Sherlock Holmes & History

I was in grade 7 when my teacher first introduced me to Sherlock Holmes, but it wasn’t until I was in high school that I fell in love with Sherlock Holmes. It was not many years later that I fell in love with history (particularly Canadian history). So when I decided to write my first book, it would be a union of these two loves.

 

This is quite evident to anyone who has read The Canadian Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Most of the chapters of this book have a good smattering of Canadian history, geography and culture. One can learn a bit about this vast country from the Citadel in Halifax, to the politics in Ottawa, to the settling of the west, to the Fenian raids.

My second Sherlock Holmes mystery is entitled Cold-Hearted Murder, and I decided to keep Holmes in England, but a good part of the backstory takes place during the Klondike Gold Rush in the Yukon Territory.  

I did not plan on writing another Sherlock Holmes adventure, but when David Marcum asked me to contribute a story to an anthology that would benefit a worthy cause I acquiesced.

I decided to write a story based on the murders of the Canadian poisoner, Thomas Neill Cream who killed women in Canada, the United States and was finally arrested and brought to trial in England. I entitled the story The Lambeth Poisoner Case and can be found in The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories, Volume IX.

Stephen Gaspar's books can be found on Amazon

Thomas Neill Cream