The Canon in Kentucky

Downtown Winchester, Ky.

"I hear of Sherlock everywhere since you became his chronicler," Mycroft Holmes told his younger and more energetic brother.

The world's first consulting detective is known, read, and loved everywhere. And so on tomorrow (March 8) I will be giving two talks on Sherlock Holmes in Winchester, Ky. - one at an assisted living center and one at a public library. That's about a hundred miles from our home in Cincinnati.

The topic of the first is "Everything I Need to Know I Learned from Sherlock Holmes: Life Lessons from the Great Detective." Seven residents of the Rose Mary C. Brooks Place have a Sherlock Holmes reading club that meets once a month. This month they have been reading my Holmes story "The Peculiar Persecution of John Vincent Harden" from my book Baker Street Beat. I'm pleased to be able to share with them life lessons from the Canon - although I'm pretty sure they could give me life lessons!

In re-reading the "John Vincent Harden" story, written long ago, I was amused to see the references to Lexington, Ky., which is only about a twenty minute drive from where I will be speaking.

The second talk, in the evening, will explain to patrons of the Clark County Library "What Every Writer Can Learn from Sherlock Holmes." And that's a lot.

It will be a fun day of talking about writing, wisdom, and Sherlock Holmes. And I suspect that Winchester, which I have never visited, will be very much like Erin, Ohio, the setting for my Sebastian McCabe - Jeff Cody mystery novels. I was flattered that the local paper, The Winchester Sun, took notice of my talks in this story.