The Pastiche is Afoot: Adapting and Creating New Work in the World of Sherlock Holmes

In 2006, I was commissioned by a theatre to write an adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles (which had entered the public domain in 2002). The youth theatre company. Always trying my best to bring something new to any adaptation, I decided to go with an interesting premise: What If Holmes really had died in his battle with Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls, triggering an unprecedented crime spree in his absence that necessitated his SISTER stepping in and PRETENDING to be him, while her closest friend stood in for Watson, who had left England heartbroken at the loss of his friend?

Other than this extra layer of story, the adaptation stayed faithful to the original and enjoyed a successful run with its cast of teenage actors.

I had always been fascinated by Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson. I had grown up watching Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. When I was in my early 30s (around the year 2000), I read the entire catalog, having only previously read The Hound of the Baskervilles, and I was truly hooked. As I always do, I started a dedicated notebook and took copious notes.

I also read pastiches by Nicholas Meyers, Stephen King, and others. 

I then proceeded to watch every film and TV series that I could find, and there were MANY. Out of those viewings emerged my favorites: Jeremy Brett and David Burke and Edward Hardwicke for Granada TV. Brett was just marvelous, even toward the end, when his health and other factors were beginning to hamper his performance. The list of other memorable performances goes on and on. Next to David Burke, my favorite Watson is Jude Law (I am fond of Downey's Holmes as well).

Sherlock, with Cumberbatch and Freeman, was smart and dark and the modern take (similar to House) shed new light on Holmes's personality and Watson's endless patience.

In 2019, I was approached by a publisher about an anthology on which they were working that would be mashups of Holmes and some classic piece of horror.

I submitted a proposal for a piece that would be a prequel to Dracula, featuring the Texan Quincy P. Morris. The proposal was accepted and I began work, but, as sometimes happens, the project fell through.

As I was developing the Stanton Chronicles, I knew in my heart that the time had come to try my hand at a novel similar to one of Doyle's four Holmes novellas--specifically the three that have prolonged backstories elsewhere.

(For more on the Stanton Chronicles, see https://joeymadiastoryteller.blogspot.com/2025/02/the-stanton-chronicles-historical.html)

I took my Dracula proposal and fleshed it out as a novel. I also co-opted a short story in process of mine, a Gothic Western, for the prolonged backstory of Quincy P. Morris. 

Then the trepidation took hold. SO MUCH trepidation, actually, that I put the project aside after a few unproductive starts and instead wrote the novelization of Three Gothic Doctors and Their Sons (https://joeymadiastoryteller.blogspot.com/2025/02/three-gothic-doctors-and-their-sons.html), which introduced a narrator, a long-time friend of Watson's, who I then knew so well that I was confident he could guide me in a new take on the Holmes/Watson relationship.

In January of 2022, Sherlock Holmes and the Mystery of M was published.

Here is the back cover blurb:

August 1894. Pall Mall Gazette journalist Judah Philemon Stanton, longtime friend of Dr. John Watson, is visiting 221 B Baker Street when an unexpected visitor arrives—Dr. Jack Seward (from Bram Stoker’s Dracula) who is searching for his missing friend, the Texan Quincey Morris. Within minutes of Holmes taking the case, word arrives from Scotland Yard of the brutal murder of the Chancellor of the Exchequer by what appears to be a wolf.

Narrated by Judah Stanton, Sherlock Holmes and the Mystery of M is part thriller, part horror story, and part exposé on the complicated relationship between Holmes and Watson and the lengths the good doctor went to in protecting his friend, especially when he failed.

Modeled on the four Conan Doyle novellas—with an extended backstory taking place in Wyoming narrated by ex–Texas Ranger Quincey Morris—this prequel to Three Gothic Doctors and Their Sons honors the classic source material while bringing readers of the Sherlock Holmes stories and Dracula new insights, new characters, and new adventures.