The Sorceress and the Prude

Sep 2020
The Affair of the Mysterious Letter - Alexis Hall – Ace, 2019
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There is something about the relationship between Sherlock Holmes and John Watson that seems to attract fan fiction writers like bees to buddleia. This is a bit strange if you think about it. On the one hand you have Holmes, whom many would argue is more a logic machine than a fully rounded human being, and on the other you have Watson, who, apart from his bizarre and not entirely honourable habit of chronicling his friend's activities for commercial gain, is as boringly conventional a character as any in fiction. I guess this explains why so many writers feel the urge to come up with spicier variants on the Holmes/Watson relationship (for example, The Oxford Despoiler). How successful you regard these takes to be probably depends on how much you are invested in the original pairing. This one, which envisages Holmes as a powerful sorceress called Shaharazad Haas and Watson as an uptight trans man called John Wyndham, will certainly not please if you care deeply about the originals because it largely abandons any pretence of mirroring its inspiration within the few first pages. The fantasy novel that is built around them, however, is quite entertaining.
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