Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Anti-Democracy League

Excerpts from The New Non-Fiction Thriller

I had seen little of Holmes since since his ill-conceived move to America, which I had predicted would result in the great detective’s ruination. But when I received a text reading “Drop all & arrive here yesterday! The game is afoot!,” I immediately divorced my wife, leased out our charming cottage in Cotswold, sold our two adventure-loving children to an agent for Somali pirates, and decamped for the States.

The great man still had some powerful hold over me, that much was certain. Perhaps it was our gay thing, or the drugs.

I found him ensconsed at 221 b.Bay Drive in Miami Beach, his rooms decorated with lobster, coconut and artillery shells and with walls that rolled up to allow the surf to pass in and out freely. He was playing a haunting sonata on his violin, nor did it stop when he put down the instrument in order to light a pricy Cuban cigar.

“I congratulate you upon your perfect timing, old boy,” said Holmes, puffing his Cohiba. “I’m dreadfully sorry you had to spend three hours wallowing in snake-infested swamp water after your flight from London crashed in what is left of the Everglades, killing everyone aboard but you. But here you are.”

“What?” I sputtered. “How could you possibly know of that disaster, Holmes? The news of the crash was suppressed so as not to rattle the world financial markets over the loss of the Duke of Moravia, the largest foreign investor in TikTok and the only man in the world who fully understands Elon Musk.”

“Eleeomosynary, my dour Watson,” said Holmes, whipping out a cell phone. “I am equipped with the new Sherlock App, made by Google. It is the ultimate search engine. Point it at any individual, click on “deduce,” and it tells you all his secrets. It is also making me astonishingly rich.” The garish illustration, featuring a much younger Holmes wielding a flame-shooting cannon, was appalling.

“But see here, my good man,” I said. “If any bloke who can afford this absurd gimcrack can convincingly impersonate Sherlock Holmes, then who will need the real Sherlock Holmes?

“Elephantically, my weird Datson,” replied Homes. “Tall, unscrupulous American chaps with an insatiable thirst for wealth and power, who underestimate the force of the new technology. I believe I detect one approaching now.”

Even as he spoke, there was a violent pounding on the outer door, which soon splintered, admitting a small army of men and women all identically clad in dark suits and long red ties. They were led by by a porcine, yellow-haired, obese giant who spoke incessantly in a peculiar, braying whine that conveyed to my trained ear a troubled history of tragically incompetent toilet training and generally insufficient childhood discipline.

This eminence marched straight up to me, flung a meaty arm about my shoulders, and addressed me as follows: “They all say I need money! That’s crazy! Nuts! Me? That’s like saying the Pope needs Catholics. So you’re Sherlock Holmes. I saw all your movies. Great stuff, Holmes. That’s the kind of wholesome, non-perv all-American entertainment America needs to get back to to being great again. I’m not here to ask you for money, Holmes. The lying media say I’m out of money. Have I asked you for a penny?”

“I can’t honestly say that you have, sir.” At that point, I saw an opening to dart in and correct the excitable fellow’s misapprehension that I was Sherlock Holmes. But before I could so much as harrumph, Holmes himself had leapt into the discourse. “I’m Dr. John H. Watson,” he said. “I am literary adviser and biographer to Mr. Holmes, who is a great admirer of yours.”

“Yeah, you’re the ghost writer,” said the fat non-gentleman. “I got a million of ‘em. I don’t need you. I need the world’s greatest detective. This guy right here.” He playfully snapped my bowler. It plummeted, and rolled back and forth on the floor.

🦩🦩🦩

It wasn’t the first time Holmes and I had changed places—many of you aficionados doubtless recall “The Preposterous Case of the Speckled Peccary”—in which I disguised myself as Holmes in order to lure the dastardly villain known as the Andalusian Assassin out of his secret cave to take a shot at what he thought was his nemesis and bugbear.

Fortunately, he missed me by a millimeter.

What the new client wanted from Holmes (that is, me) was simply “to get the goods on Biden.” Not being conversant with American politics, I failed to recognize the name, but was instructed by the client that Joe Biden was “the worst human being in American history, a guy who makes your arch-enemy, Professor Mortuary, look like Shirley Temple. Bur nobody can nail him. Nobody but the great Sherlock Holmes.”

When I asked Holmes what exactly he desired me to do in this matter, he laughed uproariously. “Alimentary, my blear Wattleson-Pankhurst-Waller-Bridge. You are to ‘do me,’ as the Americans say. Walk about peering through a magnifying glass. Measure things. Take notes. Take samples. Give progress reports to the television news presenters. You will find nothing incriminating, for there is nothing to be found. But we stand to earn a good deal in fees and expenses. Though he isn’t really a billionaire as he claims, our client constantly receives fresh political donations from tycoons and robber barons who approve of his Global Anti-Democracy League.”

But something was eating at my conscience. “Erm, Holmes, old boy,” I said. “Is this business, you know, proper?"

“Proper?”

“You understand, principled, honorable—that type of thing. After all, as odious as the client is, should we be taking his payment for rendering no real services?”

Holmes scoffed. “Watson, the 19th century, Queen Victoria and the code of the gentleman are long gone. Today we live in a different world, a world of social media, branding, influencers and clicks. Audiences don’t want long, intricate unravelings of pedantic clues, they want ironic dialogue, nimble editing, special effects and action, followed by a witty commercial. They will find your bungling parody of my investigative technique amusing. Here, take this.”

He handed me a small but heavy object. It was a Webley Bulldog revolver.

“I’m not saying go out of your way to discharge this fellow,” he said. “but should the need arise, don’t hesitate to protect yourself.”

Whistling a Seventeenth-century Romanian funeral march, Holmes vanished. I stood as if rooted to the spot for quite a long time, then went out to pick up the trail of Hunter Biden.