Classic Sherlock Holmes fanworks exchange

*flourish of trumpets*

The Grand Reveal. Please go and acknowledge your compliments in person, cross=post as desired and recipients, if you have not already thanked your giftor, get right on that.

We have an A03 collection at which you are welcome to post/link, HERE

Meanwhile, in the restaurant of the Landsdowne Hotel, Eastbourne, Sussex, some time in 1905:

“Watson, it was not an “adventure”. A puzzle, certainly. A mystery, if you insist. But there is nothing ‘adventurous’ about tiresome conversations with tiresome people and a trip to Cambridgeshire to uncover a mere domestic tragedy"

I was inclined to humour him. It had been a very good dinner, paid for, at my insistence, from my latest royalty cheque, and now we were expansive over a brace of Havanas and a bottle of Armagnac.

“Surely it could be argued that the client had an adventure, albeit an unhappy one.”

“Hmm. Nevertheless, I am bound to say this latest collection shows a sad lack of imaginative variety. The Adventure of…The Adventure of… and so on for the entire book.”

Sherlock Holmes waved his cigarette hand with a flourish and almost set fire to a passing waiter.

“I thought you never read them.”

He laid his unoccupied hand flat on the cloth and examined its pristine fingernails.

“I always take an interest in an Index, dear boy.”

“It is not a simple matter, coming up with a title for a short story. To capture the heart of a case and to present it in a way that people want to read more. Adventure is what people want, and that is what I give them.”

His expression softened, just a fraction. “And what I give you.”

For my part, I was not afraid to smile outright, and to reach for his hand across the table. He allowed me to press it, for a moment.

“Not just the cases, Holmes. You surely know that.”

“I know it.”

As if to break the spell, to show how much he detested sentiment, he went back on the attack, although he chose another target.

"In any case, I know that Doyle has the final say: he has a very well-developed commercial sense.” It was not a compliment. “Say you had entirely free choice: what would we see?”

“Certainly not ‘Treatise on the Deductive and Inductive Methods in Detection, parts one to sixty’,” I dared.

He sighed. “That particular manuscript was clearly not as well hidden as I had thought.”

“It was in the pile of papers covering the acid burnhole in the hearth-rug, which I tripped over last Thursday night. What about ‘Sherlock Holmes Glues his Finger in a Keyhole'? Or ‘Watson is Right After All about Mrs Felton’s Pearls’? Or ‘This Story is A Patchwork of Details from Six Different Cases to Avoid Being Sued for Libel’?"

“’Adventures’ it is, then. How much to replace the rug?”


[p.s. absolutely no disrespect intended to any of you who did choose to name your story an ‘Adventure’ – I just noticed that every single one of 'The Return of Sherlock Holmes' collection is so named, and that with various folk reporting struggling with titles – well, inspiration is not to be brushed off lightly]

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“Holmes…”

Damn. I had not expected him home quite so soon.


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