PW talks with Steve Hockensmith: elementary, my dear Western.(Q&A)(Interview)

Steve Hockensmith's humorous western series features two cowboy brothers turned sleuths, Big Red and Old Red, who are inspired by reading Sherlock Holmes. Their latest exploit is The Crack in the Lens (Reviews, May 11).

How did the series develop?

I was trying to dream up a new short story. During a long hike my wife and I took, away from cars and telephone poles and McDonald's and all that, I was daydreaming about the west a century or so ago, and I realized that the "Wild West" era and the Victorian era overlapped almost perfectly. Wouldn't it be great to bring those things together somehow? So I wrote a short story about a couple of Sherlock Holmes-worshipping …