Solar Pons is not precisely either an imitation or a parody of Sherlock Holmes. One might almost call him an understudy, and a triumphant one—a necessary replacement filling the abhorrent vacuum created by The Master's retirement….

The first book collection of Pons adventures, oddly entitled "In Re: Sherlock Holmes," appeared in 1945, to the deep gratification of all who have read and reread the sixty tales of the Holmesian canon and hungered for something new and yet the same. Now at last we have the long-awaited sequel…. "The Memoirs of Solar Pons" …; and once again the habitués of Holmes' 221B Baker Street can move to Pons' Praed Street with happy confidence.

The title is misleading; no equivalent of the seemingly tragic Reichenbach disaster befalls Pons. But the eleven stories … are all in the grand tradition of magnificently sinister plotting and spectacularly logical deduction. Each devotee will have...