Author Mattias Boström four years ago. He still has the beard. See below |
From Holmes to Sherlock, new in English this month from The Mysterious
Press, is the story of the birth and enduring life of the character whose name means
“detective” in almost every language.
And what
a fascinating story it is, as told by Swedish Sherlockian Mattias Boström! “Reads
like fiction” is a cliché that’s hard to avoid in describing this engrossing
narrative full of quirky characters and twists and turns of plot. The 497 pages
of text, followed by 100 pages of notes and index, fly by.
The
book begins in 1878 with Arthur Conan Doyle. It ends in 2015 with the rediscovery
of the lost William Gillette film of his classic melodrama Sherlock Holmes. The closing lines of the book remind us, however,
that the story will go on.
With
so much ground to cover – literal ground across many countries as well as metaphorical
ground across more than a century – even such a hefty tome as this one couldn’t
give detailed attention to everything. So Boström had to be selective about
what to sketch lightly and what to put under the magnifying lens. This he did almost
perfectly.
Most
of the 111 chapters, greatly expanded from the original Swedish version, involve
material that I’m somewhat familiar with after more than five decades of
Sherlockian reading. And yet, almost every chapter also contains material that was
new and interesting to me. From Holmes to
Sherlock is neither too elementary nor advanced for anyone interested in
the Holmes phenomenon.
It
would be hard for me to pick a favorite part, but the account of how the first
female members were added to the ranks of the Baker Street Irregulars is among
the most dramatic and moving. And the explanation of the Sherlock Holmes
copyright ownership, a complex thread running through multiple chapters and many
years, was most enlightening to me.
I
first interviewed Mattias Boström about this book just over four years ago. I’m
delighted to be able to finally read it in English and learn that it’s just as good as I
expected. If I had a much smaller Sherlockian library, this book would still be an indispensable part of it.
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