Shadows Over Baker Street

Shadows Over Baker Street
Author	Various
Cover Artist	John Jude Palencar
Language	English
Genre(s)	Horror Detective
Publisher	Del Rey Books
Release Date	September 2003
Pages	464

Shadows Over Baker Street is a thematic anthology in which the stories blend the cases of Arthur Conan Doyle's master detective Sherlock Holmes with elements of the Cthulhu Mythos. Unlike in Doyle's original stories, where the supernatural is only used as red herring plot devices, here it is all too real.

Neil Gaiman's "A Study in Emerald", which won the 2004 Hugo Award for Best Short Story, first appeared in this collection.

Publication History

Edited by Michael Reaves and John Pelan, who both contributed stories, Shadows Over Baker Street contains eighteen shorts and runs to 464 pages. It was first published in September 2003 by Ballantine Books' science fiction/fantasy imprint Del Rey Books.

Contents

• "A Study in Emerald" by Neil Gaiman
• "Tiger! Tiger!" by Elizabeth Bear
• "The Case of the Wavy Black Dagger" by Steve Perry
• "A Case of Royal Blood" by Steven-Elliot Altman
• "The Weeping Masks" by James Lowder
• "Art in the Blood" by Brian Stableford
• "The Curious Case of Miss Violet Stone" by Poppy Z. Brite and David Ferguson
• "The Adventure of the Antiquarian's Niece" by Barbara Hambly
• "The Mystery of the Worm" by John Pelan
• "The Mystery of the Hanged Man's Puzzle" by Paul Finch
• "The Horror of the Many Faces" by Tim Lebbon
• "The Adventure of the Arab's Manuscript" by Michael Reaves
• "The Drowned Geologist" by Caitlín R. Kiernan
• "A Case of Insomnia" by John P. Vourlis
• "The Adventure of the Voorish Sign" by Richard A. Lupoff
• "The Adventure of Exham Priory" by F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre
• "Death Did Not Become Him" by Patricia Lee Macomber and David Niall Wilson
• "Nightmare in Wax" by Simon Clark

Behind the Mythos

In addition to Sherlock Holmes and the Cthulhu Mythos, there are many stories in this book that also feature additional crossovers.

• Thomas Carnacki, the fictional occultist created by William Hope Hodgson, appears in "The Adventure of the Antiquarian's Niece" (although his name is spelled 'Carnaki').
• The sinister Dr. Nikola from the works of Guy Boothby is featured in "The Mystery of the Worm".
• "The Drowned Geologist" references the mysterious fate of the ship Demeter from Bram Stoker's Dracula.
• The villainous Dr. Caresco from the works of André Couvreur is referenced several times in "Death Did Not Become Him", as his experiments are crucial to the plot.
• The narrative of "A Study in Emerald" is interspersed with advertisements for fictional products that reference Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and the legendary Spring-Heeled Jack.