The Mysterious Case of the Missing Detective

Long before Tolkienites, Trekkies and Potterheads crowded convention centers and camped out in ticket lines there were the Sherlockians. Possibly the oldest conglomeration of obsessive geekdom,they formed such diverse groups as the worldwide Baker Street Irregulars and Memphis, Tennessee's The Giant Rats of Sumatra. Why then are they so absent from the World Wide Web, bastion of fanatical categorization?

Well, not absent. Google "sherlock holmes" and you will receive just over 4.2 million hits. Though if you compare that to "star trek" with 20.9 million and a whopping 37.4 million for relative newcomer "harry potter" then the consulting detective disappears into the shadowy fog.

I have been searching in vain for a comprehensive list of the characters who inhabited Doyle's universe. Such things exist for popular television like The Simpsons and obscure underground comic Love & Rockets. Other than many online collections of the Holmes' canon and pastiches, the most extensive site I have found is from these nerds who've chosen to share their love of all things Sherlock with this huge gallery of their pasty faces.

Come now, I know you have internet access and time on your hands. Get to work on the Sherlock Holmes Character Database before this rank amateur is forced to take on the task himself.