Winter 2024 BSJ

The Winter 2024 Baker Street Journal includes these articles:

The Editor’s Gas-Lamp.

The Methods of Sherlock Holmes: The “Examination Paper” of 1893’s Author Revealed
by Michael A. Meer.

“Well up in . . . poisons generally.”
by Anne-Marie Nelson.

We Love Sherlock, but Would Sherlock Love Us?
by Kira Settingsgaard.

“Black Peter”: A Tale of Hardware, Ice, and Bankers
by Robert D. Madison.

Clinical Notes by a Resident Doctor
by Robert Katz.

The Guns of “Thor Bridge”
by Charles Blanksteen.

The Commonplace Book.

Baker Street Inventory.

Film Review: Silent Sherlock.

Letters to Baker Street.

“Stand with me here upon the terrace…”

Index to Volume 74.

Whodunit?

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The Editor’s Gas-Lamp

“I have a peculiar taste in these matters.”
by Dan Andriacco, Editor

Dan Andriacco, Editor, The Baker Street Journal

“All Holmes is good Holmes,” some Sherlockians insist. We beg to differ. Although even the least of the Canon is worth reading and re-reading, not every work involving a character called or inspired by Sherlock Holmes demands our time. Whether any particular work does or not is a matter of preference.

Some ideations of our Baker Street sleuth are bound to raise eyebrows, if not hackles, for many of us. Recently, for example—

The three-issue comic book series “Godzilla’s Monsterpiece Theatre” from IDW has the giant lizard taking on Holmes as well as the Great Gatsby, H.G. Wells’s Time Traveler, and Count Dracula. This brings to mind 2010’s steampunk Sherlock Holmes, in which Holmes and Watson face a dinosaur not in the Lost World, but in London—truly a story for which the world was not yet prepared.
Shekar Home, a six-part Indian television series, drew almost universally bad reviews. The one from the Deccan Herald said in part: “Crime is common. Logic is rare—a line written by Arthur Conan Doyle could perhaps summarise what happens in Shekhar Home, a desi adaptation of the iconic Sherlock Holmes.” The review was headlined: “A Crime in itself.”
The Irregulars, an eight-episode 2021 series from Netflix featuring an offbeat Holmes and supernatural shenanigans.

Certainly, some readers/watchers will find enjoyment in these riffs, while others will cringe. That’s why since Volume 1, Number 1 in January 1946 this irregular Journal has offered Baker Street Inventory, now conducted by associate editor Mike McSwiggin. While offering the reviewer’s opinion, this feature is primarily designed to draw your attention to new and notable pastiches and Writings About the Writings that you might enjoy. But in the end, as Dr. Watson wrote, “you shall decide for yourself.”.

The Editor’s Gas-Lamp, Winter 2024, Vol. 74, No. 4.