Crossover Cover: The Living Goddess

This collection of stories features the Grey Monk, a deeply religious vigilante. In the story "The Living Goddess," the Monk battles Thuggee seeking a chest that has passed through many hands before coming to his own city. The history of the chest is shown through a series of flashbacks. One is set in Victorian London, and involves a Great Detective who is friends with a doctor (whose new bride has family in America), knows Baritsu, and is pursuing a Professor. Another takes place in New York City in 1939, and shows a vigilante who also has a guise as man about town Michael Shaw gunning down Thuggee and Nazis seeking the chest at a museum. The Great Detective is clearly Sherlock Holmes, though the 1892 date for the flashback must be incorrect, as that would place it during Holmes’ Great Hiatus. 1886 is more likely, since William S. Baring-Gould’s biography Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street states Dr. Watson married an American woman in that year. The vigilante in New York City in 1939 is Michael Shaw, aka the Nightmare, who has appeared in other stories by French.