sherlock holmes and the shadwell shadows

Lovegrove narrates via Watson in Conan Doyle fashion but suggests that the original Holmes canon is a fabrication, engineered to keep the populace ignorant. We can be glad he did so, and Sherlock Holmes and the Miskatonic Monstrosities is much stronger for it. In his endeavour to blend what seem to be two incompatible literary canons, James Lovegrove made the bold decision to really go for it. It’s a big city but there seems at least a reasonable chance that these two individuals, with similar backgrounds and from the same region of America, might known one another.Ĭonan Doyle famously rejected hints of the supernatural in his Holmes mysteries in The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire, while HP Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos is nothing but supernatural. Holmes appeals to his friends and contacts to try and identify the man and draws a blank, but is pointed towards a Nathaniel Whateley of Miskatonic University, Massachusetts who is in London. Holmes, in his famous fashion, is able to deduce that the patient is from the Boston area, has come from wealth, and was academically trained. His rambling suggests control by a ‘hidden mind’ but little else of value. His strange language is familiar to Holmes and indicates contact of some kind with malign cosmic forces. One hand is missing and one side of his face is badly scarred. Bizarre scribbles cover the floor and walls of his cell, and his only communication is in an alien tongue. His identity is unknown, and his behaviour is troubling.

However, they will face their greatest test yet after Inspector Gregson (an initiate in the so-called Dagon Club, alongside Holmes, Watson and Mycroft) tells them of an American patient in the infamous dreaded Bedlam asylum who may interest them. Holmes and Watson, tired but unbroken by their battles with otherworldly foes, have managed to keep the world safe from supernatural incursion. It is now 1895, 15 years after the Shadwell Shadows story. The only winner were the readers, who got to enjoy a superlative pulp thriller. At the same time, they were able to thwart Moriarty’s plan to bring the world to its knees and begin a new dark age of rule by the Elder Gods.

The contest ended in a draw with Holmes and Watson’s worldview irrevocably altered to assimilate the understanding of humanity’s insignificance in the cosmos.

Written by James Lovegrove - Last year’s Sherlock Holmes and the Shadwell Shadows was a hugely enjoyable crossover that pitted HP Lovecraft’s eldritch horrors against Arthur Conan Doyle’s master detective.

Sherlock holmes and the shadwell shadows