THE CASE OF THE BAKER STREET IRREGULARS

“SHERLOCK HOLMES RIDES AGAIN!” announces a newspaper headline covering a mysterious murder in this ebullient 1940 reprint by the multitalented Boucher (1911–1968), and it’s all true except for the Sherlock Holmes part.

When the Baker Street Irregulars protest producer F.X. Weinberg’s decision to sign heterodox mystery novelist Stephen Worth to script The Adventure of the Speckled Band, Metropolis Pictures publicity agent Maureen O’Breen comes up with a clever way to buy them off: Invite four Irregulars veterans and their latest initiate, German émigré Otto Federhut, to consult on the filming and comment on its accuracy to the Sacred Writings. But when Maureen sees Worth shot to death, the Irregulars are instantly transformed from authorities to suspects. Things get stranger when the corpse vanishes, and stranger still when each of the invited guests—Federhut, Dr. Rufus Bottomley, professor Drew Furness, Sirrah editor Harrison Ridgly III, and Jonadab Evans, who as John O’Dab created the deathless detective Derring Drew—recounts an intricately detailed backstory larded with improbable incidents, coded messages, Holmes-ian allusions, and broad implications of each other’s guilt. The characters are no more than types, but their different voices are perfectly suited for the wild tales they tell, and fans who approach this 80-year-old pastiche through either Arthur Conan Doyle’s writings or any of the dozens of Holmes’ posthumous adventures by other hands will be challenged, piqued, and delighted right down to the final revelation by a most unexpected sleuth.

Inventive, ingenious, rollicking fun.