A (Henry) Baker's Dozen of Books for Christmas

The goose that laid the blue carbuncle

Let the Christmas book buying begin! 

There’s an embarrassment of riches out there for Sherlock Holmes enthusiasts, new volumes and old treasures. Here are my lucky 13 choices, some of which include more than one book and all of which I have written about before:

 
The Canon, meaning the original four novels and 56 short stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Any edition will do, but Leslie Klinger’s New Annotated Sherlock Holmes defines the term “value-added.” 

The Vatican Murders: The Church Mysteries of Sherlock Holmesand The Watson Chronicles, Ann Margaret Lewis. These two unrelated books ultimately explore much bigger mysteries than whodunit.  

Sherlock Holmes for Dummies by Steven Doyle and David A. Crowder. It’s not just for dummies and not just for newbies. Even a small shelf of Sherlockian books should include this one.   

The Detective and The Woman; The Detective, The Woman, and the Winking Tree;andThe Detective, The Woman, and the Silent Hive by Amy Thomas. Fortunately, this is not a trilogy – there will be more stories to come. These books present an Irene Adler I can believe in. 

Art in the Blood by Bonnie MacBird. Although much longer than any of the original Holmes novels, Ms. MacBird gives us a Holmes and Watson that are raditional in almost every other way.

The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part I, Part II, and Part III, edited by David Marcum. This collection of new pastiches, with so many distinguished contributors that it would be foolhardy to single out any of them, is remarkable for quality as well as for quantity.  

Holmes and Watson – The War Years by Kieran McMullen. This is a three-for-one, an omnibus volume of novels about Watson’s service in Afghanistan before he met Holmes and both of our heroes together in the Boer War and in the Irish Rebellion. 

Moriarty by Anthony Horowitz. I didn’t care for his much-touted pastiche, The House of Silk, but this one is a gem of a mystery.  

The Open and Shut Case, The Case of the Spotted Band, and The Case of Scotch by Harry DeMaio. Welcome to a fun, funny, and strangely compelling alternate universe where the Holmes (or Wolfean) hero is a bear named Octavius.  

Mycroft Holmes by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Ann Waterhouse. This is the story of a young Mycroft, before he became the imposing figure that we know, and it’s a good one. 

Anything by Mike Hogan,but especially his Sherlock Holmes & Young Winston series. His books are just fun, exhibiting a light touch that avoids descending into parody.  

The Baker Street Journal. Really, every serious Sherlockian has to subscribe because every other serious Sherlockian is reading it five times a year. 

The Complete Works of Dan Andriacco, the latest of which are Bookmarked for Murderand The Egyptian Curse (with Kieran McMullen.) At least I saved myself for last!    

Learn more about any of these fine books by searching the title or the author using the search function at the upper left of this blog.