BARBELITH underground
 

Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.


Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Elementary. my dear Conan Doyle.

  
 
DavidXBrunt
14:34 / 29.10.07
Here's a thread for the discussion of the best of Conan Doyle, for favourite deductions of the World Famous Consulting Detective to be analysed, for pointers to quality pastiches to be shared, and for advice on where to find Doyles rarer fictions.

When I was a scruffy haired 8 year old with too much time on my hands (as oposed to a 30 year old one) I was handed my mums copy of Sherlock Holmes:The Collected Short Stories and given the suggestion that I find a corner somewhere and sit and read. I did. I finished them in no time, but 20 odd years later I still find myself reading them. At this time of year I always find myself digging out the shorts (and M.R.James ghost stories) and reading a couple of cases.

Now I'm not saying that the Sherlock Holmes stories are the pinacle of litarature (they don't really function as detective fiction proper) and I'm not saying they're the best things that I've ever read (Conan Doyle would spin in his grave if I professed that) but when it comes to sheer entertainment value, sheer good fun I can think of little to rival them.

One great delight in the intervening years has been to find other stories by Conan Doyle, and whenever they crop up in short story anthologies I can't resist buying them. Whether they be the advetnures of the pompous prone Brigadier, or the pirate Sharkey, the noble Sir Nigel, the Blessed Prof. Challenger, whether they be mysteries, adventures, sporting larks, or tales of the medical profession they're always welcome to me. If anyone knows of any recent collections I'd be delighted to hear them.

I'd also be interested to hear of any decent pastiches and addition to the canon. There are so many that it's a veritable minefield to even browse in Waterstones. Nothing, for me, has ever really surpassed the eery Thor Bridge, the unsettling Copper Beeches, or the barking Red-Headed League but it's refreshing to occasionally stumble across a 'new' adventure seeing as how all 56 shorts and the 4 novels that comprise the canon are all long since consumed.

I will also say that I've always thought Doctor Watson was a perfect role model and looking at the man I've become I'm very proud to share several of John H.s better qualities. I was slightly offended to see a clip from This Morning of A.C.D. describing Watson as 'rather stupid' on YouTube.

So, the games afoot...
 
 
Ticker
15:42 / 29.10.07
Best pastiche hands down is:

Laurie R. Kings' Beekeeper's Apprentice

It sounds like it would be painful to read... a fifteen year old girl and an older Holmes and Co. but it really is a fantastic series. I have to reread them and pick up the newer ones.
 
 
SGZax
22:31 / 29.10.07
I really enjoyed Nicholas Meyer's Seven Percent Solution, in which a drug-addicted Holmes is tricked into seeking treatment with Sigmund Freud. The movie (with Nicol Williamson and Alan Arkin) was fun too.
 
 
Dusto
11:39 / 30.10.07
Yeah, I was going to recommend the Seven Per-Cent Solution, as well. There's also a sequel, called The West End Horror, but I haven't read it.
 
 
DavidXBrunt
12:22 / 30.10.07
Cheers nice peoples. I've tried the King stories in the past and they haven't gelled with me. There's nothing I can point to as obviously flawed so I think it must be personal taste.

I'm familia with 7% but wasn't aware of a sequal. Time to begin the search I think.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
09:27 / 31.10.07
I like the first three Laurie King's, they're really ace but I think they fall down after that. She gets too far away from Holmes.
 
 
Janean Patience
10:22 / 31.10.07
There's Michael Chabon's The Final Solution, a novella from a few years ago which stars Holmes but never names him and has a nice little mystery which gets solved surrounded by a larger mystery which is only hinted at. The story is in the title, really, but it's worth reading.

And there's The Other Log of Phineas Fogg by Philip Jose Farmer, which doesn't feature the detective at all but does include a couple of Conan Doyle characters, including a great enemy in another guise, and is very enjoyable in its mixing and matching of that period's fiction, true events, and of course Willy Fogg's leonine globetrot.
 
 
A fall of geckos
10:36 / 31.10.07
You might be interested in Shadows Over Baker Street - a book of short stories combining the world of Holmes with the Cthulhu mythos of HP Lovecraft.

It's interesting experiment in pastiche, but faces the problem that Holmes has to live in a thoroughly rational world. The rule “once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth” looses something when the impossible becomes the central subject of each of the stories. They probably work best where the stories deal with the edges of the Holmes world. Still, it's a fun approach and there are some enjoyable stories in the collection.
 
 
DavidXBrunt
13:41 / 31.10.07
Cheers again. Familiar with Final Solution and Shadows over... Shadows suffered from being a single theme collection in my eyes. It was akin to that anthology that collected all the Saint tales with a supernatural bent. Scattered throughout the complete works they were occasional treats, surprising for the change of theme as anything else. Gathered in one place was too much of a good thing.

I hadn't heard of Log and doubt I would have picked it as a Holmes tale. It's added to my mooching list for future seeking.

Thanks again.
 
 
Janean Patience
13:45 / 31.10.07
And there's Batman #400...
 
 
grant
16:10 / 31.10.07
Heh - I was just looking at Wikipedia for a link to Zero Effect to launch into my theory that it's basically a Sherlock Holmes story, slightly updated, when I find that theory is already *in* the Wikipedia article.

So, yeah, not a book and not Victorian/Edwardian England, but Zero Effect - the Sherlock Holmes story Doyle would have written 100 years later.
 
 
lord nuneaton savage
09:28 / 01.11.07
It has been suggested in some quarters that dear old Dr House has something of the Baker Street about him. Not entirely sure I agree, mind you, but watching it does become quite interesting if you bear it in mind.
 
 
DaveBCooper
08:20 / 05.11.07
I understand that Hugh Laurie was pretty much sold on playing House on the basis that it was Holmes-like, and there are obvious comparisons - the name (House and Home, indeed), the fact he seems to live at 221B, his sarcastic and drug-reliant ways, and the nearest thing he has to a friend being a chap called Wilson…

I'd second the Chabon recommendation (very short, too, you can polish it off in one sitting), and add Mark Frost's 'The List of Seven' and 'The Six Messiahs', which feature a young Conan Doyle meeting a chap who acts as a template for his later writings. Also features appearances from Bram Stoker, Madame Blavatsky, and other folks who were around at the time. Fun.

And I recently read Neil Gaiman's 'A Study in Emerald', which I rather enjoyed, and which you can download as a PDF here ...
 
 
lord nuneaton savage
11:55 / 05.11.07
Ah, yes the Mark Frost books. I've never been able to find them so I shall get my dealer on the search.
 
 
c0nstant
13:10 / 05.11.07
How about 'Holmes versus Dracula'?

I haven't actually read this, but I just finished listening to the radio adaption, available for streaming from the BBC website, and found it a really good distraction from the tedium of admin work! Briefly; Holmes is called in to solve the mystery of the ship that is found deserted and beached in Whitby with only the captains corpse, tied to the wheel with a rosary, aboard. It turns out that Holmes and Van Helsing have a passing aquaintance and the two cases collide.

buy it in paperback here
 
  
Add Your Reply