Too Many Detectives Spoil The 221 B  

It seems that after a hundred years, the children of the Canon are one by one leaving the nest and striking out on their own.  

I was given pause to consider this turn of events this month after discovering Mrs. Hudson out sitting in a bookstore by herself. The book involved was the recent Elementary, Mrs. Hudson by Sydney Hosier. I bought it, took it home, and starting reading it up to the point where I was pretty sure Holmes wasn't going to show up. I had also started seeing a Mrs. Hudson that looked too much like Angela Lansbury in my head, so I had a dual reason for putting the book down.  

Regardless of my opinion of the landlady's first detective effort, the fact remains that Mrs. Hudson has now flown solo.

In the seventies it was Moriarty and Mycroft in books like John Gardner's The Return of Moriarty and Hodel and Wright’s Enter the Lion. In the eighties, we found Lestrade and Wiggins in Trow's The Supreme Adventure of Inspector Lestrade and Robert Lee Hall's The King Edward Plot. In the nineties, Irene Adier made her move in Carol Douglas's Goodnight, Mr. Sherlock Holmes. And now comes Mrs. Hudson.

One by one, the offspring of Watson's records are starting literary detective careers of their own, much in the way every person who had anything to do with Elvis has written their own book. The Elvis pasticheurs, however, never seem to try to put on a white jumpsuit and start belting out "Burning Love."  

So why does everyone Sherlock Holmes ever knew have to try to be a detective? One can understand it with fans of Sherlock Holmes. If you admire someone, you do tend to try to emulate them now and then. When The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars by Anthony Boucher and Murder Most Irregular by H. Paul Jeffers threw the BSI into the role of detective en masse, it made a certain sense. The same went for the Sons of the Copper Beeches in Arthur H. Lewis's Copper Beeches. We expect Sherlockians to pay attention to the methods of Sherlock Holmes and quote him on occasion.  But landladies?  

Opera singers?  

Scotland Yard detectives?  

Surely you jest. Mrs. Hudson might have learned how Holmes liked his eggs. Irene Adier may have found out where he lived. And G. Lestrade ... well, okay, maybe Lestrade didn't find out anything. But the sign on the door at 221 B didn't say "Holmes Detective College."  

Even if it did, people like Mrs. Hudson weren't lining up to attend lectures. They had jobs, friends, responsibilities, and problems that may or may not have been interesting to tile average reader.  

I find it interesting that so many of Holmes's acquaintances-turned-detective seem to have their own Watson. Why not also keep the tea in a Persian slipper? Or transfix the recipes to the cupboard with a paring  knife? Dressing gowns for everyone and a hair-trigger revolver in every pot!  

Personally, I would love to learn more about Mrs. Hudson, whether her given name is Martha, Emma, or Hildegard. The same goes for Mycroft, Irene, Wiggins, Billy, Pompey the drag-hound, and everyone else in the stories of Sherlock Holmes. But I want to learn of their individuality, what made them special. I hate finding out that every last one of them was a Sherlock Holmes wannabe.  

Sherlock Holmes was Sherlock Holmes. He was the world's first and foremost consulting detective. He was unique.  

And the way you get to be unique is by being different from everyone around you. Your doctor friend has to be a doctor. Your landlady has to be a landlady. And your big brother has to be the British government. If they're all consulting detectives too, suddenly all the fun has gone out of the business. Sherlock Holmes would have thrown down his deerstalker in disgust and become a plumber.  

Let's hope the literary tides and copyright dictates turn one day soon and give us Sherlock as a detective once more, instead of everybody else in the Canon. I'll be more than ready.  

(Printed in Plugs & Dottles, May 1996)