Sherlock Holmes and the Man from Hell is a non-canonical Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...

 pastiche

Pastiche

A pastiche is a literary or other artistic genre or technique that is a "hodge-podge" or imitation. The word is also a linguistic term used to describe an early stage in the development of a pidgin language.-Hodge-podge:...

 novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 by Barrie Roberts

Barrie Roberts

Barrie Roberts was an author, folk singer, freelance journalist, and criminal lawyer.-Biography:Born in Hampshire in 1939, Roberts was educated at Churcher's College....

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Plot

Philanthropist Lord Backwater is found dead on his property. The police surmise that Backwater came upon some poachers which led to his murder. Holmes discounts this solution and undertakes his own investigation which leads to a hidden history of Backwater's time spent in a prison settlement on Van Diemen's Land

Van Diemen's Land

Van Diemen's Land was the original name used by most Europeans for the island of Tasmania, now part of Australia. The Dutch explorer Abel Tasman was the first European to land on the shores of Tasmania...

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Reception

Reviews of Sherlock Holmes and the Man from Hell have been largely positive.

Publishers Weekly

Publishers Weekly

Publishers Weekly, aka PW, is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers and literary agents...

claimed that Roberts' writing was a successful "melding the brilliant thinker and the man of action".

Roger Johnson writing for the Sherlock Holmes Society of London stated that Roberts "has done his homework thoroughly" and "writes in a very acceptable simulacrum of Watson’s style".

In noting that Titan Books

Titan Books

Titan Publishing Group is an independently owned publishing company, established in 1981. It is based at offices in London, England's Bankside area. The Books Division has two main areas of publishing: film & TV tie-ins/cinema reference books; and graphic novels and comics reference/art titles. The...

planned to reissue the book, Lenny Picker called it a "classic pastiche".