The Holmes-Dracula File (1978)

For Halloween, here's a look back at Fred Saberhagen's The Holmes-Dracula File, the second book in his ten-book Dracula series. This is the first U.S. paperback edition.

From the writing of the late John H. Watson, M.D. 

It is with emotions doubly strange that I at last take up my pen to write the story involving the creature I have elsewhere referred to as the Giant Rat of Sumatra–a story, I may add that until quite recently I had thought likely would remain forever unrecorded . . . surely the most bizarre case in all the long and illustrious career of my friend Sherlock Holmes.

By Holmes' own instructions, it must go with some few private papers of his own, into the deepest vaults of the Oxford Street bank. There it is to remain for years or decades, for centuries if need be, until a mist singular password shall be presented for its removal . . . .

And so, at last:

THE HOLMES-DRACULA FILE 

Title: The Holmes-Dracula File

Author: Fred Saberhagen

Year: 1978

Publisher: ACE Science Fiction

Purchase: Amazon.com.

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.