Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories captured the imaginations of readers to such a degree that they hounded Doyle when he wrote of Holmes’s supposed death at Reichenbach Falls. They have continued to inspire both readers and writers in the decades since. One of Holmes’s most defining traits is his unwavering devotion to logic. How, then, might he react if confronted with a case where logic seemed not to apply? The contributors to John Joseph Adams’s anthology The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes envision scenarios in which Holmes must live up to his own maxim: “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
While the majority of the stories in this volume deal with phenomena that go beyond the laws of nature as they exist in the real world, some do prove to have mundane (if improbable) explanations. Interestingly, one such is written by Stephen King, who is far better known for his tales of supernatural horror. His contribution, “The Doctor’s Case,” is an excellent straight-up mystery story. Anne Perry’s “The Case of the Bloodless Sock” is also a well-constructed story in the vein of the original Holmes tales, penned by a modern luminary of the mystery genre.
A number of the writers had Holmes and Watson meeting real historical figures of their time. Anthony Burgess (of A Clockwork Orange fame) gives us “Murder to Music,” in which Sullivan of Gilbert and Sullivan makes a brief appearance. Stephen Baxter’s “The Adventure of the Inertial Adjustor” (one of my favorite stories, with a masterful ending) includes H.G. Wells as a character. Tony Pi’s “Dynamics of a Hanging” features Charles Dodgson, a.k.a. Lewis Carroll. These appearances made for fun Easter eggs, as well as serving to ground their stories in the time and place where the original Holmes stories were set.
Other authors have Holmes and Watson meet fictional characters from their own era. Although I felt that the resolution to Bradley H. Sinor’s “The Adventure of the Other Detective” was accomplished too easily, I appreciated the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it reference to Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. Having greatly enjoyed Barbara Roden’s short story collection Northwest Passages, I was eager to read her story in this anthology. “The Things That Shall Come Upon Them” didn’t disappoint, and I love the way she tied in the events of M.R. James’s “Casting the Runes.” Barbara Hambly’s “The Antiquarian’s Niece” references H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Rats in the Walls” and includes William Hope Hodgson’s Carnacki the Ghost-Finder as a character who assists Holmes in the case. Neil Gaiman’s World Fantasy Award-winning “A Study in Emerald” also crosses over Holmes with Lovecraft’s work, and does so with Gaiman’s trademark eerie sensibility and beautiful prose.
A number of the stories are noteworthy for other reasons. Geoffry A. Landis’s “The Singular Habits of Wasps” and Rob Rogers’s “The Adventure of the Pirates of Devil’s Cape” both center Holmes’s other skills—his physical strength, his ability at hand-to-hand combat, and his mastery of disguise—alongside his intellectual prowess. “Wasps” also has a great cosmic horror-ish ending: “I look at the stars now, and shudder. What else might be out there, waiting for us?” As for “Pirates,” many Holmes stories have titles formatted as “The Adventure of __________”, but this one really is a fun adventure, although the inexplicable element felt somewhat tacked-on at the end. As its title suggests, Dominic Green’s “The Adventure of the Lost World” draws on Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World. This one has more humor in it that most Holmes stories. Tanith Lee’s “The Human Mystery” is a beautiful story, and it’s fitting that it’s dedicated to the late Jeremy Brett, who is widely considered to have given the definitive screen performance of the Sherlock Holmes character.
Overall, this is a brilliant anthology, and regardless of which aspects of Holmes stories it is that draws you to them, you should be able to find something here to enjoy.
Outside of a Dog 