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 Art of Enthusiasm

Michael Dirda’s On Conan Doyle might deceptively sound like an academic text of no interest to the casual reader. When I first heard of it, I immediately passed it over—why would I want to listen to an academic tell us just how silly the Sherlock Holmes stories are and how little merit they have as Pure Literature? But, being a foolish mortal, I didn’t notice that the book came with a subtitle: or, The Whole Art of Storytelling. It was only after Curt Evans published a review of the book that I decided that, after all, this was a book worth having. And rather than spend my money on a Kindle edition, I gave $10 extra and went for a physical copy of the book.

Dirda’s book won the Edgar Award earlier this year in the “Best Critical/Biographical” category, managing to beat out John Curran’s Agatha Christie’s Murder in the Making. Although I was rooting for Curran’s excellent book, if any other nominee had to beat it, I’m glad it was Dirda. On Conan Doyle is not a dry academic text that dissects the stories we all know and love. It’s more of a personal reflection by Dirda on his love for Conan Doyle’s stories.

Quoth the Raven

Imagine Sir Arthur Conan Doyle meeting Harry Houdini in 1920s New York City, and a bizarre string of murders takes place. A madman is murdering people by using the works of Edgar Allan Poe as inspiration. Every grotesque murder seems more inexplicable than the last. Is there some sort of pattern? To top it all off, Houdini and Conan Doyle are in the middle of their famous spat over spiritualism and whether ghosts can be real. How awkward, then, that the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe keeps showing himself to Conan Doyle!!!

This extremely-awesome idea is the one behind Nevermore, a novel by William Hjortsberg. I’ve searched for this book for a long time, but with no success, before finding an edition for the Kindle. Unfortunately, after all the hype, the book turned out to be a major letdown.

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!

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!

Sur les lieux du crime

Those who regularly check in to At the Scene of the Crime probably know by now of the fondness I’ve developed for Paul Halter. His book Le Roi du désordre (The Lord of Misrule) was a very flawed book, but one I loved reading, which reminded me just why I love mysteries. The freshness of Halter’s impossible crimes is invigorating— not since John Dickson Carr have we been graced with an author who makes impossible crimes so central to his work. I eagerly devoured La Tête du tigre (The Tiger’s Head) and Le Tigre borgne (The One-Eyed Tiger): while I found Tête flawed, I found Le Tigre borgne a masterpiece, which left me eagerly hungering after more by Halter.

I decided to satisfy this craving with Halter’s 1994 novel À 139 pas de la mort (139 Steps from Death), the second of five books found in my Paul Halter omnibus (Volume 3). This novel, like La Tête du tigre, stars the detective duo of Dr. Alan Twist and Inspector Archibald Hurst. Again, although they are rather colourless, I find this refreshing— Halter doesn’t waste time giving us Hurst’s marital problems or Twist’s struggles against agoraphobia. They are just the detective duo, with Twist taking on the role of the Great Detective, and Hurst being his Watson figure.