purchase: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

Hellbirds (1976)

Austin Mitchelson and Nicholas Utechin's follow-up to their first Holmes pastiche The Earthquake Machine. This one brings the great detective into World War I intrigue.

THE WORLD'S GREATEST DETECTIVE 

In December of 1914, while the two greatest armies in history were deadlocked across Europe from the North Sea to the Alps, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson were called in to investigate the mysterious death of a man who had fallen victim to a vicious flock of birds. There is more to it than first apparent, however–for an evil genius, the German master spy Von Bork, is planning to infiltrate all of England. A new Sherlock Holmes thriller by the authors of THE EARTHQUAKE MACHINE.

Title: Hellbirds
Author: Austin Mitchelson & Nicholas Utechin
Year: 1976
Publisher: Belmont Tower Books
Purchase: Amazon.

Sherlock Holmes and the Houdini Birthright (1995)

Sherlock Holmes and Harry Houdini set out to save Sir Arthur Conan Doyle from fraudulent psychics.

Here's another Sherlock Holmes pastiche from the fertile pen of Val Andrew. Again two areas of mystery are linked: the exploits of Shelock Holmes and the secrets of master escapologist, Harry Houdini. Doctor Watson's collaborator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, finds himself drawn into the world of fake psychics and Houdini is anxious for Holmes to unmask the perpertrators who prey on the innocent believers.

Once he has been torn away from his beekeeping activities, Holmes's investigations lead him to some surprising locations including a Ruritanian castle. Sherlockians, historians and magic buffs will all be intrigued and delighted with this classic detective story which links fact and a little fiction to suggest what may have happened to Houdini after death.

Again .... the game is afoot.

Title: Sherlock Holmes and the Houdini Birthright
Author: Val Andrews
Year: 1995
Publisher: Breese Books
Purchase: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

The Adventure of the Peerless Peer (1974)

The 1974 hardcover edition of Philip Jose Farmer's Holmes-Tarzan mashup, The Adventure of the Peerless Peer. Published as a Dell paperback in 1976.

The "Peerless Peer" of the title is none other than Lord Greystroke, the jungle-born scion of a noble English family, a duke in Britain, but in his larger estate of Central Africa, a king. The time is 1916, at the height of the Great War. The foreign office learns that a deadly formula has been stolen from the allies by Sherlock Holmes's old foe, the German agent, Von Bork. Sherlock Holmes & Watson are called to travel to Africa to retrieve the formula. A meandering adventure story by Philip Jose Farmer, a three time Hugo award winner.

Title: The Adventure of the Peerless Peer

Author: Philip Jose Farmer

Year: 1974

Publisher: Aspen 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

Moriarty (2008)

John Gardner's long-delayed third book in his Professor Moriarty trilogy, originally titled The Redemption of Moriarty, was published posthumously in 2008 as just Moriarty.

Bestselling British novelist John Gardner published two books purporting to be the true history of Professor James Moriarty, archenemy of Sherlock Holmes, the Napoleon of crime. The books - The Return of Moriarty and The Revenge of Moriarty - were praised as stand-alone volumes set in a vividly accurate Victorian London and a stunning vision of the underworld of the time, inhabited by the kind of men and women who lived and preyed on the society of the late 19th century. 

Now it is the turn of the century and Moriarty has been away from London for several years, realizing his plans to set up crime syndicates in major U. S. cities. He is suddenly called back to London where his vast criminal society has been overrun by a rival concern led by the shadowy Sir Jordan 'Mad Jack' de Levant - a supposed gentleman hoodlum who is acting on behalf of the leaders of well-known criminal elements in France, Italy, Spain and Germany. 

Moriarty lives again and revolts against the upstart criminals who have attempted to oust him from his rightful place as king of all criminal endeavour.

Title: Moriarty
Author: John Gardner
Year: 2008
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Purchase: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

Sherlock Holmes and the Red Demon (1997)

The first of a series of Holmes adventures set in Minnesota by Larry Millett.

In the summer of 1994, a workman at the historic mansion of railroad baron James J. Hill in St. Paul, Minnesota, stumbles on a long-hidden wall safe. When experts arrive to open the safe and examine its contents, they make an astonishing discovery. There, inside, is a handwritten manuscript bearing the signature of John H. Watson, M.D.

The manuscript contains the story of how Sherlock Holmes and Watson traveled to Minnesota to track a murderous arsonist—known only as the Red Demon—who is threatening both Hill and his Great Northern Railway. Set against the backdrop of the real, devastating Hinckley forest fire of 1894, Sherlock Holmes and the Red Demon is the tense and atmospheric first novel in Larry Millett’s classic series of adventures that brought Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson to Minnesota.

Title: Sherlock Holmes and the Red Demon
Author: Larry Millett
Year: 1997
Publisher: Penguin Group
Purchase: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

The Grim Game (2024)

Sherlock Holmes investigates the death of Harry Houdini in this well-researched audio play by Scott McQuaid and Pop Up Theater. (The Grim Game was the title of a movie the real Houdini made in 1919.)

Click here for more Holmes and Houdini crossovers.

Five Miles Of Country (2024)

The third Holmes tale "as discovered by Gretchen Altabef." Lots of crossover fun in this one.

The year is 1896. Sherlock Holmes meets Thomas Edison. At the dawn of Cinema, a beautiful Broadway danseuse is murdered in Edison’s New Jersey Laboratory. Irene Adler encounters ghosts on Broadway. Harry Houdini mystifies the New York Vaudeville circuit. Holmes and Watson go hunting in New York City’s Badlands with Police Commissioner, Theodore Roosevelt. Meanwhile, Rachel Holmes journeys to the Pine Barrens to film the Jersey Devil and the denizens of Poughkeepsie reel in Kipsy the Hudson River Monster.

Title: Five Miles Of Country
Author: Gretchen Altabef
Year: 2024
Publisher: MX Publishing
Purchase: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

These Scattered Houses (2019)

A Holmes tale "as discovered by Gretchen Altabef." The first in a trilogy.

A client forsworn, a threatened town, and a Goliath of unimaginable proportions . ....Sherlock Holmes has survived a three-year vendetta against him by Moriarty’s remaining henchmen. Wounded and bleeding, with Mycroft’s help he clandestinely boards an Atlantic steamship. At the close of his great hiatus, Holmes finds sanctuary at Vassar Women’s College.

This radical challenge entangles him in the web of a nefarious mystery. Its unraveling involves New York’s most revolutionary residents: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. To pluck his client from danger, he drafts the twenty-year-old Harry Houdini in outrageous sleight of hand. Four villains embroil the plot. The lives of everyday citizens inexorably rise to heroism.

And it all begins when a twelve-year-old girl matches wits with Sherlock Holmes on Market Street.

These Scattered Houses is a daring adventure in the style of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. As Professor Sigerson the pansophic gentleman of justice, Holmes is confronted by the evil that lurks within the smiling and beautiful countryside.

Title: These Scattered Houses
Author: Gretchen Altabef
Year: 2019
Publisher: MX Publishing
Purchase: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk