In the Company of Sherlock Holmes: Stories Inspired by the Holmes Canon

Devotees of the greatest of all fictional detectives will welcome this anthology from King and Klinger (A Study in Sherlock), who have assembled a murderers’ row of talent, including bestselling authors not usually associated with Holmes and Watson. Only two stories are traditional pastiches; the other 13 pay homage to the spirit of the originals in very different ways. Michael Connelly’s “The Crooked Man,” in which Harry Bosch consults a coroner named Art Doyle, cleverly riffs on Conan Doyle’s “The Adventure of the Crooked Man.”A brilliant bipolar patient puts his gifts for Holmesian deduction to use while tracking a serial killer in Jeffrey Deaver’s “The Adventure of the Laughing Fisherman.” Cornelia Funke provides insights into Holmes’s youth in her moving “Lost Boys,” while an elderly Holmes plays a heroic role during WWII in John Lescroart’s stirring “Dunkirk.” Klinger himself weighs in with one of the more memorable entries, “The Closing,” which offers a sophisticated variation on one of the most tragic canonical adventures. According to the editors’ illuminating introduction, a similarly themed second volume is in the works. (Nov.)