Elementary, My Dear Holmes!

This article was originally written for and published in the e-zine Mysterical-E. Now that there is a new issue with a new article, I am reposting this article on the blog, complete with the images that I usually illustrate my articles with.
 

In Bloody Murder, Julian Symons’ famous survey of the mystery genre, Symons writes that “successful comic crime stores, short or long, are rare. One turns away with a shudder from the many Holmes parodies (…)” Perhaps Julian Symons didn’t have much of a sense of humour, though something resembling one does shine through in his book from time to time. Either way, Symons does Holmesian literature – both parody and pastiche – an enormous injustice by dismissing it as he does. He doesn’t really take the time to appreciate the Holmesian literature that has been written over the years.

Symons’ caution is justified in some cases, but with such a huge output of Sherlock-related literature, you can only expect some pastiches to be less successful than others. Holmes seems to have particularly bad luck when he is brought to Canada. Ronald C. Weyman’s Sherlock Holmes: Travels in the Canadian West is one of the worst collections of Holmesian pastiches I have ever read. The mysteries are frankly laughable, and the premise is absurd: apparently, during Sherlock’s Great Hiatus (after his disappearance at the Reichenbach Falls) the detective wasn’t really in hiding… no, no, Dr. Watson and he were just in Canada, chilling with the Indi–– er…I mean, Native Americans (for we must be Politically Correct, my good Watson). No, really—he doesn’t even bother to use a fake name, he keeps introducing himself as Sherlock Holmes. But throughout this time Holmes potentially has Colonel Moran’s rifle aimed at his head from any window. Certainly not the Great Detective’s smartest move, and indeed, the entire book often reads like a fictionalised history textbook, with Watson spending too much time telling you about historical figures, customs, etc. The book is even illustrated with well-known images of Canadian history, making the whole thing that much more like a history textbook… and that much duller.

Rules were made to be broken...

[Note: I am trying out something new today on the blog: instead of reviewing a book, I am discussing my impressions on a topic and trying to put them in a cohesive article. Feedback on this experiment is much appreciated, as I would like to include more posts like this in the future and would like to improve them.]

"This means war!"

—Daffy Duck, Who Framed Roger Rabbit

My reaction to James' book...

In her book Talking About Detective Fiction, P. D. James has a curious fixation for Ronald Knox and his “Ten Commandments” for detective fiction. This is one of the many points about the book which rather annoy me. Knox was not the only one to come up with rules, but James never even mentions this. She seems to believe that everyone took these rules as Law, and that any deviation was frowned upon with nothing but scorn. In fact, she goes on to say that “Rules and restrictions do not produce original, or good, literature, and the rules were not strictly adhered to.” This is a stunningly silly statement—if it were true, we might as well throw every book of poetry into the rubbish bin, because they all adhere to one rule: they must not be written in prose. 

If all goes well, you will hear more about James’ book and my problems with it in a few days. But for now, I’d like to examine Father Ronald Knox’s Decalogue. Just how futile is this attempt to define rules for the genre?