ROBERT L. FISH – The Incredible Schlock Homes: 12 Stories from Bagel Street. Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 1966. Avon, softcover, 1976.

   Only the most humorless Sherlockians could object to the way their hero is treated in these enormously funny parodies, all twelve of which were originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Because Fish clearly knew the canon, these stories arc also excellent pastiches of the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He has captured Doyle’s style in having a Dr. Watson narrate the events, and the cases generally start with the same time-tested devices used to begin the Sherlock Holmes tales. A distressed potential client appears, and Homes, who has never seen him or her before, uses his best deductive methods to guess pertinent facts. He is totally wrong, but hilariously so.

   Starting with a decidedly cockeyed chronology, “Watson” proceeds to refer to past successes of Homes’s, and these are merely excuses for some of the most outrageous puns ever to appear in the mystery genre. For example, Homes’s efforts on behalf of a Polish group are included as “The Adventure of the Danzig Men.” The detective’s involvement with a British lord who, because of dishonesty, had to resign from his clubs is called “The Adventure of the Dismembered Peer.”

   Obviously, nothing is to be sacred here, including the names of the famous characters. Watson goes under the name “Watney,” Mrs. Hudson becomes “Mrs. Essex,” and Professor Moriarty operates as “Professor Marty.” The action starts at 221B Bagel Street.

   “The Adventure of the Ascot Tie,” Fish’s first published story, is probably the best in the collection, but it is only minutely superior to “The Adventure of the Stockbroker’s Clark,” “The Adventure of the Artist’s Mottle,” and “The Adventure of the Snared Drummer.”

   Another group of stories, almost as good, was collected and published as The Memoirs of Schlock Homes (1974). All are delightful to read as they lovingly spoof the methods and idiosyncrasies of the most famous character in all of literature, exposing the frequently tenuous reasoning by which Sir Arthur’s hero came up with his solutions. Schlock’s methods are very similar-except he is always wrong, to our comic delight.

   It is proof of the permanent appeal of Sherlock Holmes that a talented writer like Robert L. Fish can take him apart, giving us great pleasure. and yet at the same time make us anxious to read the original stories once again.

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   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.