Sheridan Haynes Books in Order

The Sheridan Haynes books are Julian Symons having fun with Sherlock Holmes, but not in the most obvious way. These are not straightforward Victorian pastiches with Holmes and Watson simply dropped into fresh adventures. Instead, Symons builds the series around Sheridan Haynes, an actor who becomes famous for playing Holmes on television and begins to slide, a little dangerously, into the role off screen as well.

That setup gives the books their special flavor. Haynes is vain, opinionated, theatrical, and sometimes faintly ridiculous. He is not a born detective. He is a man who admires one, performs one, and slowly convinces himself that the performance may have become real. Symons gets a lot of comedy out of that, but he also uses it to ask how much of identity is costume, habit, bluff, and wishful thinking.

The game is part of the charm.

In A Three-Pipe Problem, Haynes is cast as Holmes and decides to involve himself in a trio of unsolved killings that have defeated Scotland Yard. The result is both a mystery and a sly look at television fame, nostalgia, and ego. The Kentish Manor Murders takes the idea further. Haynes, now more securely identified with Holmes, is pulled into a country-house setting complete with Castle Baskerville, a devoted Sherlockian collector, and the lure of what may be an unknown Conan Doyle manuscript.

What makes these books work is that Symons clearly enjoys the Holmes world without surrendering to simple imitation. The clues matter. The setups are clever. But he is also gently teasing the habits of fandom, the romance of detection, and the way actors can get trapped inside the parts that made them famous. Haynes can be brave and surprisingly sharp, but he can also be pompous, blinkered, and carried away by his own legend.

That balance keeps the books lively.

The tone is lighter than in many Symons novels, yet the mysteries are real enough to stand on their own. Readers who come for Sherlockian atmosphere will get it, but they will also get modern settings, media satire, and Symons's usual interest in how people invent better versions of themselves and then struggle to live inside them.

If you like Holmes pastiche, these are easy to recommend. If you like books about performance, self-delusion, and the odd border between make-believe and method, they are even better. Read A Three-Pipe Problem first, then The Kentish Manor Murders, and enjoy the way Symons turns affectionate homage into something distinctly his own.