Sherlock Holmes and the Railway Maniac is a non-canonical Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...

 pastiche

Pastiche

A pastiche is a literary or other artistic genre or technique that is a "hodge-podge" or imitation. The word is also a linguistic term used to describe an early stage in the development of a pidgin language.-Hodge-podge:...

 novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 by Barrie Roberts

Barrie Roberts

Barrie Roberts was an author, folk singer, freelance journalist, and criminal lawyer.-Biography:Born in Hampshire in 1939, Roberts was educated at Churcher's College....

 which pits Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...

 against an anarchist

Anarchy

Anarchy , has more than one colloquial definition. In the United States, the term "anarchy" typically is meant to refer to a society which lacks publicly recognized government or violently enforced political authority...

 who is bombing trains.

The story involves real life incidents such as the Siege of Sidney Street

Siege of Sidney Street

The Siege of Sidney Street, popularly known as the "Battle of Stepney", was a notorious gunfight in London's East End on the 2nd of January 1911. Preceded by the Houndsditch Murders, it ended with the deaths of two members of a supposedly politically-motivated gang of burglars supposedly led by...

.

The events of the novel bookend the original Doyle story His Last Bow

His Last Bow (story)

"His Last Bow" is one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Scottish author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and one of seven collected in the anthology His Last Bow. Unlike most other Holmes stories which are written from the point of view of Dr...

.

Reception

Eric Monahan called the book a "first rate pastiche" while Roger Johnson stated that Roberts "captures the
Watson-Doyle style better than most".