Happy Birthday, Mr. Holmes

Tomorrow, January 6, is the birthday of the greatest detective who ever lived, Sherlock Holmes, an event celebrated by various Sherlock Holmes societies. (Would it surprise you to know that there are more than 400 of them, with more than 10,000 members worldwide?) The event will be recognized around the globe, most notably by the first and largest such group, The Baker Street Irregulars.

Drawing its name from the street urchins Holmes occasionally employed to help in investigations, the BSI has numbered among its members former presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S Truman, any number of prominent lawyers and doctors, a former president of U.S. Steel, a former vice president of General Motors, the Marquis of Donegall, and such noted authors as Rex Stout, Isaac Asimov, Vincent Starrett, Christopher Morley, Alexander Woolcott, Ellery Queen, and sportswriter Red Smith.

The BSI began with a small handful of Holmesian scholars and aficionados in 1934, when they met for food, drink (to be sure), and convivial conversation about the Master. Woolcott arrived, in his usual understated fashion, in a hansom cab, wearing an Inverness cape and a deerstalker hat, the attire in which Holmes is so frequently (if inaccurately, as this is country garb no gentleman would ever wear in the city) depicted. The organization meets each January on the Friday closest to Holmes's birthday.

Alas, you cannot join just because you love Holmes and the Victorian and Edwardian time - you have to be invited. This may be accomplished by writing books or articles on the subject of Holmes or Dr. Watson, starting another Sherlockian society, starring in movies about him (Basil Rathbone attended the banquets), or in any other way that "keeps green the memory of the Master."

When one is deemed worthy of membership, one is given a name from the canon, as the 56 short stories and four novels are referred to. Mine is "The King of Bohemia," for the idiot who won and lost the love of Irene Adler, "the daintiest thing under a bonnet on this planet" and the only woman Holmes ever loved, referred to ever after as "the woman."

The new member is also presented with a shilling, which was Holmes's customary pay to the street beggars when they assisted him. Once, when one of the boys turned up a particularly vital clue, he asked the boy what he would like even more than a shilling. "Two shillings" was the reply, and that is now the ultimate honor that the BSI can bestow on one of its members.

Although many have attempted to explain the enduring affection for the adventures of Holmes and his faithful friend, it is as impossible to do in a definitive way as it is to explain love. It is a combination of so many things, weighted differently for different individuals, that no one definition will suffice.

What is noteworthy is that there appears to be no end in sight for the ongoing love affair that readers have with the stories and the characters, so that endless appetite is fed with more and more stories by more and more authors.

Last year, there was Michael Chabon's excellent "The Final Solution" (Fourth Estate) and Allan Vanneman's nicely written "Sherlock Holmes and the Hapsburg Tiara" (Avalon), which just came out in a trade paperback edition.

But there is a lot more still to come, most notably a new book, scheduled for May release, by Caleb Carr, the bestselling author of "The Alienist." In "The Italian Secretary" (Carroll & Graf, 256 pages, $24), Holmes and Watson investigate the unusually vicious murders of two of the Queen's servants, with suspicion actually falling on Victoria herself. The horrific crimes appear to echo similar violations of a music teacher and confidante of Mary, Queen of Scots, known as the Italian Secretary, three centuries earlier.

The same publishing company will soon release "The Forgotten Tales of Sherlock Holmes" by H. Paul Jeffers. This is a collection of pastiches based on the series of Sherlock Holmes radio plays written in the 1940s by Anthony Boucher. It is Boucher, the mystery author and former mystery critic of the New York Times, who is honored each Fall at the World Mystery Convention, better known as the Bouchercon.

Yet more to anticipate, with as much joy as a monkey turning on the banana channel, is Steve Hockensmith's "Holmes on the Range," (the first of a planned trilogy of mysteries. In this, the actual detectives are cowboys, Big Red and Old Red Amlingmeyer, who do their sleuthing on a cattle ranch in 1892 Colorado. They are avid readers of the Sherlock Holmes stories that are being published in Harper's Weekly and, when a murder occurs, they emulate their hero as they attempt to track down the killer.

In a couple previous columns, I wrote briefly about the mysterious death of Richard Lancelyn Green, the greatest scholar in the world on the subjects of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes. For a very comprehensive and unfailingly compelling account of his death by accident, suicide, or murder (the coroner has left its verdict open), get a copy of the December 13 issue of the New Yorker and read David Grann's piece, which is itself a monument to good detective work.

Mr. Green's name came to mind when it seemed that there was a good deal still being published about Holmes and Watson. A great scholar, Mr. Green was also a voracious collector who donated his books, magazines, manuscript material, and other artifacts to a library so that future scholars could have access to it. The collection numbered 40,000 items.

And you thought you had a lot of books!

Mr. Penzler is the proprietor of the Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan and the series editor of the annual "Best American Mystery Stories." He can be reached at openzler@nysun.com.