meandering about detectives

Happy Birthday, William (or Thomas, depending, apparently, on what mood Doyle was in) Sherlock Scott Holmes! The man who went by "Sherlock Holmes" was (possibly) born today in (probably) the North Riding of Yorkshire in (maybe) 1854. Ahh, the Holmesian canon: it's like trying to work out the Highlander universe. Or the wormhole physics of Stargate.

Which reminds me that I wanted to ask if anyone has checked out Sayers on Holmes: Essays and Fiction on Sherlock Holmes which has been out for a few years now. It's supposed to be a collection of Sayers' Holmesian essays, which I thought of as she wrote one attempting to pinpoint his birth year (fat chance!), though the reason I'm most interested in it is her famous radio play for Holmes' (possible) hundredth birthday, in which a young Wimsey consults Holmes on an Important Case. (Not that I used Sayers' essays today; Holmes' birthdate is from Baring-Gould.)

Actually, on the subject of writing about detectives, has anyone ever read Baring-Gould's Nero Wolfe of West Thirty-Fifth Street, in which Baring-Gould hypothesizes that Archie is Wolfe's nephew and that Wolfe is Holmes' son? (This would make Holmes Archie's great-uncle: hilarious.) It's not in print anymore, I don't think, but I might grab it somewhere if people said it was as amusing as it sounds.

And, of course, to bring this full circle, there's Rex Stout's famous speech to the Baker Street Irregulars: Watson was a woman.