Crossover of the Week

Late July 1912

THE RETURN OF THE WINCHESTER MAN 

Criminologist Professor Craig Kennedy and his friend and biographer, reporter Walter Jameson, travel from New York City to Chicago at the behest of the leader of the White Hand, a group of businessmen who oppose the Italian American Black Hand criminal organization, whose brother has been murdered by, apparently, the Black Hand’s assassin, the Winchester Man. In the process, they meet Sherlock Holmes, who is in Chicago disguised as the Irish American Altamont. After solving their own case, Kennedy and Jameson help Holmes thwart an arson attempt at the Republican Convention, orchestrated by Von Bork. Crime in New York has become relatively mundane, except for a new safecracker calling himself the Gray Seal. The leader of the White Hand mentions “that little punk Colombo.” 

Short story by Walter Jameson, edited by Greg Gick in The Further Crossovers of Sherlock Holmes, Richard Dean Starr and E. R. Bower, eds., Moonstone Books, 2017. Craig Kennedy and Walter Jameson are from Arthur B. Reeve’s detective novels. Holmes’ time in Chicago as Altamont was alluded to in “His Last Bow,” in which he defeated Von Bork. Jimmie Dale, aka the Grey Seal, is the hero of a series of novels by Frank L. Packard. “That little punk Colombo” is Chicago gangster Spats Colombo from the movie Some Like It Hot. 

This crossover is one of hundreds covered in my book Crossovers Expanded: A Secret Chronology of the World Volume 3, coming from Meteor House in August! All three volumes are AUTHORIZED companions to Win Scott Eckert's Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World Volumes 1 and 2!