The Romanovs, Reilly "Ace of Spies," Al Capone, Winston Churchill, Stalin, Babe Ruth, King George V, and other familiar figures from the pages of history - that's what Phil Growick's Sherlock Holmes novels are made of. I called the gregarious author recently to ask him a few questions about his work. He e-mailed me the answers:
Q: How
did you first become acquainted with Sherlock Holmes.
In
front of a B&W TV set in my grandparents’ living room. It was Basil. You can’t beat Basil. To me, Holmes,
through Rathbone, embodied everything that everyone around me was not: brilliant, courteous, gentlemanly. No one I
knew in New York City had such a stiff upper-lip or spoke so beautifully.
Q: Why did you write your first Holmes novel, The Secret Journal of Dr. Watson?
I’ve
always been a history nut. I’d been reading a history of the Romanov dynasty
and of Nicholas II and his family being executed by the Bolsheviks and wondered
what if they hadn’t been
executed? And if they hadn’t been
executed, who would’ve been able to have saved them?
Putting
the historic pieces together of who was where and when, it made total sense to
insert Holmes and Watson into the mix and stir till brought to a verbal boil.
Q: Did
you have to do any further research?
Please
don’t hit me over the head with a club, but not really; but that’s only because
I had read so much about the period, the British royal family, WWI, the Russian
Revolution and the rest that it was simply a matter of just getting on with it.
The
fun for me was putting people like George V, Lenin, David Lloyd George, Sidney
Reilly (Ace of Spies), and other historical personages into close proximity of
Holmes and Watson to see what could happen.
Then,
being sadistic, I gave it a surprise ending which left everyone asking what
happened to the people in the book; most especially, of course, Holmes?
By
the way, to my knowledge, no one has, as yet, seen that surprise ending
coming.
Q: So
that’s why you wrote the sequel, The
Revenge of Sherlock Holmes?
Absolutely.
Being an obliging bloke, I decided to answer the
questions. But since I’m sadistic, this
book has three surprise endings.
Q: Do
you have more historic personages in this book or the same ones?
Very
good question. Let’s say that Revenge has some of the same people, but
new ones, as well. In fact, the mix is quite startling. People as disparate as
Winston Churchill and Al Capone, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and Bugsy
Siegel.
Q: Are
you planning a third Holmes novel?
Well,
since Revenge has three surprise
endings, I’ll continue my sadism my saying, “Perhaps.”
The Secret Journal of Dr Watson is available
from all good bookstores including in the USA Amazon, Barnes and Noble, in the UK Amazon, Waterstones, and
for everywhere else Book Depository who offer free worldwide delivery. In ebook
format there is Kindle, iPad, Nook and Kobo. So is its sequel, The Revenge of Sherlock Holmes.
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