Is there a murderer in the house?

Ten academics have converged to the Swiss town of Meiringen, right next to the Reichenbach Falls, where the world’s greatest detective once duelled with the world’s foremost criminal genius. The purpose of their visit? It is an academic convention, during which the esteemed Prof. Bobo will choose one suitable candidate to become the head of the first-ever Department of Sherlockiana at the Sorbonne. It would be an incredible honour to be chosen for this position, and the academics jealously guard their secrets, each convinced that their revelations on the Canon will be more stunning than the last. Getting snowed in and effectively cut off from the outside world was unfortunate, but the convention must go on!

But before long, a much deadlier game begins. It begins with Prof. Rodriguez, who makes a stunning revelation at the dinner table, only to plunge down the staircase later that night. Another academic gets crushed by some gym equipment. As the number of academics slowly dwindles, the living must fend for themselves. After all, the killer must be one of the people trapped in the Hotel Baker Street…

The Reader is Warned

There’s an old saying that the third time’s the charm. Having read two of Donald Thomas’ Sherlock Holmes continuations (The Secret Cases of Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes and the Voice from the Crypt), I was hoping that this saying would apply to the third of these collections, The Execution of Sherlock Holmes. Unfortunately, this was not the case.

My previous two Donald Thomas reviews went through each individual story, giving a brief plot summary and my opinion of the story in question, but I don’t much relish the prospect of doing the same with this book. So instead, I’ll go over the general premise of the book and just what has gone wrong.

The Epistles of Inquiry

Reggie Heath is a QC in modern-day London, and he’s just gotten a lease on some office space in Baker Street. The terms, at least from a financial point of view, couldn’t be better. But there is one small hitch. The address which Reggie has leased is 221B Baker Street, and it seems that hundreds of letters arrive addressed to Mr. Sherlock Holmes! Part of the lease involves an agreement in which the occupant of the office agrees to answer the letters with a standard form letter.

Reggie delegates this task to younger brother Nigel, who is waiting to be reinstated as a solicitor; he is about to have a hearing with the Law Society after he performed some well-meaning actions that were misinterpreted. (I’ll leave it to the author to explain; it’s really too delightful to detail here.) And Nigel notices something odd about a few of the latest letters. It seems that one of the letter-writers has written to Sherlock Holmes before, 20 years ago, when she was eight years old! And she is writing once again asking about her previous letter. But something about the tone of the new letters seems suspicious – such as the fact that the signature is identical to the one from 20 years ago… yet what adult retains their childhood signature? Factor in a murder and a disappearance or two, followed by a few more corpses just to keep things interesting, and it seems like the letter was a sinister one indeed...

Tales from the Crypt

I had the great pleasure last year to read Donald Thomas’ The Secret Cases of Sherlock Holmes, a book which reimagined several famous murder cases as though they were Sherlockian adventures. My very favourite of the lot was an ingenious retelling of the adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton, revealing that it was a fictionalised account of the death of the notorious blackmailer Charles Augustus Howell, and turning it into a prequel to The Final Problem. It became one of my new favourite Sherlockian pastiches.

Naturally, I couldn’t pass up the chance to read more from this series, so I went with Sherlock Holmes and the Voice from the Crypt. It’s another collection of Sherlockian pastiches. There are six of them in all, but one of them is quite short, and the other (the titular story) is probably novella-length. As with the first book, Sherlock Holmes is called in to investigate famous mysteries, and helps the authorities behind-the-scenes. Naturally, Holmes doesn’t take any of the credit.

Happy Birthday, Sherlock Holmes!

January 6th marks the official birthday of the world's greatest detective, Sherlock Holmes. And to mark the occasion, the good folks at Open Road Integrated Media have created an infographic of books and authors inspired by Sherlock. To celebrate, a review of one of these books can be expected later today... Ah, but which one will it be? Tune in soon to find out!

Who? What? Where? How? Why? When?

We open our story in the San Francisco of the 1890s. The detective agency of Carpenter and Quincannon recently solved The Bughouse Affair, a complex case that included a locked-room mystery. They could do without any overly-complex cases for a while. That’s what this job was supposed to be for Sabina Carpenter: she was basically hired as a babysitter, looking after Virginia St. Ives and making sure she doesn’t sneak off for a rendez-vous with her boyfriend, a man of whom her family disapproves. It’s true, Virginia was a little brat, but it seemed like the toughest part of Sabina’s assignment would be to refrain from slapping the girl.

But nobody could possibly have foreseen the outcome: at a fancy party, Virginia confronts Sabina and runs out of the house, only to commit suicide by jumping off a parapet. But when a group is organized to retrieve the body, it’s nowhere in sight… When a suicide note is discovered, the questions only get deeper. Why did Virginia St. Ives commit suicide?

The (E-)Resurrection of a Master of Mystery

Edward D. Hoch was, quite simply, one of the biggest and best names in the mystery field for decades. He was also a rarity: an author who managed to make his bread and butter almost entirely through short stories, a form that is possibly more difficult to master than that of the novel. Hoch’s career was amazingly prolific, with hundreds of short stories to his name. Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine would not have been the same without its usual dose of Edward D. Hoch. In any anthology, Hoch could always be relied on to deliver a solid story. He was a terrific plotter: he could come up with fascinating situations, and then resolve them so elegantly that the reader could only stare in amazement at the work of a master craftsman.

So imagine my delight to discover that The Mysterious Press has brought out Hoch’s books in e-book form. Many of these are short story collections, but Hoch wrote a novel every once in a while, such as The Shattered Raven (which is among the books brought back into e-print). And one book in particular caught my eye: The Sherlock Holmes Stories of Edward D. Hoch, which collects all twelve of Hoch’s Holmesian pastiches. If any author out there could possibly do Holmes justice, it would be Hoch, and so I knew I just had to read this book.

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.

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.

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.

Mr. Holmes Goes To The Vatican

One of the most intriguing aspects of the Sherlock Holmes canon is, for me, all the untold adventures that Dr. Watson alludes to but which are never given the full-length short story treatment. And I’m not alone in thinking this. Many, many authors, from Anthony Boucher to William L. DeAndrea, have taken cues from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and come up with their own original Sherlockian adventure, based on a reference Dr. Watson made in the canon. And one of the newer efforts has come from Ann Margaret Lewis, author of Murder in the Vatican: The Church Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes.

Published in 2010, this book brings Sherlock Holmes to the Vatican, at the time of Pope Leo XIII’s reign. This is a brilliant idea because, well, Pope Leo was an extraordinary man in many ways. He made it crystal clear to critics that the Catholic Church was not opposed to science and indeed co-existed with it, and Sherlock Holmes is infamous for his scientific mind. The meeting of these two men is very, very appropriate and the author manages to spin three tales out of their encounters.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust...

A while back I went on a lengthy tirade against the Edgar Awards and Agathas, lamenting how far they have sunk and how they have become little more than a reflection of bestseller lists. It was a controversial post, generating more comments than any other post in the history of this blog. Out of all these comments, one I remembered particularly recommended Lyndsay Faye’s Dust and Shadow, a Sherlock Holmes vs. Jack the Ripper yarn. This came about because Faye had been nominated for Best Novel for The Gods of Gotham.

I generally stay away from Holmes vs. the Ripper novels. It’s a tired idea with little novelty behind it, and it seems that every other such book concludes that the Ripper murders were the result of a ridiculous conspiracy centered around Prince Albert Victor. This is based on a highly flawed idea proposed by Stephen Knight in Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution, but it somehow has gotten to be the most popular theory in the realm of fiction. I don’t get it – I thought it was a stupid solution the first time I heard it, and when I recently read up on the Ripper case I found out just how stupid a solution it really is.

The Adventure of the Distraught Doctor

"Ha! You put me off, do you?" said our new visitor, taking a step forward and shaking his hunting-crop. "I know you, you scoundrel! I have heard of you before. You are Holmes, the meddler."
My friend smiled.
"Holmes, the busybody!"
His smile broadened.
"Holmes, the Scotland Yard Jack-in-office!"
Holmes chuckled heartily. "Your conversation is most entertaining," said he. "When you go out close the door, for there is a decided draught."

– The Adventure of the Speckled Band

I have a confession to make: I got a little sidetracked. I was intending to review a bunch of books where Sherlock Holmes meets Count Dracula. As it turns out, this is not going according to plan. I’ve already made side trips into Holmes meets Poe territory and Holmes vs. the Ripper lore. The next book I’ll review is another Holmes vs. the Ripper novel. And today’s book is another one by Loren D. Estleman in which Sherlock Holmes is inserted into a famous Victorian story. It’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Holmes. (Oddly enough, Jekyll and Hyde were featured in another Sherlockian story I recently read, but in a very different capacity.)

This book in many ways mirrors the spirit of Sherlock Holmes vs. Dracula. Here, Holmes is contacted by Gabriel John Utterson, a lawyer and a friend of Dr. Henry Jekyll. Utterson is concerned about his friend, because Dr. Jekyll has just drafted up a will leaving all his property to the young scoundrel Edward Hyde. Hyde is a bounder in every sense of the word, inspiring hatred in every person he meets. He has no friends, and the only reason he is tolerated on the social scene is because of his money. Yet all of his money seems to come from Dr. Jekyll, and this is slowly casting a shadow on the good doctor’s name. Utterson wants Holmes to investigate the connection between Jekyll and Hyde, and to release the doctor from the evil man’s grip.

Dance of Death

Elementary, my dear Watson!

—apocryphal; attributed to Sherlock Holmes

The idea came to Robert Louis Stevenson in the form of a nightmare, according to his wife Fanny, and the first draft took only days to complete. Afterwards, she read the manuscript. As usual, she gave Robert her comments. After a while, he called her back to the bedroom and pointed to a pile of ashes: he had destroyed the manuscript and would start all over again from scratch. The story would eventually become The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, one of the most celebrated stories of all of English literature.

But what if that manuscript survived? What if Stevenson never burnt it at all? What if the manuscript came into someone else’s possession? That is the situation created by René Reouven in his book Élémentaire mon cher Holmes (Elementary, My Dear Holmes). And in this novel, we learn that the first draft of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a manuscript of such concentrated evil that anyone who reads it becomes a murderer…

A Most Mysterious Murder...

Le Détective Volé (The Stolen Detective) by René Reouven begins with a disclaimer that goes something like this: “Edgar Allan Poe died in 1849, and Sherlock Holmes was born in 1854, but such a minute detail wouldn’t have prevented two such remarkable people from meeting.” This is a bit misleading, since there is never at any point in the novel a moment where Sherlock Holmes meets Edgar Allan Poe. And yet…

I will admit, the concept of this novel initially had me baffled. This is a Sherlockian pastiche in which Holmes’ fictional nature is admitted from the outset, and as a result the entire novel is a literary game being played out between Reouven and his readers. Here is the premise: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is sick and tired of hearing all these comparisons between Edgar Allan Poe’s Dupin stories and his Holmes stories. So he uses H. G. Wells’ time machine to send Holmes and Watson back in time to Paris in the 1830s. Their mission is to get in touch with Vidocq, and investigate whether or not Poe ripped the idea for The Purloined Letter from the headlines. And if so, who was the real-life C. Auguste Dupin?

The Curse of Dracula

When spooks have a midnight jamboree, 
They break it up with fiendish glee. 
Now, ghosts are bad, but the one that's cursed
Is the Headless Horseman, he's the worst

—Brom Bones, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949)

In my last Holmesian review, I chastised Loren D. Estleman for using the plot device of killing Holmes off for a few pages before bringing him right back, an overused plot device in the realm of Holmesian pastiches. I advocated for more creativity from pastiche writers. And I definitely got that from David Stuart Davies in The Tangled Skein. The problem is, I’m still not sure whether I enjoyed the book or not. One minute I’ll love it, and the next minute it will have me more irritated than an English prof who thinks Edgar Allan Poe was a time-travelling postmodernist. (I’m not even making that up, but that’s a story for another day.)

The Tangled Skein is a really clever sequel to The Hound of the Baskervilles. You will recall that Sherlock Holmes’ body was never recovered after the incident at the Reichenbach Falls. Well, the body of the guilty party in The Hound of the Baskervilles was also never recovered. And Sherlock Holmes discovers that this party is alive and very much well… and seeking revenge on Holmes for having foiled his plans.

The Adventure of the Sanguinary Count

I was never much of a fan of the idea of Sherlock Holmes meeting Count Dracula. The only thing they really have in common is that they were both popular characters written at around the same time period. Apart from that there’s nothing. They inhabit separate universes. Holmes is the ever-rational man who discounts all supernatural explanations as a matter of course, while the
world of Dracula is one of terror and superstition.

But somehow, Holmes vs. Dracula became a thing. There are plenty of takes on this throughout Holmesiana, and a quick Google search of “Holmes vs. Dracula” will turn up dozens of stories. And today I’m reviewing one of the very earliest – if not the first – examples of this kind of novel, Loren D. Estleman’s Sherlock Holmes vs. Dracula.

Petri Wine brings you...

The year '87 furnished us with a long series of cases of greater or less interest, of which I retain the records. Among my headings under this one twelve months I find an account of the adventure of the Paradol Chamber, of the Amateur Mendicant Society, who held a luxurious club in the lower vault of a furniture warehouse, of the facts connected with the loss of the British bark Sophy Anderson, of the singular adventures of the Grice Patersons in the island of Uffa, and finally of the Camberwell poisoning case.

—The Five Orange Pips

I am a very big fan of the radio series The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. It initially starred Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, but near the end of its run Rathbone left the show and was replaced by Tom Conway. The program was sponsored by Petri Wine, and spokesperson Harry Bartell served as the announcer. He gave you three plugs for Petri Wine: at the beginning and at the end of the program, and at a cliff-hanger moment in the middle. But the man’s crisp, clear, smooth voice made it an enjoyable piece of advertising, and often times the final plug would be a bit of a running gag, with Dr. Watson desperately trying to avoid the subject of Petri Wine and Bartell managing to shove the plug in there nonetheless. Take, for instance, the conclusion to The Problem of Thor Bridge:

Bartell: I take you for a very charming gentleman, a wonderful storyteller, and a fine host. [Watson's chuckling, mutters of thanks] Well, you are a gentleman, of the old school... [More mutters of thanks] And you do tell a fine story.

Watson: Well, you flatter me, you-

Bartell: And you are a perfect host. That meal we had tonight was wonderful. And, um, that wine, what kind was it?

Watson: It was Petri wine, and you know it, and I should've known that you were leading up to something. Mr. Bartell, you should be ashamed of yourself.

Petri Wine was one of the many charms of the series, and although there were plenty of other series, no advertiser or host was ever as charming as Mr. Bartell with his Petri Wine— and Mr. Bell of Kreml Hair Tonic frankly creeped me out. By the time John Stanley replaced Tom Conway as Sherlock Holmes, the series really had me lost, and I've only listened to a handful of episodes from this era.

The Beasts of Holmes

One of the most fascinating aspects of the Sherlock Holmes stories are the untold stories. For as long as I can remember I have been a fan of Holmes. I was very young when I read my first three adventures—I ‘m positive that two of them were The Norwood Builder and The Speckled Band, and I think the third may have been The Red-Headed League. One of the things that’s always intrigued me, though, are the references Watson makes to some of Holmes’ other adventures.

And it turns out I’m not alone in this. Many authors have tried expanding on these references, one of the most famous collections being The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes. It’s a collaboration between Adrian Conan Doyle and John Dickson Carr, with the two men sharing the writing duties on the first six stories and Conan Doyle writing the final six on his own – the quality takes a nosedive after the first half, but some of the stories in the first half are absolute gems. But is it mere coincidence that some of the most fascinating references involve animals?

Think about it. There’s the Giant Rat of Sumatra, a mythical beast that sounds so awesome, I can’t resist capitalising its name (even though it appears in lowercase in the canon). There’s the affair involving the politician, the lighthouse, and the cormorant. There’s that mysterious worm unknown to science, and the sinister-sounding red leech. All of these sound like terrific ideas for Holmes stories… but unfortunately, Sir Arthur never got around to them. But the next-best thing is available in French: René Reouven’s Le Bestiaire de Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock Holmes’ Bestiary). In this book, Reouven tackles Sherlock Holmes as only he can, and he delivers four stories about various animals that are referred to throughout the canon.