Sherlock Holmes: The Crossovers Casebook - Edited by Howard Hopkins

This is a fun collection of Sherlock Holmes stories. They are all crossover cases, meaning prominent figures of fiction and history “crossover” into a Sherlock story and work with Holmes and Watson to solve a case. Guest stars include Professor Challenger, Sexton Blake, Harry Houdini, Dr. Moreau, Arsene Lupin, Lawrence of Arabia, Colonel Savage and more. Contributing authors include giants of the crossover genre like Win Scott Eckert, Will Murray, and Joe Gentile. 

Most of the stories are written along the traditional Sherlockian lines but the final one, “The Adventure of the Lost Specialist” penned by Christopher Sequeira strays into the realm of the weird and strange. Nothing wrong with that and I did like it, but it seems a bit out of place among the rest. My favorite story in the collection is the humorous yarn entitled, “The Haunted Manor” written by Howard Hopkins and featuring Calamity Jane.

I read these over time, not back to back which is the best way for me to avoid burnout on one particular genre. As with all anthologies some stories are more enjoyable than others, but I genuinely liked every tale presented.  Some authors were new to me and so, of course, I now have more stories to seek out.