The most prevalent of Sherlockian and Holmesian theorists were and are generally those involved in academics before their engagement with the practice of Sherlockiana; that is, a decidedly un-meta critique of the Sherlock Holmes saga, whose sole activity is explaining discrepancies not with artistic merit but with real-world functional answers. These figures include Dorothy L. Sayers and Ronald Knox, alumni of Oxford, in medieval literature and classics respectively; fellow theologists and key figures in detective fiction’s generic discourse. There is Professor Jay Finley Christ and David Stuart Davies, who wrote his university dissertation on Conan Doyle; and Leslie S. Klinger who is noted as a leading expert on the most critically pervasive of the Victorian literary canon. Their analytical dispositions latched onto Sherlock Holmes as a fun, unserious exercise of a skill—Holmes being quite suited to this as a rather low-brow piece of literature but one full of encouragements to use powers of observation and mordancy. However, for myself, entering this space from the young age of fifteen created Holmes as my very introduction to this treatment of literature. I had been drawn into the key common interest of this sphere: literary analysis.

Sure, he has an overreliance on old fashioned ideas about physiognomy (but not even as often as people think), and his forensics can be pre-scientific (though I think a lot of people would be dismayed at what modern-day forensics is like), but not phrenology. That was a highly specific insane thing that was largely out of vogue before Holmes was ever (fictionally) born and which, while it slightly poked its head into early anthropology, was not really one of Holmes's vices. (MAYBE Dr Mortimer's, though?)

Incidentally: you want a book with weird phrenology? Jane Eyre.

"Criticise me: does my forehead not please you?” He lifted up the sable waves of hair which lay horizontally over his brow, and showed a solid enough mass of intellectual organs, but an abrupt deficiency where the suave sign of benevolence should have risen. “Now, ma’am, am I a fool?” “Far from it, sir. You would, perhaps, think me rude if I inquired in return whether you are a philanthropist?” “There again! Another stick of the penknife, when she pretended to pat my head: and that is because I said I did not like the society of children and old women (low be it spoken!). No, young lady, I am not a general philanthropist; but I bear a conscience;” and he pointed to the prominences which are said to indicate that faculty, and which, fortunately for him, were sufficiently conspicuous; giving, indeed, a marked breadth to the upper part of his head: “and, besides, I once had a kind of rude tenderness of heart."

What else would one expect, after all, from an irreverent* yet devoted Sherlockian and Baker Street Irregular like Rex Stout?

*I defy anyone to apply another term to the writer and deliverer of the 1941 BSI dinner keynote, Watson was a Woman, in which Stout claimed that Watson was a woman, that she was married to Holmes, that this female Watson was also Irene Adler, and that they, improbably, were the parents of, for some reason, Lord Peter Wimsey of all people.

That said... and spoilers for the book itself below the cut...

A fan nominated Sadie's Sherlock Holmes story, A Master of Magic, for a Featured Article at Fanlore. https://fanlore.org/wiki/Fanlore:Featured_Article_Nominations#A_Master_of_Magic

I added some context to the page yesterday about the prompt she had been working from and some brief descriptions about some other short stories she wrote.

Then I did some sleuthing about Sadie herself. https://fanlore.org/wiki/User:Mrs._Potato_Head#Sadie_Shaw

Your post about Sadie's story last July is what spurned it!

Oh my goodness that's incredible!! I love the thorough research you did on Sadie as well. It's so sweet that we know she got to travel to England and move there. Thanks for putting this information out there and letting me know!

Highly recommend everyone checks out the Fanlore article plus the research into Sadie!