Paul D Gilbert Books in Order

Paul D Gilbert was born in London in 1954, and London has never really left him. Sources on his books place his beginnings in North London, and he has spent his life in and around the city. He now lives in Harrow with his wife Jackie, who is also closely involved in his work as an editor, and their family has long been part of the background to his writing life.

Sherlock Holmes got to him early.

Gilbert has said that his real moment of conversion came in a school library, when he picked up The Man with the Twisted Lip. That story stayed with him, and so did the strange pull of Holmes himself, brilliant, remote, unsettling, and endlessly interesting. When Gilbert eventually began writing fiction of his own, he did not head for a brand new detective. He went back to Baker Street and started exploring the cases Watson only hinted at.

For much of his working life, Gilbert worked in clothing retail. Later, he became a full time undertaker, which is one of those biographical details that feels almost too perfect for a Holmes writer. It helps explain why his stories are so comfortable with fog, graveyards, vanished bodies, old griefs, and the uneasy border between the ordinary and the macabre, while still keeping one foot planted firmly in the logic of a detective story.

He writes like someone who still enjoys the puzzle.

That comes through clearly in The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes, The Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes, and The Annals of Sherlock Holmes. These books build whole adventures out of the famous gaps in Conan Doyle, the cases Watson mentions in passing and never fully records. Readers who like classic Holmes and Watson banter, careful clue laying, and the feeling of being back in the original late Victorian world tend to start with those collections. They also show one of Gilbert's favorite strengths, taking a tiny scrap from the canon and spinning it into a full, readable mystery.

He also knows when to widen the frame. Sherlock Holmes and the Giant Rat of Sumatra turns one of the most famous untold cases into a larger adventure involving an abandoned ship, a dying cabin boy, a missing explorer, and clues that stretch far beyond London. Then the Odyssey of Sherlock Holmes books, Sherlock Holmes and the Unholy Trinity, The Four-Handed Game, and The Illumination of Sherlock Holmes, push even further, giving Holmes a longer running conflict, bigger travel, higher stakes, and more room for Mycroft to step into the action.

Another thing readers often notice is Gilbert's interest in history. He has spoken about his love of ancient history, and that interest shows up naturally in his fiction. The background details in his books are not there to show off. They are there to give the mysteries texture, whether the story is dealing with old legends, church intrigue, foreign travel, or the hidden corners of London. He also enjoys movies, science fiction, music, and sport, interests that suggest a reader and writer with a wide curiosity beyond Holmes alone.

Gilbert has continued to add to his corner of the Holmes world through both his own books and contributions to the MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories volumes. He has also published shorter adventures such as Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Christmas Stocking, Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Risen Corpse, and Sherlock Holmes and the Secret of Colonel Warburton’s Insanity. The through line is easy to spot. He is a London born writer, still writing about London shadows, old secrets, and the detective who first caught his imagination in a school library.