Solar Pons is a fictional detective created by August Derleth as a pastiche of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes.
Robert Bloch wrote of the series, "During a span of a century there have been literally hundreds of Sherlockian imitations, ranging from parody to direct duplication, but no one except August Derleth ever succeeded in capturing the essential charm of Doyle's original concept... To Pons's exploits he brought not only expertise but evident expression of his respect, appreciation, and affection for the source of their inspiration.
"[1] On hearing that Doyle did not plan to write more Sherlock Holmes stories, the young Derleth wrote to him, asking permission to take over the series.
The tales in the Pontine canon can be broadly divided into two classes: the straight and the humorous, the straight being more or less straightforward tales of detection in the classic Holmesian mode, while the others—a minority—have some gentle fun, most notably by involving fictional characters from outside either canon (e.g., Dr. Fu Manchu); perhaps the most outstanding example is "The Adventure of the Orient Express", which features thinly disguised versions of Ashenden, Hercule Poirot, and the Saint.
Several Pons stories have titles taken from "unrecorded" cases of Holmes to which Watson alluded, including those of "Ricoletti of the Club Foot (and his Abominable Wife)," "The Aluminium Crutch", "The Black Cardinal", and "The Politician, the Lighthouse, and the Trained Cormorant."
Fedogan and Bremer also issued a limited edition chapbook of Copper's preferred text of the story "The Adventure of the Singular Sandwich".
In addition to his extensive edits, in which Copper "rather controversially corrected many errors and adjusted many Americanisms,"[3] he arranged the stories in order of their internal chronology, rather than by release date.