Sherlock Holmes is not called the “Great Detective” without reason. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s immortal character inspired entire literary genres and even early films while the Scotsman was still penning new adventures in magazines like Blackwoods and The Strand. When the average person envisions a detective, it is a safe bet that they will conjure up the distinctive markings of Holmes — deerstalker cap, pipe, and hound's-tooth cape. While other aspects of Holmes’s biography, from his time as a light heavyweight boxer and Bartitsu expert to his thirst for cocaine, tend to get glossed over by the general public, observant and obsessed readers have taken these small biographical traces and built new worlds. Hence, the birth of the Sherlock Holmes pastiche.
Writers, both excellent and execrable, began using Holmes and Dr. Watson (Holmes’s Boswell) as fodder for humorous tales, spooky stories, or valid attempts at adding to Conan Doyle’s cannon. Maurice Leblanc, the creator of the gentleman thief Arsène Lupin, created for his Francophone character an English rival in the form of Herlock Sholmes. True to the ancient rivalry between the lands of roast beef and steak au poivre, Leblanc’s dashing and debonair cracksman triumphs over the overinflated gumshoe. Not to be outdone, the American master Mark Twain lampooned Holmes in his short tale “A Double Barrelled Detective Story,” where Fetlock Jones, Sherlock’s cousin, is accused of murder. Sherlock Holmes therefore trades foggy London for the heat of California during the Wild West.
Other pastiches have been more faithful and less satirical. Such examples include Harry Dickson and Sexton Blake, two Holmesian characters who were given their own pulp stories, paperback novels, and comic strips. Blake in particular leans more heavily on the espionage side of things, which Holmes did engage in during the original tales (see: “The Naval Treaty” or “His Last Bow”). There is also of course more modern affairs, including the excellent contemporary novels of James Lovegrove and the short story collection Shadows Over Baker Street, both of which pit Holmes and Watson against the cultists and monstrosities of H.P. Lovecraft. Given that Mr. Holmes has fought Jack the Ripper, Dracula, and certain European dictators, duking it out with Cthulhu is par for the course.
Speaking of Lovecraft, other writers from Weird Tales created Holmesian pastiches, as well. Manly Wade Wellman penned patriotic Holmes short stories during World War II, wherein the arch Englishman defeated German saboteurs (again!). Much later Wellman combined Holmes with H.G. Wells in Sherlock Holmes’s War of the Worlds. But, as good as all of this pulp is, the best Holmesian pastiche is Solar Pons, and the man who created Solar Pons was none other than August Derleth.
Derleth is best known for creating the imprint Arkham House alongside Donald Wandrei. Arkham House was almost the single, solitary source that kept Lovecraft’s fiction alive after his death from stomach cancer in 1937. As such, Derleth is often revered among fans of weird fiction for his devotion to a friend. Derleth’s own fiction is less championed, and indeed some have taken issue with his creation of the term “Cthulhu Mythos” (a term serious Lovecraftheads despise) as well as his completion of some of Lovecraft’s unfinished manuscripts. Derleth, a Roman Catholic, definitely saw the world definitely from the atheist Lovecraft, but this should not detract from his exceptional weird tales. Also, Derleth was one heck of a detective story writer, as evidence by Solar Pons.
Derleth wrote his first Solar Pons short story while Conan Doyle was still alive, although the Great Creator would die the following year. Solar Pons and his companion Dr. Parker are so close to the bone to Holmes and Watson that they may as well be twins. Pons and Parker live in London, but at 7B Praed Street rather than 221B Baker. Instead of Mrs. Hudson, Pons and Parker enjoy the services of the landlady Mrs. Johnson. And as for the elephantine of intellect and stomach, Mycroft Homes? Try Bancroft Pons on for size.
As much as Derleth’s Pons tales are mirror images of the Conan Doyle originals, there are some interesting differences. For one, Solar Pons and Dr. Parker are men of the Jazz and electric ages, with their cases taking place primarily in the 1920s and 1930s. And while many of the Solar Pons cases are simple adventures of deduction, the detective does duel with evil, or at least the appearance of evil. Suspected ghosts, vampires, and witches are all present in Derleth’s stories. The scribe from Sauk City also tipped his hat to other creators by including characters and ideas lifted from Lovecraft, William Hope Hodgson, Sax Rohmer, and Agatha Christie. Talk about a pastiche of a pastiche of a pastiche of a pastiche…
Derleth’s Solar Pons stories were published in the pulps and as paperback originals from 1945 until Derleth’s death in 1971. Much like young Derleth, who created Pons when he learned that Conan Doyle had retired from writing, Englishman Basil Copper rescued Solar Pons and Dr. Parker from the purgatory of out-of-print following Derleth’s utimely demise. Copper, a horror specialist who published his first ghoulish yarns in the 1960s, churned out new Solar Pons stories all the way until 2005. Copper’s Solar Pons is much the same as Derleth’s, although as a true Englishman, Copper could not help himself from injecting dry humour in to his tales.
Much like Derleth and Copper, the Internet has continued to keep Solar Pons alive. Devoted fans of the greatest Sherlock Holmes pastiche ever created have their own website, which chronicles, among other things, every case put to paper by Derleth and Copper. The website is a wonderful resource, plus it explains why anyone should care about Solar Pons in the first place. This is no mere copy or pantomime; the Ponsian universe has devoted “Irregulars” because the stories are so good and engrossing. Maybe you will find them that way too. Best bet is to start reading.
The game is afoot.