Successive Realizations

(i) Only on rereading Poul Anderson's "Time Patrol" did I realize that the Victorian private investigator and his amanuensis were Holmes and Watson although this should have been obvious in the first place.

(ii) Only on reading a Complete Sherlock Holmes over a decade later did I realize that the phrase "...the singular contents of an ancient British barrow..." was a quotation.

(iii) I did think on first reading The Shield Of Time that "Altamont" was Holmes although I had to check "His Last Bow" to confirm this.

Thus, Manse Everard of the Patrol interacts with Holmes in both volumes of the Time Patrol series, both in the omnibus collection and in the single long novel. Meanwhile, the Holmes series could appropriately be collected in three omnibus volumes. See here. Finally, it would be possible for a new reader to embark on the whole of Holmes, then to follow this with the whole Time Patrol - from the nineteenth century into the twentieth century, back to the nineteenth century, then backwards and forwards throughout history with Everard's deception of Altamont coming in the fifth of the six parts of The Shield Of Time. Quite a ride.