Pastiches paying homage to one of the greatest detectives of all time have been around since Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s time.  Sherlock Holmes, in his deerstalker cap with a pipe in his mouth, solving the most seemingly impossible mysteries, is too enticing a character to just let die.  And many authors have expanded the Holmesian universe by writing about other characters from various adventures.

One of the best is the Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series by Laurie R. King.  King does not just copy Holmes and his world—she adds and extends and deepens Holmes as a person and a man.  Framed as though Holmes were a real person who was exploited by Doyle, these stories tell what happened to Holmes later in life.  Young American teen Mary Russell first meets Holmes in The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, and he reluctantly becomes her mentor as they work together to solve the kidnapping of an American senator’s daughter.

Caleb Carr, author of The Alienist, contributed to the Holmes oeuvre with The Italian Secretary, wherein Holmes is on the trail of a murderer that might lead all the way to the royal family.  

Filling in the years after Holmes supposedly died in Switzerland at the hands of Moriarity, the aptly titled Sherlock Holmes: the Missing Years by Jamyang Norbu, tells of how Holmes met and helped the Thirteenth Dalai Lama assume his rightful position as spiritual and political leader of Tibet in the face of Chinese imperial interference.

In The Secret Cases of Sherlock Holmes and Sherlock Holmes and the Voice From the Crypt, Donald Serrell Thomas channels Watson and writes the unpublished further cases of Sherlock Holmes that supposedly occurred at the beginning of the twentieth century. 

In his homage to Holmes, The Final Solution, Michael Chabon, award winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, tells the story of an elderly retired Holmes who becomes involved with a German boy whose African Grey’s spouting of strings of numbers may be tied to a dangerous secret.

Mitch Cullin also focuses on an elderly Holmes, living in Sussex with the company of his housekeeper’s son Roger.  In A Slight Trick of the Mind, Holmes is dealing with a Japanese acquaintance’s missing father, remembrances of the Case of the Glass Armonica, and short term memory loss. 

During Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, Diana Fordeland, visiting from Canada, asks for Holmes assistance.  He discovers she is being followed by the head of the Russian intelligence in London and is drawn into an intrigue from long ago in this traditional update of Holmes and his world, Sherlock Holmes and the King’s Governess by Barrie Roberts.

There are also many collections of short stories that continue the cases of Sherlock Holmes including: Murder, My Dear Watson; The Resurrected Holmes; and The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures.