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 Psychoanalysed Detective

Although I profess myself to be a fan of Sherlock Holmes, I had never read The Seven-Per-Cent Solution by Nicholas Meyer, although it was a fairly popular Holmesian pastiche and was even adapted into a movie! (However, I am frankly baffled that Robert Duvall was cast as Watson. Certainly not the casting choice that springs into mind!)

Meyer presents his book as though it were an undiscovered manuscript of Dr. Watson’s, and he does it wonderfully. The idea behind this pastiche is excellent— Dr. Watson tells his readers that Sherlock’s death at the hands of Moriarty in The Final Problem never happened. It was, he claims, a complete forgery (and then he goes on to mention some other “forgeries” like The Mazarin Stone and The Creeping Man with disdain) and this book is to set the record straight about what really happened.