The Silver Knife

The Silver Knife is a story it took me around fifteen years to write. I got the inspiration for the main character while walking down Bourbon Street in New Orleans many years before Katrina laid waste to the city. I’d just had a great dinner with Jennifer Roberson, Liz Danforth and Kate Elliot. I caught a glimpse of a t-shirt design in a window, and my mind just spun it into something else entirely. I started doing some research into the Sherlock Holmes canon and mentioned the idea to Bob Vardeman. He loved it and, henceforth, bugged me on an annual basis to follow up.

It wasn’t until John Helfers invited me into the anthology Slipstreams that I had a chance to write the story. The opening scene had been in my head for a long time, as had a desire to write something set in Europe after World War One. In the intervening years I’d read a lot of history centered around that era (which fascinates me still), so I finally had a plot to follow up the concept.

This is not a Sherlock Holmes story, but one about Farrell Holmes, an American cousin who had fought in World War One. Suffering from shellshock after the war, he convalesced with a distant relative who had become a beekeeper in Sussex. The American Holmes is younger and, while not as intelligent as his famous cousin, is possessed of a certain animal cunning.

It always has been my intention to write more of these stories. That’s one of the cool things about this job: characters show up and whole worlds evolve around them. One other title I’ve wanted to do is Hounding the Baskervilles/, which would be a lot of fun. If enough of you decide that’s something you want to see, definitely think it’s possible.