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Related and derivative writings

In addition to the Holmes canon, Conan Doyle's 1898 " The Lost Special " features an unnamed "amateur reasoner" intended to be identified as Holmes by his readers. The author's explanation of a baffling disappearance argued in Holmesian style poked fun at his own creation. Similar Conan Doyle short stories are " The Field Bazaar ", "The Man with the Watches", and 1924's " How Watson Learned the Trick ", a parody of the Watson–Holmes breakfast-table scenes. The author wrote other material featuring Holmes, especially plays: 1899's Sherlock Holmes (with William Gillette), 1910's The Speckled Band, and 1921's The Crown Diamond (the basis for " The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone "). These non-canonical works have been collected in several works released since Conan Doyle's death.

In terms of writers other than Conan Doyle, authors as diverse as Agatha Christie, Anthony Burgess, Neil Gaiman, Dorothy B. Hughes, Stephen King, Tanith Lee, A. A. Milne, and P. G. Wodehouse have all written Sherlock Holmes pastiches. Contemporary with Conan Doyle, Maurice Leblanc directly featured Holmes in his popular series about the gentleman thief, Arsène Lupin, though legal objections from Conan Doyle forced Leblanc to modify the name to "Herlock Sholmes" in reprints and later stories. In 1944, American mystery writers Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee (writing under their joint pseudonym Ellery Queen) published The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes, a collection of thirty-three pastiches written by various well-known authors. Mystery writer John Dickson Carr collaborated with Arthur Conan Doyle's son, Adrian Conan Doyle, on The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes, a pastiche collection from 1954. In 2011, Anthony Horowitz published a Sherlock Holmes novel, The House of Silk, presented as a continuation of Conan Doyle's work and with the approval of the Conan Doyle estate; a follow-up, Moriarty, appeared in 2014. The "MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories" series of pastiches, edited by David Marcum and published by MX Publishing, has reached over forty volumes and features hundreds of stories echoing the original canon which were compiled for the restoration of Undershaw and the support of Stepping Stones School, now housed in it.

Some authors have written tales centred on characters from the canon other than Holmes. Anthologies edited by Michael Kurland and George Mann are entirely devoted to stories told from the perspective of characters other than Holmes and Watson. John Gardner, Michael Kurland, and Kim Newman, amongst many others, have all written tales in which Holmes's nemesis Professor Moriarty is the main character. Mycroft Holmes has been the subject of several efforts: Enter the Lion by Michael P. Hodel and Sean M. Wright (1979), a four-book series by Quinn Fawcett, and 2015's Mycroft Holmes, by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse. M. J. Trow has written a series of seventeen books using Inspector Lestrade as the central character, beginning with The Adventures of Inspector Lestrade in 1985. Carole Nelson Douglas ' Irene Adler series is based on "the woman" from "A Scandal in Bohemia", with the first book (1990's Good Night, Mr. Holmes) retelling that story from Adler's point of view. Martin Davies has written three novels where Baker Street housekeeper Mrs. Hudson is the protagonist.

In 1980's The Name of the Rose, Italian author Umberto Eco creates a Sherlock Holmes of the 1320s in the form of a Franciscan friar and main protagonist named Brother William of Baskerville, his name a clear reference to Holmes per The Hound of the Baskervilles. Brother William investigates a series of murders in the abbey alongside his novice Adso of Melk, who acts as his Dr. Watson. Furthermore, Umberto Eco's description of Brother William bears marked similarities in both physique and personality to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's description of Sherlock Holmes in A Study in Scarlet.

Laurie R. King recreated Holmes in her Mary Russell series (beginning with 1994's The Beekeeper's Apprentice), set during the First World War and the 1920s. Her Holmes, semi-retired in Sussex, meets a teenage American girl. Recognising a kindred spirit, he trains her as his apprentice and subsequently marries her. As of 2024, the series includes eighteen base novels and additional writings.

The Final Solution, a 2004 novella by Michael Chabon, concerns an unnamed but long-retired detective interested in beekeeping who tackles the case of a missing parrot belonging to a Jewish refugee boy. Mitch Cullin 's novel A Slight Trick of the Mind (2005) takes place two years after the end of the Second World War and explores an old and frail Sherlock Holmes (now 93) as he comes to terms with a life spent in emotionless logic; this was also adapted into a film, 2015's Mr. Holmes.

There have been many scholarly works dealing with Sherlock Holmes, some working within the bounds of the Great Game, and some written from the perspective that Holmes is a fictional character. In particular, there have been three major annotated editions of the complete series. The first was William Baring-Gould's 1967 The Annotated Sherlock Holmes. This two-volume set was ordered to fit Baring-Gould's preferred chronology, and was written from a Great Game perspective. The second was 1993's The Oxford Sherlock Holmes (general editor: Owen Dudley Edwards), a nine-volume set written in a straight scholarly manner. The most recent is Leslie Klinger's The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes (2004–05), a three-volume set that returns to a Great Game perspective.