When one Baker Street isn't enough.

Sherlock and Sherlockians provided the best parts of the past weekend, I think.

My friend John Holliday, a great Sherlockian whose reclusive and mysterious nature means he's only been seen by a scant few Sherlockians, came to town for an Irish pub lunch and hanging out in the Sherlock library. (I have the good Carter as a witness, in case you should ever think he's a Tyler Durden figment of my imagination whom I named after a famous gunfighter.)

And the 221B Con commanders all went down to Atlanta to research the new hotel for this year's con, and the con's Homeless Network tweeted some great pics of what we can expect there come spring. As I had to tweet on Saturday, the reminders of all the love and inclusion that swirl around 221B Con were a healthy inoculation against the hate on display in one corner of the country, and a reminder that there are good, good people here in America, as well as those who act otherwise.

But when Sunday night came, and the last moments of the weekend brought that weary lack of accomplishment blues that come as the clock runs out, I found myself picking a book out from down in the pile near my bed, one I picked up at an Indianapolis horror convention, of all places, a few years back:

Two Hundred and Twenty-One Baker Streets, edited by David Thomas Moore.

I dearly love that title, so much that I almost wish I'd come up with it myself. But as this was a three-hundred-and-some page paperback, what I found inside was merely fourteen stories of alternative universe Sherlocks and Johns, and yet . . . it was enough.

"A Scandal in Hobohemia" by Jamie Wyman turned Baker Street into a carnival, where ex-military man Jim Walker first encounters carny Sanford Haus. It was a colorful new world to be swept into, securely anchored by the knowledge that underneath their guises, these were two old friends.

The second tale, "Black Alice," by Kelly Hale, brought back the familiar names of Holmes and Watson, but place them a full century before their rightful place, the same yet different.

I don't review books very often here in the blog, as I don't finish most books in a timely manner, and don't like to talk about those I don't finish . . . not sure who's fault that is in a particular case. But in this case, just getting started with Two Hundred and Twenty-One Baker Streets was such a particularly welcome tonic of distraction at the end of mixed bag of a weekend. (Burying bodies from the household serial killer can be soooo depressing on top of everything else. Don't know why we let him live here.)

And a good reminder of just how much fun Sherlock Holmes and John Watson can be at the end of the day is always worth a mention.