Mark Sohn’s The Absentee Detective: Tales of Conspiracy, Connivance, and Intrigue is a 2018 collection of four short stories. These are The Detective Who Wasn’t, The Detective Who Wasn’t There, The Unlikely Detective, and The Tinseltown Detective. All the stories are of a sufficient length to develop their complex plots and provide a very satisfying read.

The first story, The Detective Who Wasn’t, features, not Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, but Mortimer Knight and Baxter Belmont, two actors who play those respective parts on stage. The story begins when ‘Holmes’ is approached by a young boy who believes the two men are the real Holmes and Watson. He wants them to investigate why his beloved collie suddenly bit him and his mother. Thus begins a serpentine tale that stretches over British countryside and history, with nods to Charles II and Nazi spies.

I realise this story…