Two Hundred and Twenty-One Baker Streets by Guy Adams, Kasey Lansdale, Glen Mehn Page A

into a wizard’s circle in a fantasy world. In one story, detective and doctor even turn up as schoolgirls...
    There are new Lestrades —both capable and inept—newly elusive Adlers, and newly sinister Moriarties. Mrs. Hudson gets particular love (my personal favourite being the carnival dwarf).
    What I’m saying is, the fourteen men and women I recruited to write these stories for me delivered, but good . They’ve all found incredible ways to shed new light on old characters, to show you sides of the great detective and his indefatigable companion that their fusty reputations made obscure. Fun, clever, haunting, sad, scary, strange and weird , here are Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson as they never were... and really are.
    David Thomas Moore
    June 2014 Oxford

A Scandal in Hobohemia
Jamie Wyman
    Wyman came to me courtesy of the tirelessly charming and utterly brilliant agent Jennie Goloboy. Author of the gambling themed godpunk urban fantasy Wild Card , Jamie provided me with a story in her self-confessedly favourite story-telling milieu, the creepy carnival. One of the delights (and frustrations) of editing an anthology is the inevitable “I want more!” moments; I guarantee you’ll want more of Sanford ‘Crash’ Haus and his companion Jim Walker.
    T HE CANVAS TENT held in heat like an Alabama kitchen, though it didn’t smell nearly so pleasant. The odors of dust and grease paint mingled with the smells of pungent herbs: patchouli, sandalwood perhaps. But there was no mistaking the funk of a blue drag somewhere beneath it all. That scent—the reefer— brought back all sorts of memories. Some good, others best left in the trenches.
    She’d sent me in here alone, and though Agent Trenet didn’t say it, I knew she meant to test me. No genius needed to figure that out, this being my first case. I turned in a circle in the tent, focusing on all the tiny details: the way the stitches on the psychic’s garish red scarves were fraying; the coffee stains on the rickety table peeking through the moth-eaten silk cloth. Fingerprints smudged the glass orb in the center of the table. How anyone could read the future through all that oil and muck was beyond me.
    But then, I wasn’t Madame Yvonde, Seer of All and Mistress of Fate.
    According to the painted banners and smooth talkers at Soggiorno Brothers’ Traveling Wonder Show, the Seer was a direct descendant of Cassandra herself. “She can lead you to fame,” the barker had said, “guide you to money. Help you seek that which you most desire.”
    I didn’t want fame, and I didn’t need money. What I needed, strictly speaking, was a man. Or at least his name. Trenet seemed to think Madame Yvonde would lead us there, and with her being my superior in a multitude of ways, I didn’t bother to make a fuss. I stood in that sweatbox of a tent and waited.
    Madame Yvonde paid me little mind. Probably on account of all the spirits and such vying for her attention. She shuffled about, a rotund bundle of bright scarves, grimy homespun and arthritic old bones. With her came an eye-searing stench of rotgut. Padding from one corner of the tent to another, the hunched old hag murmured gibberish and lit a number of ivory candles. The bracelets on her wrists and the tiny coins at her wide hips jingled with every ponderous step.
    “Now,” she said as she slithered behind the crystal ball. “You don’t believe, do you, sonny?”
    I put on my best, most innocuous smile. “Excuse me, ma’am?”
    “Don’t ma’am me, boy.” Yvonde’s voice was deep as a well and just as dark. She withdrew a cob pipe from the folds of her dress and brought it to her lips. She spoke through gritted teeth as she lit it. “You come in here wearing a suit like that, it says you’re educated. Educated man don’t listen to spirits or stars unless he’s desperate. And you are not desperate. Not yet.”
    “I’m looking for someone,” I said neutrally.
    She brightened and let out a puff of