Foreword

by Jonathan Kellerman

I’m frequently asked which writer I consider the primary influence on my own career as a novelist. My answer is always the same: the American master of crime fiction, Kenneth Millar, writing as Ross Macdonald. Macdonald’s meld of Southern California malice-amid-the-palms and stunning psychological insights helped me develop my own voice.

On the rare occasion when I’m asked about a secondary influence, I cite Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

The Holmes stories, discovered during my pre-teen years, awed me with their wondrous mix of elegant language, rich sense of place, spot-on plotting and characterization, and cutting-edge (Victorian) science. The world to which Sir Arthur granted me entry kick-started my earliest attempts to write fiction.

But my debt goes beyond that.

In 1981, while working as a 31-year-old hospital psychologist and medical school professor, I learned from a colleague who was a devoted Sherlockian that Doyle had penned his earliest stories while waiting for patients to show up at his surgery - a less than booming enterprise.

Hmm.

The preceding decade had seen me hunched in an unheated garage from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. writing bad novels that, mercifully, remained unpublished. But I persisted - ah, the virtues of the obsessive-compulsive personality! - and that year, spurred by the image of Doyle scratching away in a quiet office, I quit a tenured position and went into solo private practice.

I set up a typewriter in my consulting room, expecting scads of spare time - the country was gripped by a recession. Instead, my practice booked up in two weeks and back to the garage I went, finally getting it right and completing the first Alex Delaware novel, When the Bough Breaks. Forty novels later . . . .

Which brings us to the notion of pastiche.

When approached by David Marcum to write this introduction, I had reservations about the appropriation of a writer’s character and style by others. Like most professional novelists, I’m protective of my characters, find the idea of someone else “borrowing” them curious, and would assertively challenge any attempt to profit monetarily from such.

But upon reading the stories in this compilation, I realized that no ill intent or mercenary aims were at play. Quite the opposite; these tales are love letters to Doyle, Holmes, Watson, and the entire Sherlockian world. Even better, this book is a charitable endeavor benefiting a cause dear to my heart and endorsed by Sir Arthur’s descendants - a school for children and adolescents with special needs, situated at Undershaw, Doyle’s long-time home.

Reassured by all that, I set about reading the stories and grew impressed by their quality. This is, for the most part, an impressive display of The Collective Baker Street Unconscious.

So here it is, an introduction. Read, enjoy, take a few moments to pay silent homage to one of the greatest writers of our time. And thank you, Sir Arthur, for spurring me to quit my job.

Jonathan Kellerman

May 2016