Sherlock Holmes pastiches old man,' solving the case of the missing parrot belonging to a nine-year-old Jewish refugee boy from Germany. While readily solving the mystery, 'the old man,' as well as the rest of the characters in the novella, fail to see what the parrot's incessant muttering of random German numbers really means. Caleb Carr was approached to pen a tale for the anthology "Ghosts of Baker Street". Carr's short story grew to become a full length novel which became 2005's "The Italian Secretary". An example of Sherlock Holmes pastiche is found in "The Curse of the Nibelung: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery"
Gerry Rafferty March 2004 he wrote: "Let's get back to music: after all that's the only reason that this website has been set up." Another posting announced that Rafferty would begin to release music regularly as free downloads: "In reality, Gerry could put a new track out every two weeks or so. We will keep you informed of developments as they happen." Only a handful of tracks were ever released, however, and the website eventually closed down without any explanation. In 2009 Rafferty released "Life Goes On", again on Hypertension. This album features a mixture of new recordings, covers of Christmas carols