It's a Real Mash when They Clash!

Sherlock Holmes versus Dracula - Loren D. Estleman

The world’s greatest consulting detective meets the scariest monster in an epic clash of two of the most famous characters in modern fiction. The Baker Street detective's brilliant deductions confront the determined wickedness of the most terrible enemy of his investigative career.

From the powerful first chapter of the ghost ship winding up in Whitby harbor, Estleman manages to capture the attention of the reader with a dead captain lashed to the wheel, the crew missing, and eyewitness reports of a huge dog running from the vessel. Estleman is a master of the late-Victorian idiom: the prose sounds like 1890, sentences overstuffed with phrases and clauses though always easy to read. He also imitates Watson’s idiosyncratic voice, especially the ironic contrast between Watson’s self-image as skeptical, rational, and composed and his frequent overwrought melodrama and susceptibility to gloomy settings.

However, Estleman gives the stories his own imaginative stamp by every now and then making an allusion that all of us readers of Holmes stories will understand. For example, Holmes and Watson discuss the case that many remember, The Adventure of Speckled Band. In this, Inspector Lestrade rather comes off like a jaded copper in a hard-boiled story. Dog fans will like Toby showing up too. I’ve never read Bram Stoker’s vampire novel, so any allusions to it were lost on me, but that lack didn’t hurt my enjoyment of this thriller.

Also known as The Adventure of the Sanguinary Count, this 1978 thriller was the first of Estleman’s Sherlock Holmes pastiches. This tribute was followed in 1979 by Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Holmes. I think neither of these set the critical world on fire and Estleman found his own voice with the Amos Walker series of noir novels set in Detroit in the 1980s. After a long hiatus, came The Perils ofSherlock Holmes (2012) and Sons of Moriarty and More Stories of Sherlock Holmes (2013).

These books were authorized and licensed by the estate Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of the detective fiction that introduced many of us hardcore readers to mystery fiction or for that matter fiction written not just for kids but for general readers. A discerning reader need not be wary, fearing a faded imitation written by a hack. The author of 70-some mysteries and historical westerns, Estleman has been a hardcore Holmes fan and re-reader of the stories since his adolescence in the Seventies.