Imagine the scene, 221b baker street, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson are in their rooms, Holmes is smoking his pipe staring at the ceiling,

"Watson he cries, What do you know about Vanderbilt? Make a long arm and look in that wonderful book 'The Curious Book of Sherlock Holmes Characters', a truly remarkable work, packed will information about every character we have encountered in our 56 short stories and 4 novellas. This writer has even included that carbuncle eating goose and that lazy dog that did nothing."

Watson stretched out his arm and picked it up from the coffee table, "I like to keep it handy, it looks so nice on this table, giving the whole room an air of sophistication. In addition it's so large and thick, it would stop an air rifle bullet at a thousand yards. Only the other day I looked up Captain Calhoun and Messrs. Biddle, Hayward and Moffat and found that there was a link between these individuals."

Holmes thought a moment, and said "What links Miss Hunter, Miss Smith, Miss Westbury and Miss De Merville?", "Too easy" cried Watson. "What about this Holmes, get those braincells working, Which Canon story has 4 totally unrelated people with the same surname (last name), I can give you a clue, one was a policeman, one was an alias, one was a teen and one was an official. "

"And this book lists them all?" asked Holmes,

"Yes, there are over one thousand characters in it and of course, we both get a special mention, and it's illustrated throughout"

"Sidney Paget again, I suppose?"

"Oh no, not just him, but artists like Frederic Dorr Steele of Collier's fame, Ernest Flammarion, F. H. Townsend, Josef Friedrich, Paul Thiriat, Richard Gutschmidt, Arthur Twidle et al. It's a must have for anyone seriously into Us."

Mike Foy's mammoth book includes all the characters (animals included) from the Sherlock Holmes canon, with as many illustrations as possible. It's one of the largest compilations of its kind and an excellent reference resource for Sherlock Holmes fans.