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.
Author: Nicholas Meyer
Year: 1974
Publisher: E.P. Dutton & Co.
Purchase: Amazon.
Also see: The West End Horror (1976)
