Story Profile: “The Adventure of the Wisconsin Hodag”
I’ve mentioned August Derleth’s affectionate pastiche of Sherlock Holmes, Solar Pons, earlier on this blog. While Derleth crafted Pons to be in the same fictional universe as Holmes, due to copyright issues Holmes never actually appeared directly in a story alongside Pons. The legal situation has changed, and Solar Pons and Sherlock Holmes now solve cases together in a pair of anthologies by Belanger Books: The Meeting of the Minds: The Cases of Sherlock Holmes and Solar Pons Volume I and Volume II.
My story, “The Adventure of the Wisconsin Hodag,” appears in Volume II. Based on the real legend of a mysterious beast said to run rampant in the woods of Wisconsin, as well as the true story of how the executive offices of the President of the United States were relocated to Northern Wisconsin for one fateful summer, “The Adventure of the Wisconsin Hodag” has Holmes, Pons, and Pons’ friend Parker travelling to the American Midwest. August Derleth himself makes an appearance in this story that features sightings of a mythical beast, and a terrifying conspiracy with international implications.
Belanger Books is responsible for the revival of the Solar Pons series over the last couple of years, and with luck, anthologies like The Meeting of the Minds will earn the detective new fans.
–Chris Chan
Chris Chan’s first book, Sherlock & Irene: The Secret Truth Behind “A Scandal in Bohemia” was released on August 27thfrom MX Publishing, and is available for sale at Amazon.com and the MX Publishing website, as well as at Book Depository (with free worldwide shipping there). It is also available in a Kindle edition.
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