It’s been a while since I’ve posted a newsletter. Sorry about that. Sometimes life gets in the way. Many of you will have seen my latest work Baker Street: The Curious Case Files of Sherlock Holmes has been released by Genius Books in the US. It’s been a mammoth project, three years in the making.
Since the release of Baker Street: The Curious Case Files of Sherlock Holmes, one of the questions I keep getting asked is: Where did this obsession with Sherlock Holmes come from? People seem to expect a revelatory story—a moment of divine literary inspiration. Perhaps a pristine leatherbound edition of The Hound of the Baskervilles gifted to me on some windswept birthday, unlocking a new world in a single, elegant sentence.
I hate to disappoint, but there was no great awakening. No thunderclap of discovery. For me, Sherlock Holmes was simply always there.
I was indoctrinated early—though not necessarily by the pure, pipe-smoking, cocaine-injecting Holmes of the Canon. No, my first encounters were far more playful. I suspect my first Holmesian avatar may have been—Egad!—Sherlock Hemlock from Sesame Street. A green, bug-eyed detective with a monocle and an exaggerated “A-ha!” And then came the cartoons. Daffy Duck as Sherlock. Snoopy in a deerstalker. Possibly even Private-Eye Popeye. It’s all a bit foggy now, like one of Holmes’s fog-bound cases, but the spirit of the Great Detective has been with me for as long as I can remember.
Holmes has popped up in the most unexpected places over the years. In a 1976 episode of Wonder Woman, titled Wonder Woman Meets Baroness von Gunther, there’s a boy named Tommy—devoted Holmesian, deerstalker perched proudly on his head, The Hound of the Baskervilles in hand—helping Diana Prince foil evil. Even then, as a kid, I remember thinking: See? Sherlock’s everywhere.
And he really is. The unmistakable silhouette of the deerstalker and pipe turns up across every corner of popular culture. Consider Doctor Who—specifically The Talons of Weng-Chiang, where Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor essentially is Holmes, stalking through a foggy, Victorian nightmare. Or Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, where Spock declares, “An ancestor of mine once said, ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’” (A line Nicholas Meyer, director of that film and author of The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, knew well.)
Star Trek: The Next Generation took it even further. In the episodes Elementary, Dear Data and Ship in a Bottle, Data and Geordi create a Holmesian holodeck fantasy—only to accidentally bring Moriarty to sentient life.
Then there’s The Prisoner. In the episode The Girl Who Was Death, Patrick McGoohan’s nameless spy wanders through a surreal Holmesian dreamscape, donning the outfit and investigating a mad plot. And even in Campion, the BBC series starring Peter Davison, the Holmes nod is clear—Albert Campion wears a deerstalker in Police at the Funeral, gently winking at the audience, saying, “I’m in on the game.”
These moments are scattered across decades and genres, but they’re all part of a bigger truth: I didn’t have to go looking for Sherlock Holmes. He was always there. Tucked into the margins of my childhood, drifting through cartoons, sitcoms, sci-fi, comic books, and bedtime stories. Holmes, in one form or another, has always been part of my life.
Baker Street: The Curious Case Files of Sherlock Holmes isn’t an attempt to solve that mystery—but to celebrate it. It’s a tribute to the character who has always been there, and to all the strange and wonderful places he’s appeared. From Basil Rathbone to Benedict Cumberbatch, from Jeremy Brett to Brent Spiner’s Data, Holmes has endured not just because of Conan Doyle’s brilliance—but because the world keeps needing someone like him.
I never chose Holmes. He chose me. And I suspect—if you’ve picked up this book—he’s chosen you too.
Take a Walk Down Baker Street
As I said at the top, Baker Street: The Curious Case Files of Sherlock Holmes was a mammoth project. It’s 100,000 words, 284 pages (215 x 279mm), full colour throughout—it’s quite a handful.
If you’re curious to obtain a copy for yourself, you can get one direct from the publisher (for my friends in the US) at BakerStreetGenius.com
Or alternatively, you can snag a copy at Amazon.
Yours in the Spirit of Adventure
That’s more than enough self-aggrandisement for one day. But have no fear, I’ll be back soon with more nonsense from inside the greystone walls of old Pentridge Prison. Until then, stay safe and look after one another.