The Horror!

It is March 1895 in London and Sherlock Holmes receives a strange visitor at 221B Baker Street. It is a peculiar, arrogant Irishman named George Shaw and he comes to consult Holmes about the murder of theatre critic Jonathan McCarthy. Holmes and Watson accept the case and begin to dig around McCarthy’s personal life, discovering that the man was universally despised in the West End. During their investigations, they run across all sorts of potential suspects, including Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, and Sir Arthur Sullivan.

But if only the case had ended there – when another murder occurs, Holmes and Watson discover something absolutely horrendous is at the centre of this case, a secret so black it could unravel the very fabric of British society. In fact, that’s why Watson decided to entitle this case The West End Horror. After being lost to the world for years, it fell into the hands of Nicholas Meyer, who had also edited Watson’s The Seven-Per-Cent Solution. It is unfortunate, then, that this was such a sub-par outing for both Holmes and Watson.

The Resurrection of Sherlock Holmes

Donald Thomas’ book The Secret Cases of Sherlock Holmes is a rare treat, hitting upon a brilliant idea for a Sherlockian pastiche. As Dr. Watson explains in an introductory letter, Sherlock Holmes has died and his private papers have passed into the good doctor’s hands. These papers worry a good deal of important people, who would like to set fire to the documents on the spot. But after much bargaining, a compromise is reached: Dr. Watson is to have access to the papers and is allowed to chronicle some of Sherlock’s most secret cases. Afterwards, the stories (as well as Holmes’ papers) are to be suppressed for seventy years, to see the light of day only long after the principal players have all died.

And thus, Dr. Watson explains, this is the first time he dares to take up his pen and chronicle Sherlock Holmes’ most secret cases, completely uncensored and with no attempt to disguise the famous people involved in the mysteries. For instance, we learn that The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton was largely fictionalised in order to protect the identities of the persons involved – in reality, the notorious blackmailer was Charles Augustus Howell, who was found with his throat cut and a ten-shilling coin stuck in his mouth: the slanderer’s reward. Another of Holmes’ cases, mentioned in passing, involved a forgery case in which Holmes was of some service to Lestrade; Dr. Watson reveals that it was in fact the Bank of England forgeries of 1873, “when the Bidwell brothers came within a hair’s breadth of having the Bank’s funds at their mercy”.

The Final Problem

Earlier this year, I reviewed a string of Holmesian pastiches, which is when I got very annoyed at a recurring plot element. It seems that many pastiche writers go for the cliché plot element where they “kill” Holmes for one scene, have Watson mourn his tragic death, and bring him back twenty or thirty pages later. This got so annoying that when I was reviewing Loren D. Estleman’s first-rate Sherlock Holmes vs. Dracula, I ended up writing the following:

Basically, I’ve gotten very tired of sitting through Holmes’ death over and over again, and only to see him come back. It’s not like I hate Holmes – I love the character – but it’d be refreshing if someone killed Holmes off and just left him dead.

Those words have come back to haunt me. Because as it turns out, there is a gentleman out there named Michael Dibdin who wrote The Last Sherlock Holmes Story. And ooooooooh boy, it’s definitely the last Sherlock Holmes story. I won’t say why it’s the last one, but I will say this much: Dibdin’s revisions to the Canon are so drastic that they make Nicholas Meyer’s The Seven Per-Cent Solution look like a faithful follow-up.

The Return of Sherlock Holmes

I adore the work of French author René Reouven. He is so intelligent and his works are so delicious, often full of references to other works of literature. He also enjoys blatantly rewriting history to such an effective degree that it’s hard to figure out where history ends and where fiction begins. And – just my luck! – Reouven is himself an admirer of Sherlock Holmes!

I love Sherlock Holmes and I owe him a serious debt of gratitude. It was the Sherlock Holmes stories that introduced me to the detective novel (after which I eventually graduated to the Agatha Christie School of Mystery, which would eventually lead me to John Dickson Carr and many more!). I have always admired Holmes: he sees everything other people see, but he observes and deduces as well, with seemingly-miraculous results! And so I have read many Sherlock Holmes pastiches in my time, and last year I had the pleasure of reading Robert L. Fish’s Schlock Homes stories, which I called “single-handedly the wittiest, funniest, most wildly entertaining, and (to put it simply) the best collection of Sherlock Holmes parodies I’ve ever read”.

And today, it is with pure pleasure that I can say something very similar about René Reouven’s own Sherlockian pastiches. Les passe-temps de Sherlock Holmes (The Pastimes of Sherlock Holmes) is a collection of three stories in which Sherlock Holmes must solve mysterious cases that Dr. Watson referred to in the Canon. And each of these stories is absolutely delightful. In fact (and this is literally the only time this has ever happened) I was at times convinced I was reading a French translation of one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s lost adventures... and that’s no exaggeration!

"Inconceivable!"

Laurence Vining was not a particularly pleasant man. He was a genius, of course, and the police appreciated his help on the odd occasion where they found themselves out of their depth. In fact, just recently, Vining helped to put a murderer behind bars when the police were quite stumped, solving the mystery of the “Shop Murder”. He solves these cases with the help of his very own Watson, Dr. Benjamin Willing.

But despite Vining’s ingenuity, he’s a callous, cold-hearted man who manages to surround himself with enemies. Yet it’s something of a shock when Vining is murdered in a tube station under seemingly impossible circumstances! He gets into a lift by himself, and the operator sends him down— but at the lower level, when the doors are opened, Laurence Vining tumbles out of the lift dead— a knife plunged into his back. (The knife is a curious Oriental dagger, as a matter of course.)

Sherlock who?

Over the last few days at work, I’ve had the enormous pleasure of listening to The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes as read by the brilliant Derek Jacobi. I listened to Jacobi reading The House of Silk last year and absolutely loved his reading: he made Dr. Watson sound intelligent and charming, and not a buffoon like Nigel Bruce admittedly did. (That doesn’t mean I dislike Nigel Bruce as Watson, I just don’t think he’s anything like the character Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote about.) I don’t think you could possibly find a better actor than Jacobi to read these stories aloud. He makes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s prose come vividly to life, so that each story, even if forgettable, becomes a fantastic auditory experience.

I was well-familiar with these tales and so I was reacquainting myself with them. I found that I enjoyed them all very much after all this time. Truly, Sherlock Holmes is a timeless character— I am revisiting these stories yet again, and every time, I find that I love Conan Doyle’s world! The stories only seem to get better with age.

There is one omission here: The Adventure of the Cardboard Box, which in the U.S. is included in His Last Bow, was not among the tales I listened to, so I decided not to review it. For other reviews of Holmes shorts, please take a look at The Puzzle Doctor’s site, In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel, where the doc is discovering the Holmes tales and finding out just how much he’s been missing out on!

Elementary, my dear Colonel...

Is it a coincidence that at around the time I participated in a Sherlock Holmes-themed podcast, I suddenly was reviewing a lot of Sherlock-related material? Not entirely. If you’ve listened to the podcast (as I’m sure you have), you’ll know that I was very excited to mention Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D’Urbervilles by Kim Newman. I claimed that it took the character of Colonel Sebastian Moran and Professor James Moriarty and made them into twisted reflections of Dr. Watson and Sherlock Holmes.

It’s all quite cleverly done. Similar to Watson and Holmes, Moran and Moriarty are introduced by a man named Stamford. They too share rooms and have a housekeeper named Mrs. Halifax (often referred to as Mrs. H) who keeps a brothel. Holmes has the Baker Street Irregulars? Moriarty matches him with the Conduit Street Comanche. And throughout the entire proceedings, author Kim Newman reimagines the familiar Holmesian universe through the eyes of Colonel Sebastian “Basher” Moran.

But these are not merely Holmes stories retold from the villains’ perspective. Rather, these are entirely original adventures that intertwine with the Holmes stories we all know and love. We see just how Moriarty manages to influence the cases Holmes was soon going to crack. And Holmes rarely appears onstage, but as the short story collection progresses, his presence becomes more pronounced, ultimately culminating in The Problem of the Final Adventure. In fact, all the short stories in this fine collection have titles that play around neatly with the titles of the original Holmes adventures.

Sherlock: The Hounds of Baskerville

As The Hounds of Baskerville opens, Sherlock Holmes is bored. He is pining for a proper case, when a man named Henry Knight drops in for a visit. As a young boy, he claims, he witnessed his father getting ripped apart by a monstrous hound on Dartmoor. He ran away in terror, although no corpse was ever found. After years of therapy, he has returned to the crime scene… but this does nothing to quell his terrors. Although Sherlock is initially sceptical, he becomes very interested after his visitor tells him, “Mr. Holmes, they were the footsteps of a gigantic hound!”

Thus, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are on the case, going to Dartmoor. There, they get onto the scent of top-secret military experiments at a place called Baskerville. And I won’t say any more about the plot. The writer is Mark Gatiss, who previously penned the somewhat-disastrous The Great Game. (One of these days I’ll watch it again and give it a proper review to voice all my issues with that episode.) However, this time Mark Gatiss outdoes himself. The Hounds of Baskerville, inspired by the infamous The Hound of the Baskervilles, is a pure delight from start to finish.

Sherlock: A Scandal in Belgravia

For those who are not on board, as episode three of Sherlock (The Great Game) concluded, Holmes and Watson found themselves facing off against the dastardly Jim Moriarty, a character who seemed to be trying to out-do all the Bond villains in terms of being over-the-top and silly. Moriarty threatened to have them killed, only for Holmes to threaten to blow them all up. Just as the confrontation is about to climax, the credits rolled, leaving viewers to wonder how Holmes would get out of this scrape in one piece.

Oh no, you didn't!

Now comes A Scandal in Belgravia, which resumes from the point at which The Great Game left off… and thank your lucky stars, because Steven Moffat takes over the screenwriting! The series having written itself into a corner with a terrible Moriarty, Moffat takes the character off screen as soon as possible. And he does this with a sort of confidence— at this point, I still didn’t like Moriarty one bit. He was still every bit as unthreatening and laughable. But the show seemed to know where it wanted to go with this character. It seemed to have some sort of a purpose in mind. Moriarty only makes a handful of appearances in this episode and although it doesn’t really make him threatening, it does lead to something special in the third episode. But I’m getting ahead of myself here.

Sherlock: The Game's Afoot!

I was very interested by Season One of the BBC’s Sherlock. The concept was simple: transpose the Sherlock Holmes tales to modern day. Sherlock Holmes now uses not only his remarkable deductive prowess, but he also fall back on the Internet, texting, GPS technology, webcams, etc. Played with admirable gusto by Benedict Cumberbatch, the character of Sherlock felt authentic— if Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had written the tales in modern day, this is the kind of character he’d come up with. He is a socially awkward genius who cannot understand why people around him see the same things but do not observe.

Martin Freeman played Dr. Watson, and in my opinion, he’s the best of them all. He blows Nigel Bruce out of the water. David Burke and Edward Hardwicke have nothing on him. He captures everything that made Watson great, and he manages never to look like an idiot. Holmes’ deductions are truly astounding, and Watson’s admiration feels very genuine without these moments feeling contrived. There is never a situation where Watson exclaims in surprise: “But Holmes, how on earth did you know that the only sinister-looking character with a collection of machetes was the one who decapitated Lord Bathtub?” Watson is an intelligent man—after all, he’s a doctor—but his intellect doesn’t come close to Holmes’. His life with Sherlock gives him stimulation in many ways and he develops a true friendship with the man.

That being said, Series One had a lot of problems with it. The first episode, A Study in Pink, was a very clever one written by Steven Moffat, with a lot of witty in-jokes for the Sherlockians. The plot was nicely retooled to make it fit into a modern-day setting. Moriarty was suitably hinted at. The episode was exciting. The only thing really wrong with it was the all-too easy ending, where Watson apparently learns (albeit briefly) how to read people’s minds.

It was all downhill from there. Episode Two, The Blind Banker, was penned by Steve Thompson, and was laughably silly. It took several pages from the Edgar Wallace playbook, most notably in the inclusion of Sinister Chinamen, as every Chinese character except one is part of an evil gang. It’s understandable, if not acceptable, to see such stereotypes in Edgar Wallace, but it felt shockingly out of place in modern day. But the episode was just barely fun enough, particularly in its finale with the unnecessarily-slow-moving-dipping-device-of-death.

Episode Three, penned by Mark Gatiss, was the worst of the lot. Entitled The Great Game, it saw Sherlock confronted with multiple puzzles, but the episode was frankly laughable. The plot never held water, and it is completely contrived from start to finish. You’re always aware of the plot’s flimsy artificiality, you’re never drawn into the story. I could go into detail about the plot's loopholes, but I will save that for a possible future review. But in the final scenes, we finally meet Moriarty, and it’s bad. Gatiss takes a very bad joke and streeeeeeeeeetches it out into what feels like infinity. The series basically wrote itself into a corner—it has the silliest, most laughable, and most unthreatening incarnation of Moriarty I’d ever seen. Its stories no longer held water. The only thing left in its favour was a fascinating premise and excellent acting from Cumberbatch and Freeman.

So I was sceptical for Series 2… Would the series continue its downwards spiral, or would it snap to attention and break the vicious cycle? Only time would tell… and that’s what I intend to do in the upcoming days by reviewing all three of the episodes from series 2. I hope you will all join me for this.

Your move, Professor...

When Sherlock Holmes came out two years ago, I was sceptic. I criticized the trailer for marketing yet another dumb action movie that capitalised on an infamous creation. But as the reviews poured in, I found them surprisingly positive, finally relenting and going to see the film for myself. To my delight, I found that the movie was an intelligent and entertaining film with a very modern take on Sherlock Holmes, hardly the all-out action flick the trailer represented. I solemnly ate my words and enjoyed the movie enormously. My reviews were extremely positive— I even made it into The American Culture with my review, the only time that’s ever happened.

I was all for a sequel… but when the trailers for Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows appeared, doubt crept back into my mind. These trailers were even worse than those for the first film, showing disparate elements covering everything between Sherlock Holmes cross-dressing, Lisbeth Salander as a gypsy, and homicidal train employees using a machine gun in an assassination attempt. It seemed like this film would be a total disaster. Besides, let’s be honest: A Game of Shadows is one of the dullest and most uninspired titles of all the Sherlock Holmes films ever made.

The game's afoot!

And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me, filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before.

—     Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven

We’ve had something of a Sherlock Holmes revival in recent years. This is mainly due to the release of Sherlock Holmes, a Hollywood blockbuster starring Robert Downey Jr. as the immortal sleuth and Jude Law as Watson. I highly enjoyed the movie, but have major reservations about the sequel, the trailer to which is even worse than the misleading trailer for the first film! But I digress. Along with this Hollywood revival of detective films (The Thin Man is due for a Johnny Depp remake, and Downey Jr. is set to star as Perry Mason—not to mention the money-grubbing Disney studio out to reimagine Miss Marple as a sexy young Jennifer Garner), we’ve seen the Holmes stories reissued and pastiches of all shapes and colours. And the highest-profile one at the moment is Anthony Horowitz’s The House of Silk, which has been billed as the first novel to get official approval from the Arthur Conan Doyle estate. (But wasn’t Caleb Carr’s The Italian Secretary also approved by the estate?)

The House of Silk sounds like a typical Holmes pastiche, thanks to the cliché wording of the cover and (on one occasion) Dr. Watson, which claims that the events could “unravel the very fabric of society”. Which basically means Professor Moriarty is part of a world-wide conspiracy to steal the Queen’s underpants during her Diamond Jubilee. Right? Wrong! I was pleasantly surprised. The story begins as a typical Sherlock Holmes adventure, but it slowly expands into an investigation of the titular house of silk.