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.

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 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.

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 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.

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!

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.

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.

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.