Two Hundred and Twenty-One Baker Streets

August 25, 2014
Readers who ever wondered what Holmes and Watson would be like if they were teenaged girls will find that itch scratched here, in Jenni Hill’s “Parallels.” Her entry, along with 13 other short stories, will only appeal to fans of alternate universes (AUs) who are comfortable with the concept of placing the beloved characters in very different settings. According to one of Hill’s characters, AUs are where “characters might be aliens, barbarian warriors, or rock stars, but at the end of the day they were still themselves.” But many fans of Conan Doyle’s work will recognize little here, as the authors rely mainly on gimmicks and one-liners. James Lovegrove, who has written two solid book-length Holmes pastiches, contributes the most memorable story, “The Innocent Icarus,” set in a Victorian London where humankind has been divided into categories based on superhuman talents—except Typicals, like Holmes, who can “only think.” That intelligent reinterpretation is the exception rather than the rule, and even those open to unconventional versions of the Master Detective will find other similar anthologies more enjoyable.