Two hundred and twenty-one Baker Streets

A very uneven collection of tales where Holmes and Watson are taken by the authors and put in different countries, different ages and different sexes. Some of the stories are quite good, and some simply aren't. These are the 14 stories:

1. A scandal in Hobohemia by Jamie Wyman. A carny not-Holmes in a travelling carnival.
2. Black Alice by Kelly Hale. A 17th century Holmes and Watson in England. Quite good.
3. The Adventure of the Speckled Bandana by J. E. Cohen Holmes and Watson's case in modern Las Vegas.
4. The Rich Man’s Hand by Joan De La Haye. South African Holmes and Watson found themselves in need of money and take a case from Lestrade. Its weird, really weird, but it's a good one. I love the sarcastic personality of Watson.
5. The Lantern Men by Kaaron Warren. A slow ghost story located in modern Australia, with a Holmes that is not a consultant detective and a Watson that is not a doctor.
6. A Woman’s Place by Emma Newman. A very good answer to the question "but why does Mrs Hudson puts up with the detective pair?".
7. A Study in Scarborough by Guy Adams. A very interesting take on the "Holmes-Watson" pair as a famous but faded comedic duo in modern England. Quite good.
8. The Small World of 221B by Ian Edginton. Dr. Watson has to be the best man of Mr. Michael Stamford, and things start to go really weird. Very good story.
9. The Final Conjuration by Adrian Tchaikovsky. What happens if you can't take the impossible from the equation? This is fantasy and mystery at its best. I love this story.
10. The Innocent Icarus by James Lovegrove. A victorian London where everyone is born with strange superpowers. Except for Mr. Sherlock Holmes.
11. Half There/All There by Glen Mehn. Sherlock Holmes in Andy Warhol’s ‘Factory,’. I hated this one. Didn't finished it.
12. All the Single Ladies by Gini Koch. Contemporary California: a series of murders in all-female universities, a Dr. Watson with a sarcastic personality, a British Sherlock Holmes helping the local police and a reality show. Very good story.
13. The Patchwork Killer by Kasey Lansdale. A modern Watson, one not-so-modern Holmes and a weird series of killings. I didn't liked this one.
14. Parallels by Jenni Hill. Meta-stories in a story. If you like fanfics, this is your story. I hate fanfics.

This is an interesting collection of stories although, inevitably, there are some that I enjoyed more than others. Highlights for me included Kelly Hale’s Black Alice which shifts Sherlock Holmes to the Enlightenment and pits him against the parochial superstitions of seventeenth-century Worcestershire. This felt like a near-perfect setting for the great detective and I would loved to have seen more like this.

Then there was Kaaron Warren’s The Lantern Men which was very dark. If you can imagine Edgar Allen Poe having set a Sherlock Holmes story in Australia, then you have pretty much captured the feel of this story. Emma Newman’s A Woman’s Place imagines a near-future dystopia and explains — rather brilliantly — why he unflappable, ever-present Mrs. Hudson continues to put up with Holmes.

The Small World of 221B by Ian Edginton is an overtly strange story that I found myself enjoying a great deal more than I expected. The Final Conjuration by Adrian Tchaikovsky makes no attempt to re-imagine Holmes, preferring to plonk him unaltered into a high fantasy setting, to brilliant effect.

The Innocent Icarus by James Lovegrove gives us a Holmes in a world of superheroes and All The Single Ladies by Gini Koch gives a breezily flippant Holmes against a background of reality TV.

And finally, there’s Parallels by Jenni Hill which takes the re-inventing Holmes idea to it’s limit with a pair of teenage girls.

Obviously, other people will respond to different stories differently and will find other highlights. But you have any interest in the idea of a re-imagined Sherlock Holmes, and even if you don’t, this collection is well worth a read.