Sometimes, the best books aren’t born from ambition.

A Sherlock Holmes fan’s reflection on growing up, fitting in, and finding a literary home

They begin as notes jotted in the quiet—during illness, recovery, or longing. Baker Street: The Curious Case Files of Sherlock Holmes didn’t come from a plan. It came from a fall. In this honest and unexpectedly funny reflection, author David Foster shares the unlikely path that led him from a hospital bed to one of the most expansive guides to the Holmesian universe in print today.

A love letter to Sherlock, cinema, and second chances.

Baker Street: The Curious Casefiles of Sherlock Holmes has just been published by Genius Books, and to say the response has been phenomenal feels like an understatement. I've been overwhelmed—in the best way—by the kind words, messages, and genuine enthusiasm from readers. Some have even gone so far as to describe me as a “Sherlockian scholar.” To which I can only say, thank you, but I must politely disagree—and offer a sincere apology to the real Sherlockian scholars out there. I'm not one of you. I'm just a fan. A lifelong, sometimes obsessive, very curious fan of Sherlock Holmes.

Honestly, I can't remember a time when Holmes wasn’t part of my life. There’s no clear “origin story,” no fateful moment when I first cracked open The Hound of the Baskervilles and fell under its spell. Holmes has just always… been there. Familiar. Comforting.

I had no grand plan to write a compendium about the world of Sherlock Holmes. Baker Street came about quite literarily by accident. And by accident, I mean that I collapsed on a sunny afternoon in St. Kilda, in March of 2022, smacked my head on the concrete, and woke up in the Alfred Hospital with no memory of the incident. The most significant after-effect of the fall was something called BPPV—Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo. Sounds gentle, doesn’t it? Like a Victorian ailment that Dr. Watson would attend to. But trust me, there’s nothing benign about it. The vertigo was like being stuck in a tumble dryer. The room spun viciously with even the slightest movement. Walking was a dangerous proposition; I fell often. So for the next 18 months, I rarely left my tiny studio apartment, except to crawl out for medical appointments.

I was isolated. Unable to work. And worse—I couldn't read properly. I couldn’t concentrate. Watching a movie felt like running a marathon. My mind just wouldn’t hold still. So I reached for what was familiar. Short stories. Old friends. Sherlock Holmes.

I’d read many of Conan Doyle’s stories back in college. In fact, I suspect one of the reasons I never finished my Graphic Design degree was because I spent more time in the library reading the adventure classics than I did studying typography or logos. Doyle, Verne, Rider Haggard—all the good stuff I missed in childhood, I tried to catch up on in my late teens. But I digress. Let’s get back to Baker Street.

Another side effect of not working was, of course, not earning. I couldn’t buy new books or DVDs to occupy my time. I had to rely on what I had on the shelves. So I started rereading Holmes—slowly—and I began jotting down notes as I went. Nothing too ambitious. Just thoughts. Observations. Questions. I should add here, with some embarrassment, that many of those early notes—filtered through the tumble dryer of my mind—weren’t exactly accurate. Editing the book later, I discovered just how scrambled my memory had become, a cocktail of vertigo and gaslit Victoriana. For example, I would have sworn that Conan Doyle’s The Story of the Lost Special was about thieves who steal a train and dismantle it piece by piece in an abandoned tunnel. It's not. At all. I have no idea where that version came from. Certainly not from Conan Doyle.

Eventually, I started watching Holmes films and television adaptations—again, all from my own library or from freely available sources online. YouTube, the Internet Archive, all of it became part of my Holmesian rehab. And I kept taking notes. Slowly, the notes began to accumulate into something more structured. An idea for a book started to form. Though even then, the thought wasn’t I’m going to publish this. It was simply, I need something to help me remember what I’ve read and watched.

But the notes grew. And grew. And somewhere along the line, they became Baker Street.

And now, here we are.

One of the things I’m most proud of about this book is that so much of the source material—perhaps as much as 70%—is freely available. Conan Doyle’s original stories are in the public domain. So many early film adaptations are on YouTube. The Internet Archive is a goldmine of pastiches and oddities. And my local library’s eBook and audiobook collection was invaluable—especially as I couldn’t go in person. I love that anyone who picks up Baker Street and wants to go on a similar journey exploring the world of Sherlock Holmes doesn’t need to spend a fortune. The material is already out there, waiting for you. You just have to know where to look.

And if you’re unsure where to start—if the Holmesian world feels a little too big or a little too foggy—then maybe Baker Street can help. It’s not a scholarly tome. It’s a map drawn by a fan. A companion. A conversation. A love letter to the detective who never really left my side—even when the world was spinning.

—David Foster

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Get your copy here: Baker Street