My family has been with Scotland Yard for more than a century. I can trace a line of constables back to the Great-great-grandfather for whom I am named. It is from this Great-great-grandfather that the stories came, the stories of a great detective the likes of which the world has never seen before and probably will never see again. It is I who has the fortune or perhaps the misfortune of dealing with a shadow of this brilliance on a regular basis.

Sherlock Holmes didn't invent the position of "Consulting Detective", he reinvented it.

The Holmes family could never stay away from a crime scene for long, and many members of the somewhat vast extended family work for various departments in differing capacities around the country or, as in some cases, around the world. It is in their blood, despite the fact that the line my family has watched with fading hope over the years is descended from the detective's older brother. This is how I know that none of the crime scenes I will come to will contain a body that Holmes has left behind no matter how enthusiastic he seems around a fresh corpse. None of the other Holmses have left one behind as far as we know, though many have looked like they wanted to on more than one occasion, including one Sgt. Donavan who looks like she would rather cheerfully dispose of her distant - and apparently unknown to her, and possibly unknown to him considering how far and wide the family has spread - cousin in a garbage skip

There had been some interest amongst my relatives a while back over a boy who was named Mycroft after his great-grandfather who'd tried to help the police once or twice, but that didn't pan out, as the boy went into government service instead. My father, upon hearing this, had had a most unusual reaction. He'd stared at me as if he'd never seen me before before running out the door and to the nearest pub where he got completely plastered.

I learned why years later when a young man who looked to be as high as a kite approached me at a crime scene and started sharing things I was sure that only the killer would know. His alibi had checked out however, as I knew it would after I learned his name. It was oddly enough the brighter ones, the ones more like him that tended to turn out like this, that tended to drown their massive intellects in drugs or alcohol because they just didn't seem to be able to turn whatever the hell it was that made them like they were off any other way. Unlike most of his other relatives that had that spark, the drugs clearly weren't working for Sherlock Holmes who had obviously been named for his brother's namesake's younger brother. That evening at the pub, as I myself got completely smashed, I had commented that all we needed was a Dr. John Watson and it would be like it was in my Great-great-grandfather's day back when Queen Victoria was on the throne.

When I saw Dr. Watson fresh from Afghanistan during that case he'd given the rather colorful title of A Study in Pink when he had typed it up and posted it on his blog, it was as if something clicked into place and the stars had aligned. We were now playing the roles set by our ancestors generations before, and I have little doubt that the ride will be just as grand and as beautifully frustrating for me as it had been for my Great-great-grandfather oh so long ago as we blaze a new trail into the future.

Perhaps, one day I shall show Dr. Watson the battered dispatch box my family has been holding onto, and the manuscripts that had been returned after being rejected by various publishers. The look on his face should be priceless at the very least.

Were I a more superstitious man, I would say that there are some things that not even death itself could contain, and Sherlock Holmes in any incarnation would be one of them. It would make sense that he'd drag the people he lived and worked with along behind him, as anyone else would probably try to dump him back into his grave shortly after meeting him.