A Recap of Holmes in the Heartland 2023

Holmes in the Heartland: Arch Enemies was a huge success!  More than 90 Sherlockians from the St. Louis area and around the country spent three days celebrating Sherlock Holmes and mingling with one another.  

The weekend officially kicked off on Friday afternoon, but plenty of folks arrived on Thursday and connected with one another.  Some went out to dinner, others hung out at the hotel, and one group braved the heat to attend a Cardinals game.

Friday

Friday afternoon found the Sheraton Westport hopping as everyone started arriving.  Brad Keefauver captured the energy of seeing everyone with this blog post.

Our first official event was an architectural tour of the St. Louis Public Library, followed by a viewing of the St. Louis Sherlock Holmes Research Collection in the library's Rare Books and Manuscript Room.  The Central Branch of the St. Louis Library is a gorgeous place, and the tours highlighted some amazing aspects of the place.  And people really seemed to enjoy looking over books from the collection and discussing certain aspects of specific pieces spread throughout the room.

There were a few hours for everyone to grab a bite to eat with friends after the library before our next event, the Just Desserts for Professor Moriarty banquet, sponsored by The John H. Watson Society.  Everyone enjoyed treats and coffee in a relaxed atmosphere while door prizes were raffled off to attendees.

Saturday

The biggest day of the weekend was Saturday.  The doors opened at 8:30 and the vendors started doing a brisk business right away.  While they eyed up purchases, attendees also mingled with one another and viewed the day's door prizes.

The speaker line up was a blast!  If we tried to recap every wonderful thing that was said, this blog post would be as long as an encyclopedia.  So we will just share the line up along with some pictures here.

Ray Betzner - Professor James Moriarty, and the Quest for Order in the Universe

Kristen Mertz - Moran's Game

Cindy Brown - Guys I Love to Hate: The List Keeps Getting Longer

Steven Doyle - Baron Gruner: The Most Misunderstood Villain in the Canon

Mike McSwiggin - The Ultimate Arch Enemies of the Canon: Dr. Watson and Calendars

Beth Gallego - Enemies for Life: Faces of Moriarty in Sherlockian Literature for Youth

Monica Schmidt - BBC, But You Do Not Observe: Sociopathy and Sherlock Holmes

Joe Eckrich, Rich Krisciunas, & Michael Waxenberg - Jefferson Hope: The Trial of the (19th) Century

As intriguing as these titles and pictures are, they don't even begin to do justice to the fantastic presentations.  We were very lucky to have such a great line up of speakers this year!

After a short break and time for socialization in the hotel bar, we were treated to a great buffet dinner.  Two of our local members, Adam Presswood and Stacey Bregenzer, gave toasts to Arthur Conan Doyle and villains in the Canon.  These toasts will be published in full in our next blog post.

After everyone was fully fed and we went through the dessert table more than a few times, it was time for the night's entertainment: The Alpha Inn Goose Club Trivia Night.  Brad Keefauver and his trusty goose companion, Steve Mason, took the group through trivia that spanned decades, genres, and myriads of interests.

Sunday

People who opted for the three-day registration got to visit the St. Louis Arch that included a guided tour of the new history museum, a trip to the top of the Arch, a documentary film on the building of the Arch, and of course some souvenir shopping.  We wrapped up the weekend with lunch at The Old Spaghetti Factory on Laclede's Landing before everyone finally filtered out on their ways back home.

A Look Back at The Parallel Case of St. Louis by Joe Eckrich

With the second “Holmes in the Heartland” conference almost upon us, I thought it would be appropriate to take a look back the history of The Parallel Case of St. Louis and our previous St. Louis conferences.  

We began, rather inauspiciously, on 15 November 1998, a small group of Sherlockians meeting in my apartment in Shrewsbury, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis.  However, the idea for the group began during meetings of The Noble Bachelors, the oldest scion society in St. Louis.  They met two or three times a year, usually in dinner meetings with 30 – 40 people attending.  There was always a Sherlockian program but little or no opportunity to discuss the actual stories.  So sprang the idea of a smaller group meeting more often to discuss the Canon and anything else of Sherlockian note.  The idea took off and 35 years later we are still meeting and still discussing one case at a time.

For a name I wanted something with a connection to St. Louis.  There were actually two mentions of St. Louis in the Canon; “the Jefferson Hopes of St. Louis” in a STUDY IN SCARLET and, in THE SIGN OF FOUR, Holmes talks of referring a French detective, Francois le Villard, to two parallel cases involving a will which took place in Riga in 1857 and in St. Louis in 1871.  “The Jefferson Hopes” was already taken, so I chose “The Parallel Case of St. Louis.”  Note that case is singular, although our first booklet was titled “The Parallel Cases of St. Louis”.  More on that later.

We began meeting in members’ homes and eventually moved to a mystery bookstore called “The Big Sleep."  Helen Simpson, owner of The Big Sleep, kindly opened up just for us on the evening of our meeting, on the third Monday of every other month at first, and eventually the 3rd Thursday of every  other month.  During the first year we began the practice of inviting guest speakers periodically beginning with John Lutz, a local author of mystery and suspense books.  We also had Francis M. Nevins, author and Ellery Queen expert, Fred Levin, BSI, a noted Chicago Sherlockian quite knowledgeable about the Reichenbach Falls, and Bob Randisi, mystery author and president of the Private Eyes of America.

In 1989 we held our first Summer banquet with guest speaker Tony Harries who had been secretary to Sherlock Holmes at the Abby National in London.  The following year our guest speaker was David Hammer, BSI, Sherlockian author and publisher.  

In 1991 Pat Accardo suggested we should have a newsletter and offered to edit it with me as co-editor.  It was named “The Parallelogram” and ran for over 10 years.  In 1999 we produced our first “writings on the writings," a booklet entitled “The Parallel Cases of St. Louis."  We produced a second booklet, “Romancing The Hound” on August 2001 for both the 10th anniversary of "The Parallelogram” and the 100th anniversary of the publishing of the first part of THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES in the Strand Magazine.  While a totally separate booklet, it was listed as Special Supplement Number One of “The Parallelogram” and sold separately.

St. Louis has a proud history of Sherlockian Conferences beginning in the 1990s.  The Harpooners of the Sea Unicorn produced several in St. Charles, Missouri, including “The Game’s Afloat” in 1998 which took place on a Showboat docked in St. Charles.  The speakers for this event were Terence Faherty, Brad Keefauver, Rosemary Michaud, Roy Pilot and John Smithkey III.  These were followed by two at Westport Plaza, the location of this year’s Holmes in the Heartland, at the old Westport Playhouse.  These were joint efforts with all of the St. Louis scion societies. 

The Parallel Case of St. Louis then held two conferences under the banner “Holmes Under the Arch” and “Holmes Under the Arch II”.  The first took place in 1999 and was subtitled “Weekend at Baskerville Hall” and included a murder mystery written by Brad Keefauver to be solved during the weekend.  Both conferences were highly successful but for limitation of space I will concentrate on the second.  This was held at the Holiday Inn/Viking hotel and conference center in Sunset Hills, a St. Louis suburb.  It took place on June 20 – 22, 2005 and was very well attended.  Our speakers included Catherine Cooke, current Chairperson of The Sherlock Holmes Society of London and, at the time, librarian at The Marylebone Library in charge of their Sherlock Holmes collection.  She spoke on “1951 – A Vintage Year”, about the Festival of Britain and Marylebone’s contribution of Sherlock Holmes study and the resulting founding of The Sherlock Holmes Society of London.  Les Klinger spoke on “Game Over."  Les had produced THE NEW ANNOTATED SHERLOCK HOLMES, which played “the game” of Holmes and Watson being real people, which we know they are.  As such he and the Annotated received some criticism from various sources, which was his subject.

Bill Mason, with the able assistance of his wife Cynthia Mason, gave us “Hooray For Doctor Sterndale, The African Explorer."  Among other things, Bill posited that Dr. Sterndale was the inspiration for “one of the greatest and most memorable classic scenes in the history of cinema.  I speak, of course,  of the 1930 film, “Animal Crackers," and more specifically, to the movies signature musical number, “Hooray for Captain Spaulding”.  Bill and Cindy then proceeded to give us various stanzas of the song substituting Dr. Sterndale for Dr. Spaulding with a riotous conclusion.  Julie McKuras then gave us “Holmes on the Mississippi” and spoke about our own Gray Chandler Briggs and also the beginnings of the Sherlockian collection at the University of Minnesota.  This was followed by Sue Vizoskie’s “Downstairs in the Canon” and particularly Mrs. Isabella Beeton and her BOOK OF HOUSEHOLD MANAGEMENT.  In addition, we held a pastiche writing contest with the winning pastiche “The Adventure of the Empty Case of The King of Beers” by Julie and Mike McKuras.

The First “Holmes in the Heartland” took place in 2018.  We were due to follow it up two years later but something called Covid interfered and then there were a few other conference scheduled elsewhere, so here we are in 2023 ready for our second “Holmes in the Heartland."

As you can see St. Louis is a place to be reckoned with when we discuss Sherlockian Conferences!

Holmes in the Heartland 2023

You may have seen and heard about Holmes in the Heartland, but have you really observed what all is happening in St. Louis on July 28-30?  We are packed to the gills with a weekend full of Sherlockian events, speakers, vendors, sites, and surprises.  This is a weekend you won't want to miss!

The weekend kicks off on Friday afternoon with an architectural tour of the gorgeous central branch of the St. Louis Public Library.  Upon completion, we will adjourn to the city's Rare Books and Manuscript Room for a viewing of the St. Louis Sherlock Holmes Research Collection.  

After the library closes at 5, everyone will move back to Westport Plaza.  All around our hotel are great choices for dinner with Sherlockian friends, both new and old.  And we haven't forgotten about the late-night socialization that happens at these events.  You can count on a great time after dinner if you want to keep the party going!

The doors will open Saturday morning for those of us who like to get to the vendors tables first.  And you'll want plenty of time to peruse our packed shopping options!  Make sure to leave space in your luggage for books from Wessex Press, Books on the Square, and BSI Press along with Sherlockian treasures from Lynda Conway, Joe Eckrich, Regina Stinson, Mike McSwiggin, Steve Mason, and The Practical Preservers of Sherlock Holmes.

Then you're in for a full day of Arch Enemies with presentations by Ray Betzner, Kristen Mertz, Cindy Brown, Steven Doyle, Mike McSwiggin, Beth Gallego, Monica Schmidt, and the St. Louis Costumers Guild.  Enjoy topics covering Professor Moriarty, Colonel Moran, Baron Gruner, psychology, and Watson's arch nemesis.  And because Sherlockian events are known for their food and socializing, we've built plenty of time into Saturday's schedule for lunch and socialization breaks in between all of these fascinating speakers.

But Saturday isn't finished after all of these speakers.  The festivities will continue with a Sherlockian dinner banquet that evening with canonical toasts and a rousing round of Alpha Inn Goose Club Trivia, hosted by your trivia landlord, Brad Keefauver, and his sidekick, a Texas-size goosed who bears an uncanny resemblance to Steve Mason.  If you still have energy left after all of this fun, plan on joining fellow Sherlockians for nightlife on more time!

And how could we theme this weekend "Arch Enemies" and not take our guests to the Gateway Arch?  Sunday morning will find scores of Sherlockians visiting the Gateway to the West for a trip to the top of the Arch, guided tour of its history museum, and film on the building of this landmark.  We'll squeeze in one more meal at a riverfront eatery, and then it will be time for us all to head back to the real world, but full of all of the memories we've made over the past few days!

Registration is open now and hotel rooms are going fast!  Two- and three-day packages are available for your travel arrangements.  And if you are new to Sherlockiana or St. Louis, don't let that deter you.  We will send out driving and parking information out ahead of time.  Sherlockians are unbelievably welcoming and once you get here, you won't be a stranger very long!

If you have any questions, please reach out to us  and we will be happy to answer any questions.  We look forward to meeting you in St. Louis!