Yet he is intensely prejudiced, often bad-tempered, irritable with the people who might look to him for a little kindness, capable of a quite unmerited snub, grossly self-indulgent, arrogant, self-opinionated, and decidedly touchy about trivialities.

He is, of course, the Master, Sherlock Holmes.

How does one account for the fascination that Sherlock Holmes has held for so many people, of so many backgrounds and countries, over so long a time? Never fear, for editor Michael Harrison and twenty-five other devoted Sherlockians clear the fog of late-Victorian London as they take us indeed beyond Baker Street to a firmer understanding of Holmes, Doctor Watson, the Canon, and their creator, Conan Doyle. No one here has sought to father views and significances which are not plainly apparent at the first reading of the stories, the sixty adventures.

In "Moriarty and the Real Underworld," author John Gardner invokes a sordid picture of the cracks-men, snoozers, whizzers and dippers, the artful mobs-men of Doyle’s nineteenth-century London.

Isaac Asimov reconstructs the lost scientific papers of Professor Moriarty, "the Napoleon of crime," "organizer of half that is evil and nearly all that is undetected in this great city."

Martin Gardner’s startling "The Irrelevance of Conan Doyle" reveals Doyle’s conversion to spiritualism, an obsession which cost him a small fortune during his investigation of the occult, spirit photographs, and other psychic phenomena.

The enfant terrible of Sherlockian scholarship, Samuel Rosenberg (Naked Is the Best Disguise: The Death and Resurrection of Sherlock Holmes), and Nicholas Meyer, author of the best-selling The Seven Percent Solution, delve into the psychology of the Saga.

In "The Other Decalogue," Jacques Barzun, educator and man of letters, chastises Holmesian parody, pastiche, and forgery, but goes on to suggest ten dictates for the serious pastiche.

Colin Wilson, a literary force in both Britain and America, views Holmes as "a response to a deep-rooted psychological need," an answer to the "new disease of alienation," in "The Flawed Superman."

That witchcraft, the American Indian, Lillie Langtry, New Scotland Yard, and chemistry are among the many elements that combine to ignite this anthology should not surprise. Nor should it astonish that included in this Holmes fellowship are pharmacists, lawyers, librarians, geologists, university professors, a radio executive, a TV engineer, a minister of religion, a Dean Emeritus of a university medical center, journalists, a professional artist, and a Scotland Yard man.

Cult, hobby, or addiction, call it what you will, here is the composition and spirit of the Holmesian movement in microcosm. These authors, representatives of that movement, have joined in an effort to present Sherlock Holmes and/or his creator in an entirely new light. This book will give you a new understanding of the Master.