Spend a couple months editing an issue of Sherlock Holmes stories and you’ll encounter a strange truth: for a character so famous for his asexuality, lots of people want to fuck him. (Or, at least, know who he’s fucking.) Fortunately, the writers in this month’s issue explore the subject with both grace and skill.

Not surprisingly, Irene Adler figures prominently in many of our tales, appearing as a time traveling researcher scientist in Jill Hand’s “Killing Sherlock” and returning to Victorian London with an unexpected surprise for Messrs. Holmes and Watson in “Bohemian Soul” by Abra Deering Norton. “The Woman’s” presence is also hinted at in Robert Perret’s whirlwind “A year in Sherlocku,” and she could very well be the true author of Catherine Wald’s excellent elucidation of Holmsian desire, “Sexing the Detective.”

A second thing you learn editing a Sherlock Holmes issue is that it’s not really about the mysteries or the deductions, it’s not the deerstalker or the magnifying glass. What made Conan Doyle’s stories so special was just going along for the ride with Holmes and Watson to wherever adventure might take them. Pat Woods understands this perfectly and throws in a dash of the mystic (for JDP-good measure) as he constructs an absolutely beautiful lost tale from the archives of John Watson. “The Adventure of the Etheric Projection” closes out our issue.

We hope you can read it somewhere foggy.