Allusions/references To Other Works
In the prologue, Meyer refers to the "Baring-Gould papers" as having caused a resumption of interest in Holmes' life, and Meyer includes several allusions to Baring-Gould's works. At the end of the novel, Holmes implies that he and Irene finally consummated their relationship in Montenegro; this seems to be a reference to Baring-Gould's theory that Nero Wolfe was the love child of Holmes and Adler from an affair they had in Montenegro in 1892. Holmes' undercover name, Sigerson, is both a reference to Conan Doyle's story "The Adventure of the Empty House" where Holmes uses that name, and Baring-Gould's Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street, where Holmes' father's name was Siger.
Raoul compares Holmes to Auguste Dupin, a comparison which causes Holmes some offense.
The Marquis de St.-Evremonde, the descendant of Charles Darnay and Lucie Manette from A Tale of Two Cities, is among the guests of the Paris Opera.
In the novel's afterword, Meyer acknowledges the two most obvious influences, Conan Doyle's vast Sherlockian opus and Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera, which Meyer terms an "absurdist masterpiece".
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“My first childish doubt as to whether God could really be a good Protestant was suggested by my observation of the deplorable fact that the best voices available for combination with my mother’s in the works of the great composers had been unaccountably vouchsafed to Roman Catholics.”
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