The Pursuit of the House-Boat

Captain Kidd has carried off the floating clubhouse of the Associated Shades from the River Styx, with Queen Elizabeth and other women aboard. On the riverbank, Raleigh chairs an anxious meeting of spirits whose grand plans soon dissolve into arguments about boats, geography and grammar. John Kendrick Bangs turns this fantastic emergency into a comic novel, bringing Sherlock Holmes into a company that includes Socrates, Shakespeare, Noah and Dr. Johnson.

The humour comes from making figures of history and literature behave like quarrelsome club members. Aboard the missing boat, Cleopatra and her companions discuss Paris fashions while a committee struggles to present its scheme against the pirates. Holmes, meanwhile, takes command of the Gehenna for the pursuit. The mixture of detective parody, nautical adventure and talkative ghosts gives readers an unusual way to revisit familiar names, with their dignity repeatedly tested by everyday concerns.