Sherlock Holmes -- a fictional character -- was never alive, at least in the usual sense . . .
Yet here he is to be found, engaging in sharp-witted conversation with the shades of various and sundry famous souls of our historic past -- and trying to prove that a certain cigar fragment does, indeed, belong to Captain Kidd -- that shady shade of Hades who has absconded with the Houseboat of the Associated Shades!
First published in 1897, The Pursuit of the Houseboat continues the light-hearted exploration of the hobnobbings of the famous (and the dead) in the Afterlife . . . first enjoyed by readers in John Kendrick Bangs' 1895 novel A Houseboat on the Styx.
