My wife collects Sherlock Holmes pastiches and I try to find Holmes books in other written languages whenever I’m somewhere that that’s a thing. She has a fun collection of French, German, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, and… want to say Indian but can’t remember for certain (it’s been a few years).
Her favorites are the Warlock Holmes books but I really enjoyed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s “Mycroft Holmes,” series. The first one in particular tackles some big topics and was very interesting.
I'll be on the lookout for both the Warlock Holmes and Kareem's Mycroft series!
Another YA Holmes pastiche that I enjoyed immensely is the 4-book Charlotte Holmes series by Brittany Cavallaro, beginning with A Study in Charlotte, a clever play on the Study in Scarlet that introduced her great-great-great grandfather into the world. She's had a rough time of it, including several stays in mental hospitals, which is a powerful update of what it might be like for someone that borderline sociopathic who winds up addicted to opiates in something resembling the real world. You don't get to just start a business and be famous. Especially as a teen, you just get in deep trouble that nearly kills you.
They're not exactly heavy, but this lends the stories an unusual heft. There's a lot of humor, much of it deriving from her relationship with the progeny of Watson who attends her boarding school (another classic YA trope that this leans into). They're both terrific characters who are both like and unlike their famous forbears in ways that illuminate the originals.
The Holmes family in particular is greatly extended, as is the Moriarty family (both are featured in family tree diagrams in the beginning of the books), and there's a lot of great stuff on intergenerational trauma to go with it. They also lean into the family businesses of political influence, so there's some solid spy stuff to go with all of the above. You will NOT see some of this stuff coming. Really sharp storytelling here.
Holmes and Watson explore some romance, which feels inevitable, but by the time they get to it, also deeply earned. It's slow and tentative without being tedious, and fits nicely in the context of the real pain that these characters experience.
My wife and I have been talking about this while I'm writing this, and we really were both quite moved by this series. This is the best kind of YA, deeply empathetic and insightful to go along with propulsive storytelling. Anybody who reads these is gonna want to read more books this good, which is what it's all about.