Sherlock Holmes to Battle Barker’s Cenobites This Summer

This one promises to be anything but elementary, dear Watson!

Solaris Books has announced their intention to publish the genre crossover Sherlock Holmes and the Servants of Hell, along with their willingness to “go to hell in the process!” The novel, penned by noted Hellraiser historian Paul Kane, is scheduled for release this July, 2016 and will carry Clive Barker’s seal of approval.

In a recent press release, Solaris Editor-in-Chief Jonathan Oliver could barely contain his enthusiasm:

“The world’s greatest detective meets horror’s greatest icons, what more could you want? Paul has been a significant voice on the horror scene for a while now and he’s steeped in Clive Barker’s hell-bound mythos. That we now have the chance to pit Holmes against a world he could never have imagined is very exciting indeed. This promises to be a journey into hell, pitting two great masters against each other. Gruesome, yet compelling, Kane will undoubtedly deliver the horror crossover of 2016.”

Author Paul Kane has written over 50 novels, including the infamous Arrowhead trilogy for Abandon Books. As a journalist, he writes for SFX, Rue Morgue, and DeathRay; he’s been regarded as an expert of Hellraiser mythos, having scribed numerous articles, along with the non-fiction book The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy, published by McFarland Books. Of his impending novel with Solaris, Kane states:

“I’m incredibly excited – if also more than a little daunted – by the prospect of this book. It’s only the third long form fiction featuring elements from Clive’s Hellraising universe, coming after The Hellbound Heart and this year’s massively successful The Scarlet Gospels, and the first time Holmes has ever encountered the mythology. Readers can expect a very different kind of Holmes book, and a very different kind of novel featuring Hell and its famous Servants.”

Sherlock Holmes and the Servant of Hell will follow fiction’s most celebrated investigator from an insane asylum in France to London’s seediest underground societies—and eventually into the realm of Leviathan. The case centers on a man who disappeared from a locked room, along with his affiliation with a mysterious cult known as “The Order of the Gash”. No word on whether Holmes will face off against fan favorite Pinhead, but a confrontation with Cenobites is guaranteed.

Sherlock Holmes was deemed “public domain” following a ruling against the Conan Doyle Estate by federal judge Rubén Castillo of the United States District Court of the Northern District of Illinois in 2013 (a ruling solidified by the US Supreme Court’s refusal to hear an appeal in 2014). The decision doesn’t merely apply to Holmes, but Dr. John Watson and all the other characters associated with the famous sleuth; the ruling even applies to “situations” involving Holmes.

All this means that (for better or worse) there’s no telling where Holmes & Watson may end up next—or whose path they may eventually cross. Up next: Sherlock Holmes vs Predator, perhaps?

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