For all Sherlock Holmes lovers, we decided to publish this time a novel with Sherlock Holmes written by John Kendrick Bangs, first issued in 1897 by Harper & Brothers. It was also serialised in the famous Harper's Weekly during the same year, between February 6th and April 24th, 1897.
As reported on The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia online, The Pursuit of the House-Boat is a novel dedicated to “A. Conan Doyle, Esq., with the author's sincerest regards and thanks for the untimely demise of his great detective which made these things possible”.
After the House-Boat had been hijacked by Captain Kidd at the end of A House-Boat on the Styx, the various members of its club decided that to track it down, a detective would have to be called in. So they hired Sherlock Holmes, who, at the time of the book's publication, had indeed been declared dead by his creator.
This story is part of the so known Associated Shades series, an exclusive men's club in Hades, whose members are the shades of famous people, including Adam and Baron Munchausen but primarily classical writers: Homer, Confucius, Shakespeare, president Walter Raleigh, Johnson and Boswell, and many others. The series includes four books (A House-Boat on the Styx, 1895, The Pursuit of the House-Boat, 1897, The Enchanted Type-Writer, 1899 and Mr Munchausen,1901. All four books were illustrated by Peter Newell.