The Misadventure of Shelrock Holmes Read Free

up with Jefferson Hope, the name of the murderer in A STUDY IN SCARLET. Mr. Starrett is so certain this is what happened diat he is willing to bet all his precious first editions of Holmes that he is right! Personally, we agree with Mr. Starrett's views — so unconditionally, in fact, that we are prepared to risk our own precious first editions by offering to share Mr. Starrett's bet.
    That is why you will meet in this volume such appellative disguises as
    Sherlaw Kombs
    Picklock Holes Thinlock Bones Shylock Homes 9 Hemlock Jones Purlock Hone Holmlock Shears Herlock Sholmes Shamrock Jolnes Solar Pons Shirley Holmes
    and, by comparison, such moderately warped Watsonisms as
    Whatson Potson Whatsoname Jobson Whatsup
    WE CANNOT bring you anything new of Sherlock — you've read all there is. By the time this book is published, the newly discovered short story, The Man Who Was Wanted, may have been given to the world by the Doyle estate —and you will have devoured that. And that's all there is, there is no more. We are realists enough to face the hard fact that there is no Cox's Bank--not in this world; that there is no dispatch-box in its legendary vaults containing the documents of unrecorded cases. They are lost to us forever.
    9 One of the newest variants has a curious politico-economic flavor: on the night of May 6 1943, in the Rudy Vallee radio show, Basil Rathbone played the part ot a detective named F. H. A. Homes. And currently, in the magazine 'Speed Comics, there is a series of color comics in which The Master Detective (assisted by Dr. Watsis) is called Padlock Homes.
    Two bizarre uses of Sherlock as a first name also come to mind. On July ii, 1043 Station WJZ of New York broadcast a "Sneak Preview" radio program titled "Cohen the Detective"; this show. Potash and Perlmutter style, concerned the de-tectival misadventures of two partners in the clothing business, Mr. Sherlock Cohen and his associate, Mr. Wasserman. And in the magazine "Funny Animals, there is now appearing a series of color comics about Sherlock Monk, a monkey wearing a deerstalker-cap and smoking a calabash pipe, and his assistant, Chuck, a duck wearing a flat, wide-brimmed straw hat; it is Chuck, however, who is the real sleuth of this strange zoological detective-team.
    Someone has said that more has been written about Sherlock Holmes than about any other character in fiction. It is further true that more has been written about Holmes by others than by Doyle himself. Vincent Starrett once conjectured that "innumerable parodies of THE ADVENTURES have appeared in innumerable journals." 10 There aren't that many, of course; but a half dozen or more full-length volumes have been devoted to Holmes's career and personality, literally hundreds of essays and magazine articles, a few-score radio dramas, some memorable plays, many moving-picture scripts — and to put it more accurately, numerous parodies and pastiches.
    We bring you the finest of these parodies and pastiches. They are the next best thing to new stories — unrecorded cases of The Great Man, not as Dr. Watson related them, but as some of our most brilliant literary figures have imagined them. These "misadventures" - these Barriesque adventures that might have been — are all written with sincere reverence, despite the occasional laughter and fun-pokings, which are only a psychological form of adoration — or, perhaps, downright envy. The old proverb — "imitation is the sin-cerest flattery" — reveals in a single laconic sentence the comprehensive motif of this book.
    You will see Holmes through the eyes of Mark Twain, O. Henry, Bret Harte, Sir James Barrie, Stephen Leacock, and lesser lights — all Devotees of Doyle and Sycophants of Sherlock, all humble Watsons paying homage from their own 22iB, the eternal sanctuary of perpetual youth.
    AND FINALLY, an explanation for certain omissions — "missing misadventures." We have not failed to consider the inclusion of three pastiches in