Currently on Twitter...

As part of an ongoing project on my Twitter feed, I'm delivering stories from the Sherlock Holmes canon in tiny installments of 140 characters or less. I recently finished up "Charles Augustus Milverton," in which the reader is introduced to "the worst man in London" and learns that "...there are certain crimes which the law cannot touch, and which therefore, to some extent, justify private revenge."

The current story is "The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger," in which Sherlock Holmes advises: "Your life is not your own...Keep your hands off it...The example of patient suffering is in itself the most precious of all lessons to an impatient world."

Check out my Twitter feed for a daily installment, although I am usually inspired to post more than once a day. And don't forget you can read through the original canon online.

GUEST BLOG: Takeaways from “Sherlock Holmes Through Time and Space”

By Chris Redmond

I brought a lot of things home with me from the recent “Sherlock Holmes Through Time and Space” conference in Minneapolis — some of them tangible, such as the anthology (“festschrift”) published in honour of Randy Cox and launched during the big weekend, but most of them intangible. You know the sorts of things I mean: friendships created or renewed, memories (mostly involving moments with those friends), ideas (picked up in conversation or from the speakers), web links, must-read lists, phone numbers.

From left to right: Lindsay Colwell, Chris Redmond, Monica Schmidt

In my case, the Sherlockian gains included a clearer appreciation for the BBC’s “Sherlock” series than I have previously had, thanks to the presentation by Roger Johnson and Jean Upton of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London about their visit to the set of “The Reichenbach Fall”. Interestingly, and in contrast with much of the fangirl fandango of the past two years, they emphasized series creators Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat, not Benedict Cumberbatch or any of his co-stars. Through the courtesy of Johnson and Upton, I am now displaying on the home page of Sherlockian.Net a photo of the two of them in close proximity to Martin Freeman’s coat at the doorway of 221B; the picture was taken by Gatiss himself.

Among the “Sherlock” clips shown during that presentation was the already classic scene in which the detective analyzes his new companion’s cellphone, much the way the original Holmes analyzes Watson’s brother’s watch in The Sign of the Four. The scene was received so vocally by the Minneapolis audience that I almost thought some of them had never seen it before. More likely, they had never seen it so clearly, on such a big screen.

Most of the 150-plus Sherlockians present seemed fully up to speed on television adaptations (British, American and now Russian) as well as cinematic history and even marginally relevant TV. I had not fully realized until last weekend how very Sherlockian “Doctor Who” is. Maybe I was hanging out with too fast a crowd, but I saw Whovian T-shirts, and heard Whovian banter, and sometimes felt lost because, to tell the truth, the Doctor is not part of my cultural armament. Neither are most of the movies people were referring to. (I would like to add artistic verisimilitude at this point by mentioning two or three titles, but the truth is, I know so little about cinema past and present that the titles didn’t even stick in my mind.)

I came away from Minneapolis wondering whether this media awareness is now the mainstream of the Sherlockian world, and if so, what’s to become of the likes of me. To my generation the Jeremy Brett TV episodes of the 1980s are still new-fangled, really, and the true Sherlock Holmes resides in books and archives. But most people seem to have adapted to the 21st century better than I have. I felt lucky, sometimes, that they were putting up with my clueless expressions.

In the talk that I had been invited to give, “Why the Carbuncle Was Blue”, I made sure to include a few nods to the video culture and the “feels” that it induces in true believers. Why, I went so far as to say that Arthur Conan Doyle might have approved of the creation of Molly Hooper. However, I suspect that doesn’t explain the generous way my talk was received. What seems to have struck my listeners was the range of Canonical and extra-Canonical detail, and particularly the research findings about colour naming that I included, half remembered from my academic days a couple of decades ago. I also tossed in some bits of literary theory, Gilbert and Sullivan, art history and the book of Revelation. Fields like these may be, though I had not realized it until recently, as exotic to the new breed of Sherlockian as Louise Brealey and Peter Capaldi are to me.

Perhaps best of all, I was able to include a little Sherlockian history in my talk, crediting the earliest research about the blue carbuncle to Doyle W. Beckemeyer, who published his work in 1953 through the Illustrious Clients of Indianapolis. I would like to think that the audience appreciated that, feeling linked by it to enthusiasts of sixty years ago who probably had just as much fun with Sherlock Holmes in their way as we do now in our way. Or ways. What Beckemeyer’s taste in movies was, we do not know, but it may well have involved some fellow called Rathbone.

oOo

Chris Redmond is the author of The Sherlock Holmes Handbook, In Bed with Sherlock Holmes: Sexual Elements in Arthur Conan Doyle's Stories of the Great Detective, and Welcome to America, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Victorian America Meets Arthur Conan Doyle. He is the proprietor of Sherlockian.net and can be found on Twitter.

Currently on Twitter...

As part of an ongoing project on my Twitter feed, I'm delivering stories from the Sherlock Holmes canon in tiny installments of 140 characters or less. I recently finished up "The Adventure of the Lion's Mane," in which a retired Sherlock Holmes informs us, "I am an omnivorous reader with a strangely retentive memory for trifles."

The current story is "Charles Augustus Milverton," in which the reader is introduced to "the worst man in London" and learns that "...there are certain crimes which the law cannot touch, and which therefore, to some extent, justify private revenge."

Check out my Twitter feed for a daily installment, although I am usually inspired to post more than once a day. And don't forget you can read through the original canon online.

BOOK REVIEW: “The Annals of Sherlock Holmes”

Paul D. Gilbert; Publisher: Robert Hale (April 1, 2013)

“[Jeremy Brett’s] exuberance while filming ‘The Devil’s Foot’—an exuberance that to some extent was a result of his illness—led him to make additions to the story, some not always in keeping with either Conan Doyle’s Holmes or his previous performances. It was that great enthusiasm and thrill at developing the character that was responsible for us seeing Holmes wearing a bandana around his head, as Brett had worn one in the swinging ‘sixties. He also draped his scarf around his trilby hat in a strange way. Bohemian, maybe; risible, certainly. A still in ‘The Sunday Times’ which featured Holmes with this scarf/hat concoction was captioned: ‘Sherlock Holmes as a teapot!’” (David Stuart Davies, “Bending the Willow”)

The Sherlock Holmes of Paul Gilbert’s books is immediately recognizable. Beyond the features that automatically mark the character as the Great Detective, there is a more specific quality in every turn of phrase, sharply raised eyebrow and peculiar idiosyncrasy. Gilbert’s Sherlock Holmes is unquestionably and unmistakably Jeremy Brett. The author of four collections of Sherlockian pastiche – The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes, The Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes and the Giant Rat of Sumatra, and most recently, The Annals of Sherlock Holmes – Gilbert said in a 2010 interview:

"He was a great actor and when I write, Jeremy Brett is my Sherlock. His family have read my books and I believe they have gone down well with them… I owe a lot to Jeremy Brett. I never met him but my interpretation of Holmes owes a lot to his character."

And that debt to Jeremy Brett is present within even the first few pages of The Annals of Sherlock Holmes, a collection of three stories inspired by canonical references (to both unpublished cases in Dr. Watson’s dispatch box at Cox and Co., at Charing Cross, and fringe characters from published stories). In the very first tale, as Holmes and Watson keep a frigid vigil on Christmas Eve, Watson remarks:

“I could not help but wonder at my friend’s effrontery. After all, he was sitting comfortably in the corner of this tiny stable with his muffler tied down about his hat while a large brown blanket was draped over his shoulders forming the shape of a teepee (13).”

The passage evokes an almost instantaneous recollection of Jeremy Brett’s puzzling wardrobe choices from the Granada Television adaptation of “The Devil’s Foot.” Gilbert’s Sherlock Holmes is a vivid and sharply painted portrait, recognizable in every word and gesture. It is a remarkable tribute. Likewise, his Watson seems to be equal shades of David Burke and Edward Hardwicke – although there appears to be a little bit more of Hardwicke’s interpretation in his Watson’s frustration and exasperation: “Really, Holmes, on this occasion you have surely surpassed yourself. Your shabby treatment of me displays a wanton lack of respect that I surely don’t deserve!” (51) Over the course of three separate stories, Gilbert successfully achieves cohesiveness and consistency, allowing the collection to be appreciated as a whole – as well as for the merits of its parts.

 

vvv

The Dundas Separation Case: In “A Case of Identity,” as he attempts to explain to Dr. Watson just how infinitely strange life can be, Sherlock Holmes makes reference to some papers, saying:

“This is the Dundas separation case, and, as it happens, I was engaged in clearing up some small points in connection with it. The husband was a teetotaller, there was no other woman, and the conduct complained of was that he had drifted into the habit of winding up every meal by taking out his false teeth and hurling them at his wife, which you will allow is not an action likely to occur to the imagination of the average story-teller.”

While the canonical reference makes it sound as if Watson was unaware of this peculiar case, Gilbert’s readers soon learn that this just simply isn’t so. When Holmes and Watson are contacted by Miss Edith Swinton – a friend of Miss Violet Hunter (COPP), she asks their help in deciphering the excessively bizarre behavior of her employer, Sir Balthazar Dundas. Since the arrival of a mysterious visitor, Dundas has begun to treat his wife in an appallingly abusive fashion, and is now cloistering himself in the attic of his home in Dungeness. Readers soon learn that this case is also the explanation behind Watson’s oblique canonical reference to “the whole story concerning the politician, the lighthouse, and the trained cormorant” (VEIL).

The Abernetty Mystery: During “The Adventure of the Six Napoleons,” Sherlock Holmes tells Inspector Lestrade:

“The affair seems absurdly trifling, and yet I dare call nothing trivial when I reflect that some of my most classic cases have had the least promising commencement. You will remember, Watson, how the dreadful business of the Abernetty family was first brought to my notice by the depth which the parsley had sunk into the butter upon a hot day.”

The unpublished case of the Abernetty family has always stimulated curiosity. What could be a better example of Sherlock Holmes’s keen deductive reasoning than his observations on something as seemingly insignificant as a sprig of parsley? When Holmes and Watson are invited to visit the Collier family (a reference to Gilbert’s previous work, Sherlock Holmes and the Giant Rat of Sumatra), Watson suggests that they make a brief visit to his friend, Montague Abernetty, along the way. But where Holmes and Watson go, trouble is sure to follow. When the men arrive, Abernetty is already dead of cyanide poisoning – and every member of his family is a suspect!

The Adventure of the Reluctant Spirit: "I have come to you, Mr. Holmes," Miss Mary Morstan told Sherlock Holmes in The Sign of Four, "because you once enabled my employer, Mrs. Cecil Forrester, to unravel a little domestic complication. She was much impressed by your kindness and skill." While it has been some time since the passing of his wife, Dr. Watson still maintains contact with the woman who once employed her, Mrs. Cecil Forrester. Unfortunately, Mrs. Forrester is recently bereaved and under the influence of a medium who claims he can make contact with her deceased daughter, Evangeline. As such, she turns again to the man who once impressed her with his “kindness and skill”. But with Sherlock Holmes supposedly engaged in the investigation of a sapphire gone missing from a locked room, Watson appears to be on his own in assisting his old acquaintance. However, the two cases begin to intersect, and Langdale Pike (3GAB) arrives, with his own peculiar set of skills, to aid them both.

vvv

 

Gilbert has summoned a Sherlock Holmes who is in full possession of his powers, and does not hesitate to use them completely. His Watson is at equal turns admiring and exasperated, but always at the Detective’s side. Everything about them is authentic and familiar, as comfortable as a visit to Baker Street and an old dressing gown. The Annals of Sherlock Holmes is the latest contribution to Paul Gilbert’s fine collection of Sherlock Holmes pastiche, and he remains exacting in his details and faithful in his execution.

 

oOo

 

The Annals of Sherlock Holmes is available in hardback and for the Kindle from Amazon, and in hardback and for the Nook from Barnes & Noble. Paul D. Gilbert is available on Twitter, and Facebook.

 

“Better Holmes & Gardens” has its own Facebook page.  Join by “Liking” the page here, and receive all the latest updates, news, and Sherlockian tidbits.

Currently on Twitter...

As part of an ongoing project on my Twitter feed, I'm delivering stories from the Sherlock Holmes canon in tiny installments of 140 characters or less. I recently finished up "The Speckled Band," in which Dr. Grimesby Roylott introduces the reader to: "Holmes, the meddler... Holmes, the busybody... Holmes, the Scotland Yard Jack-in-office!"

The current story is "The Adventure of the Lion's Mane," in which a retired Sherlock Holmes informs us, "I am an omnivorous reader with a strangely retentive memory for trifles."

Check out my Twitter feed for a daily installment, although I am usually inspired to post more than once a day. And don't forget you can read through the original canon online.

“The Meaning of This Extraordinary Performance” (COPP): Granada Television’s “The Man with the Twisted Lip”

“Jeremy Brett particularly enjoyed the next stage of the story, the construction of the divan and Holmes’ enormous consumption of tobacco as he thinks the problem through while Watson snatches an hour or two of sleep. We decided that Holmes had brought his mouse-colored dressing gown with him rather than borowing [sic] a blue one, thus adding our contribution to one of the minor mysteries of the Canon. Jeremy also enjoyed finding new aspects of Holmes and he relished the meditative stillness of this sequence, although inspiration does not strike until he washes his face at dawn.” (From A Study in Celluloid: A Producer’s Account of Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes, by Michael Cox)

In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original short story, “The Man with the Twisted Lip,” Mrs. Kate Whitney actually arrives at Dr. Watson’s home looking for, not the doctor himself, but his wife. “Folk who were in grief came to my wife like birds to a light-house,” he says. But in the 1986 Granada Television adaptation of the story, Dr. Watson is the lighthouse. This is, of course, because the marriage between Mary Morstan and Dr. Watson was written out of the Granada series. According to Jeremy Brett, “[Mary Morstan] would have got in the way. Watson was more in love with Holmes – in a pure sense – than he could have been with a woman. He wouldn’t want to give up the excitement, the danger. As for Holmes, if Watson had gone off and left him for a woman he wouldn’t know what to do. He’d be stoned out of his mind every night.” And so, in Granada’s version, Mrs. Kate Whitney arrives at Baker Street, hoping that Dr. Watson (played by Edward Hardwicke) might help her find her missing husband, Isa Whitney. But the hour is late, and Mrs. Whitney tells Mrs. Hudson that she is concerned that she will only be in the Doctor’s way. “He won’t mind, I’m sure,” says Mrs. Hudson. “He’s the kindest of men.”

The audience has already seen Mr. Isa Whitney in the opening sequence of the episode, walking distractedly past the beggar, Hugh Boone. Whitney attracts Boone’s attention momentarily, if only because he fails to give him any change before disappearing down a shadowy alleyway. “Yours is the Kingdom of Heaven, sir,” Boone mumbles after Whitney’s retreating figure. Whitney walks past a group of workmen, who lift a burlap sheet in the course of their labors, but when the sheet falls again, Whitney is gone – vanished completely. It is an effortless bit of cinematic magic, but nevertheless effective. Whitney has evaporated as completely as the smoke from an opium pipe, gone the audience knows not where, but the tone of the episode has been set. Existence and identity are insubstantial notions, and both ideas are at odds in this episode. A person can dissipate into nothing, with an ill-timed word or a thoughtless action. A person can vanish completely, but they can also vanish deliberately. “Mr. Holmes disappears without a trace at regular intervals,” Watson tells Kate Whitney, and such is the episode’s common thread. The audience finds characters that are tasked with the effort of identity and the burden of existence.

Dr. Watson eventually leaves Baker Street to retrieve our vanished man, leaving Mrs. Whitney to take tea with Mrs. Hudson. The two women muse philosophically as to whether “men ever really truly grow up, or if they remain little boys forever,” over a shot of Dr. Watson running to catch a cab and arriving in Upper Swandam Lane – a vile alley of disrepute if there ever was one, and brought to vivid life out of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s story. As the Doctor arrives, a well-dressed man is discussing trade with two women of ill-repute (who then turn their attentions to Watson), then a scream as a fight breaks out, and Watson narrowly avoids being struck down by a shattering bottle. Watson locates the vanished Whitney inside The Bar of Gold, the opium den, but he also finds Sherlock Holmes, “merge[ed] with the surroundings,” and artfully disguised as an opium addict – complete with grizzled wig and beard, false eyebrows, a prosthetic nose, and tattered clothing. It’s a masterful camouflage, and so the effect is rather singular, therefore, when Holmes removes the disguise once in a cab with Watson. Each piece of his false face is removed to reveal the refined, patrician features of Jeremy Brett underneath. He has already exchanged his ratty addict’s costume for his traditional black suit, all crisp lines and sharp angles, and the transformation is complete. Sherlock Holmes himself has shown the audience how simple it is to assume the persona of another person – and also how effortless it is to dispose of one.

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson arrive at the Cedars, near Lee, in Kent, where Mrs. Neville St. Clair is waiting and eager to attest to her husband’s character. Of interest, in this adaptation Mrs. St. Clair is played by Eleanor David, who would take another Sherlockian turn in the 2004 film Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking as Mary Pentney (with Jonathan Hyde, as George Pentney, who appears in Granada’s 1994 adaptation of “The Dying Detective”). She describes her dramatic ordeal in detail, including how she found her (also vanished) husband’s garments behind a curtain in the opium den. Neville St. Clair’s clothing has been discarded like a snakeskin, disposed of like so much trash, but Mrs. St. Clair fervently announces the name of her husband’s tailor – as if that were somehow an integral part of his identity and the mention of it will somehow summon him into being. Later on the episode, as Holmes recounts a discussion with Inspector Bradstreet, the audience sees those same clothes in Bradstreet’s office. In this instance, however, the clothes are laid out neatly, as if trying to replicate the man who should be occupying them. And at the end of the episode, when St. Clair emerges from his Bow Street cell in his gentleman’s persona, he arranges the remaining scraps of Hugh Boone in a similar, tidy fashion, perhaps in the hopes of bidding the beggar into his own separate, independent existence – so that he won’t have to destroy him completely by casting him into the fire.  

In the original short story, after a few hours of sleep at the St. Clair residence, Watson (and therefore, the reader) is awoken by Holmes’s shout of revelation, to find the Detective still smoking and in much the same contemplative position as he was before the Doctor drifted off. Holmes has solved the case, but the readers do not get to witness the actual epiphany. Granada’s adaptation remedies this omission by having the audience witness Sherlock Holmes while in the midst of his method. Immersed in the golden light of a slowly rising sun and subtle clouds of tobacco smoke, the Detective sits in a meditative state. The camera angle moves in gradually and narrows into a tight shot of Jeremy Brett’s face, his eyes opening slowly and his brow subtly arched. With his pipe in hand, perhaps we see a slight echo of Holmes as he appeared earlier – as the ragged opium addict in the Bar of Gold. And in this version, Watson sleeps through the moment of grand understanding, because it takes place elsewhere. In front of a mirror, Holmes washes his face only in waistcoat and shirtsleeves, and understanding slowly dawns, resulting in a boisterous clap instead of a verbal cue. As he wakes Watson in the next scene, Holmes is suddenly fully dressed – including overcoat and hat – his detective identity fully assumed and ready for battle.

At the end of the episode, Inspector Bradstreet makes Neville St. Clair promise that they will see no more of Hugh Boone. “I swear it by the most solemn oath that a man could take,” St. Clair replies. But the understated smirk and downturned expression on Holmes’s face suggest that the Detective doesn’t think much of St. Clair’s promises. Perhaps it is simply because the end of Hugh Boone doesn’t necessarily preclude St. Clair from taking up some other beggar persona, in another part of London. The man had a gift for disguise, after all. Or perhaps he understands that St. Clair and Boone are inexorably intertwined, and that untangling the two will be no mean feat. Because as the audience has already seen, Sherlock Holmes knows better than anyone how simple it is to assume an identity, dispose of one, and begin the whole process anew.

oOo

Sources:

• Stuart Davies, David. Starring Sherlock Holmes: A Century of the Master Detective on Screen (January 2006).

"Better Holmes & Gardens” has its own Facebook page.  Join by “Liking” the page here, and receive all the latest updates, news, and Sherlockian tidbits.

BOOK REVIEW: “The Amateur Executioner: Enoch Hale Meets Sherlock Holmes”

Dan Andriacco and Kieran McMullen; Publisher: MX Publishing (April 2013)

“Hale had read the Sherlock Holmes stories as a boy, of course; everybody had. But even though Hale knew that Holmes was a real person, like America’s Alan Pinkerton in the last century and William J. Burns in this one, he had viewed the world’s first consulting detective as a remote and almost legendary figure. And to think that Wiggins had known him! What had Pound said? It was too bad that Holmes was retired. Hale was inclined to agree. But it seemed that the detective’s old friend, his ‘Boswell,’ was still keeping his eye on crime news” (73).

The year is 1920, and the world hasn’t stopped moving simply because Sherlock Holmes has retired. Time has marched relentlessly and ruthlessly forward, and no one has come away unscathed. The Baker Street Irregulars are no longer little boys; familiar canonical characters are now old men with a propensity to ramble; London is filled with an entirely new generation of dizzying intellects and untapped creative potential; and Sherlock Holmes can no longer be found easily with a telegram to the Baker Street flat. And it’s against the background of this complex historical tapestry that Dan Andriacco and Kieran McMullen weave together their new collaborative novel: The Amateur Executioner: Enoch Hale Meets Sherlock Holmes. But despite all that has changed in the years since 1895, some things endure. The criminal class remains active and evergreen, as do those who work in the pursuit of justice. And the art of deduction, as journalist Enoch Hale proves, is still very much in fashion.

The Amateur Executioner is the first collaborative work between Sherlockian authors Dan Andriacco and Kieran McMullen. Andriacco is the author of several Sherlockian writings, including Baker Street Beat, No Police Like Holmes, Holmes Sweet Holmes, and The 1895 Murder. McMullen’s works include a trio of military-themed Sherlockian pastiches: Watson’s Afghan Adventure, Sherlock Holmes and the Irish Rebels and Sherlock Holmes and the Mystery of the Boer Wagon, as well as an insightful survey of actors who have portrayed Dr. Watson on stage and screen throughout the years entitled, The Many Watsons. The authors’ combined talents and respective areas of expertise are well-matched, in addition to being well-balanced. The resulting effort is a triumph of historical fiction – well-researched, engaging, and supremely entertaining.

Journalist Enoch Hale of the Central Press Syndicate, an American expatriate in London, is not a detective – although like most reporters, he certainly has the makings of one. And while Hale himself is not particularly illustrious (although the prominent Wall Street family he left in America would likely beg to differ), his circle of friends and acquaintances more than exceeds the definition of the word. They include poets and politicians, actors, directors and musicians, as well as some characters that seem tantalizingly familiar, but remain stubbornly on the wrong side of recognition until almost the very end of the novel. Well-known canonical faces are also present in abundance. Horace Harker, who readers should know from “The Six Napoleons,” is a regular feature at Hale’s day job, and on separate occasions, Hale turns to both Langdale Pike (3GAB) and Shinwell Johnson (ILLU) for information. To investigate a series of murders, whose common theme is that the victims are executed with a hangman’s noose, Hale even works in close concert with a Chief Inspector Henry Wiggins, whose eye for detail and methods of investigation should be instantly recognizable, as if this character has spent his life studying at the feet of some master instructor.

But the mystery at the heart of The Amateur Executioner is more than just a device meant to propel Enoch Hale from one familiar face to another. The machinations behind the series of murders (and their seemingly unrelated victims) are intricately and expertly plotted, and as complex as any of the one hundred and sixty separate ciphers in Holmes’s monograph. It is a mystery of hidden dimensions and international implications, but with a local flavor not unlike one of the Great Detective’s own cases. The novel stays satisfyingly grounded in the world of Sherlock Holmes – even if the man himself is not a constant presence. Enoch Hale is as doggedly persistent as Sherlock Holmes is known to be, and when his managing director at the Central Press Syndicate (one Nigel Rathbone, recently arrived from South Africa) tells the journalist, “Get the story, Hale!” – there is almost certainly an echo of “Come, Watson, come! The game is afoot."

But there is no denying that the strength of The Amateur Executioner is in the effortless manner in which it evokes historical figures, fictional characters, and famous places. It’s certainly entertaining to read that a fortune-teller (one of the executioner's victims) told both George Bernard Shaw and W.B.Yeats that they will win the Nobel Prize (the former is dismissive of the prediction, while the later seems eager to believe). And as for Winston Churchill, who met with the same fortune-teller? “She said I would be Prime Minister some day. What politician wouldn’t want to hear that” (54)? Later during a visit to a moving picture studio, Hale encounters “Hitch,” the studio’s art director. Short, balding, and chubby, he is described dismissively: “Hitch here designs title cards, but he harbors a not-so-secret desire to be a director” (119). The cavalcade of famous faces culminates in the arrival of William Gillette, the American actor so famous for his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes. But the actor seems to be more than a little immersed in his most famous role – despite being nearly 70-years-old – and Hale begins to fear for the actor’s well-being after a round of insightful deductions aimed at the journalist:

“I’ve also never met a journalist who wears Brooks Brothers suits. That takes more money than Fleet Street pays out, until you’re the boss, if then. Your family can hardly be pleased that you’ve become a scribbler, which may explain why you’re pursuing that trade in old England instead of the New England your accent comes from. Yet it’s obvious that they haven’t cut off your allowance since you’re wearing the very latest style and a new fabric that Brooks Brothers has just begun to import from India called Madras. By the way, that notebook in your hand is as indicative of your profession as Chief Inspector Wiggin’s two-and-a-half inch barrel weapon and handcuffs are of his” (125).

A good novel should endeavor to surprise its readers on every page, and The Amateur Executioner is the best kind of surprise – the subtle wink and nudge to – not just fans of Sherlock Holmes – but those who enjoy a wide variety of topics, from poetry to politics to popular culture. The novel is not unlike a treasure hunt, and you wonder just who or what is going to turn up next. It’s a fast-paced and immersive read, barely allowing the reader to take a breath from page to page. But it’s also a remarkable and masterful undertaking – suggestive of something new and fresh, while remaining true to the source that shaped it.

“The essence of lying is in deception, not in words.” (John Ruskin)

oOo

The Amateur Executioner: Enoch Hale Meets Sherlock Holmes, by Dan Andriacco and Kieran McMullen is available in paperback from MX Publishing, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.  It is also available for the Kindle. You can follow the authors on Facebook.

“Better Holmes & Gardens” has its own Facebook page.  Join by “Liking” the page here, and receive all the latest updates, news, and Sherlockian tidbits.