John Pelan (1957–2021)

Pretty average, except for A Study in Emerald, which works as an affectionate tribute to Sherlock Holmes with a decent twist. It plays a bit loose with Lovecraft but in a good way - some of the stories don't seem to get Lovecraftian horror at all.

The big problem is that the Holmes format and Lovecraft format are totally at odds with each other. Lovecraft stories end with a horror ending where people lose their sanity, nothing is understandable and there's no hope for the future. In a Holmes story the ending is (usually) happy, everything is resolved and everything is explained as being entirely logical, while clues throughout the story make the ending satisfying. These stories typically follow a pretty unhappy medium. Even attempts to portray some permanent effect on Holmes' or Watson's mind falls flat when the next story has them yet again baffled and confused about the idea of Lovecraftian cults existing, despite them having just confronted them. Obviously that's somewhat unavoidable in a short story collection like this but it is a little silly. Most of the stories have unpleasant things happen to the characters yet Holmes and Watson escape mostly unscathed. Multiple stories seem to have a very loose handle on Holmes' character and speaking style, which is pretty jarring. One story dedicates pages to a lovingly described firefight in the London sewers, which is neither very Lovecraftian or Sherlockian. One story is based on Moriarty recording his plans to control the world on a wax cylinder, live, while he's doing them. There's a story that featured something from Jewish folklore that almost felt anti-semitic because of the weird way it was handled.

I feel like more stories could have done with trying to break away from some of the Lovecraft mythology while still keeping some of the spirit. Some of them quote Lovecraft stuff but make it incredibly mundane.

I guess I feel most of the stories failed to work as either a Lovecraft story or a Holmes story and ended up not making much of an impact. It was alright enough but just not exciting and too much repetition of basic story premises.… (mere)

This large collection of stories that try to combine Sherlock Holmes and H.P. Lovecraft is consistently entertaining, but other than Neil Gaiman's opening tale, which manages to surprise, nothing else rises above the ordinary. Even the few stories narrated by Dr. Watson lack the feel of Doyle's original tales, and in these and the other stories I can't help but feel that these are not the Dr. Watson and Sherlock Holmes I have come to know. As for the Lovecraftian elements in these stories, there are some grim things to be sure, but none of the writers writes like Lovecraft, so the effect of the horrors is less immediate. Even the appearance of H.G. Wells and (the fictional) Dr. Nikola don't liven things up that much. This one is more of a miss than a hit, for sure.… (mere)