ACD's Holmes Beyond the Canon

The 1981 Castle Books edition (left) and the 1995 Barnes & Noble 

Even if your Sherlock Holmes library is less than a shelf, it should include a book of the apocrypha, Arthur Conan Doyle’s writings about Holmes that are not part of the Canon. That includes, at minimum, two plays, two sketches, and two short stories (in which Holmes is unmistakably referenced but not named).

Such a book is The Final Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, edited by Peter Haining. I already a Barnes & Noble copy of this 1995 book and recently acquired the earlier Castle Books edition from the library of the late R. Joel Senter, Sr., published in August 1981. Although I’m not a collector, I sometimes keep different editions of a book that happen to come my way.

(The Haining anthology is not to be confused with the Heritage Press book of the same name, edited and with an epilogue by Edgar W. Smith, which brings together His Last Bow, The Valley of Fear, and The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes. It was published in 1952, the year I was born. I inherited one of those from Joel, too.)

The Haining collection is a good one, but I don’t think it’s the best. For my thoughts on the superior version of the apocryphal Holmes, please click here to read my earlier blog post on Leslie S. Klinger’s The Apocrypha of Sherlock Holmes.

Welcome to My Library

This blog began on May 28, 2011. I've written 408 blog posts since then, and accumulated quite a few readers through my DanAndriaccoMysteries Facebook Fan Page and my Twitter account, @Dan Andriacco. So a lot of you weren't there at the start. Here's a reprise of that first blog post, also repeating the same photo of me in my library.   

Welcome to my library. Just don’t call it a collection.

I’ve been acquiring books about or related to Sherlock Holmes and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ever since my first copy of The Complete Sherlock Holmes in 1964.

By now I have several hundred – various editions of the Sacred Writings, pastiches, critical works, biographies, works of fact and fiction peripherally related to Holmes, books by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and juvenile books. There are even a couple of cookbooks. They all sit on shelves spanning an entire wall of a room in our home appropriately known as the Sherlock Holmes library.

It was only a couple of years ago that it dawned on me that this truly is a library that we have, not a collection.

First of all, I don’t have the drive, the tenacity, the vision, or the insanity to be a collector. I also don’t have a plan unlike, for example, collectors who set out to own every edition of The Hound of the Baskervilles. I simply pick up books that I like and ones that I think I might find useful. It's very haphazard. I also have very generous friends who have bolstered the shelves over many years.

Secondly, I use these volumes like a library – that is, for reference. It was an immense help to have my own copy of The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, for example, when I wrote the book version of Baker Street Beat.

Nevertheless, I have picked up some interesting books along the way. I’ll be telling you about some of them in future posts on this new blog. I’ll also be posting photos from our Sherlockian adventures, reviewing new books, and sharing some Quintessential Quotes by and about Sherlock Holmes. I know it’s going to be fun for me, and I hope it will be for you as well.

Please check in often. The game is afoot!

A Worthy Counterpart to Sherlock Holmes

If Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes had a sister, she might act like Eldamunde Cunningham.

The unusually named heroine of The Eldamunde Cunningham Mysteries, published in March by Canada's Gneiss Press, is a formidable amateur sleuth in her 20s. The year is 1895 and she shares rooms with the widowed narrator of these short stories.

Like Holmes, Elda instantly deduces all manner of telling details at her first glance at the many people who come to her for help. She also from time to time employs disguise, and even more often ruses which involve false names. Many of these charming tales, as in the Canon, turn out in the end to not be criminal matters at all.

But this bohemian woman is in no way intended to be a sort of Sherlock Holmes in drag. She is a fully rounded character with her own peculiar traits, notably her devotion to betting on horse races. Her irascible landlady, Mrs. Nash, is nothing like the sweet Mrs. Hudson. (But don't they both have the names of automobiles?) 

As befits a collection of 13, many of the stories apparently have an element of the supernatural. Titles include "The Spectre in the Celler," "The Chillbank Ghost," "The Fortune Teller," and "The Nine Witches."  But the solutions are as down-to-earth as, say, The Hound of the Baskervilles and "The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire."


All of the stories are well-written, enjoyable to read, and satisfying to the last page. If for fans of Sherlock Holmes they are reminiscent of the Master, that's a pleasant bonus.

Is Fiction Real?

At the recent "Gathering of Southern Sherlockians," the first door prize that I picked was a book called Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong: Reopening the Case of the Hound of the Baskervilles.

The French author, Pierre Bayard, makes what I consider to be an ingenious and totally plausible case that Sir Charles Baskerville died by accident and the only real victim and the real killer in the Baskerville case were completely missed by Holmes. He reveals the surprising name of the killer only on page 166 out of 188 pages.

"A murder without a weapon, without a threat, without an insult, where the victim puts himself to death, while the other characters applaud -- it would be hard to find a finer triumph in the annals of crime," he writes.

This is interesting, but not as interesting as Bayard's theories about the life of fictional characters. He is profoundly convinced "that literary characters enjoy a certain autonomy, both within the world in which they live and in the travels they make between that world and our own. We do not completely control their actions and movements. Neither the author nor the reader can do so (p. 114)."

This should have a certain resonance with fiction writers because we have all felt that moment when our characters take over and say things we never expected of them. That's why I keep changing the outline of every book while I'm writing it. But Bayard goes even further:

"The notion that literary characters are contained inside the books they inhabit is a dangerous illusion" (p. 133).

What do you think? Is the wall between fiction and reality solid or permeable?

Possessing A Treasury Indeed

Maybe I am a bit of a collector after all.

I've always maintained that my modest 300-400 Sherlock Holmes books constitute a library, not a collection. But recently I bought a vintage copy of A Treasury of Sherlock Holmes just because the dust jacket is in better shape that the one I already had. (I have two other editions of the book as well.) That sounds distressingly like collector behavior to me.

It's an interesting book to own, by the way -- a collection of Holmes stories chosen by Adrian Conan Doyle (1910-1970), the author's youngest son. In the introduction, he says he selected them on the basis of plot, characterstic, and atmosphere.

Certainly his own distinctive tastes were also a factor that led to some surprising decisions. For example, Adrian disdained "A Scandal in Bohemia," the first Holmes short story and one of the best known, as having "none of the essential elements." But he included "The Adventure of Mazarin Stone," which is widely thought to be the worst of all canonical Holmes adventures. Go figure.

The order of presentation is also strange, with "The Final Problem" coming third out of 27 short stories (there are also two novels), and "The Adventure of the Empty House" second last. At least "His Last Bow" is last!

In his introduction, Adrian is quite defensive of his father, again and again making the point that the author was "the real Sherlock Holmes." I'm not sure who would deny this.

Of Holmes scholars, on the other hand, he generally demonstrates contempt. (The exceptions are H.W. Bell and Vincent Starrett, great pioneers and giants on whom others stand.) Sherlockians, for their part have returned the favor, with most regarding the prickly Adrian as far from their favorite Conan Doyle.

What are your favorite canonical Holmes stories?

P.G. Wodehouse, Fan for Life

One of the joys of different editions of the Canon is the often-interesting introductions. Some are insightful, and some are informative in other ways.

For example, I didn't know that P.G. Wodehouse was a long-time fan and friend of Arthur Conan Doyle until I read his 1975 introduction to a Ballantine paperback edition of The Sign of Four.

Wodehouse, who died later in 1975 at the age of 93, was the creator of the clueless gentleman Bertie Wooster and his omnicompetant manservent, Jeeves. Although perhaps less known today than they once were, the comic duo of Wooster and Jeeves are almost as iconic -- and as English -- as Holmes and Watson.

In his introduction, the elderly Wodehouse writes:

"When I was starting out as a writer -- this would be about the time Caxton invented the printintg press -- Conan Doyle was my hero. Others might revere Hardy and Meredith. I was a Doyle man, and I still am. Usually we tend to discard the idols of our youth as we grow older, but I have not had this experience with A.C.D. I thought him swell then, and I think him swell
now.

"We were great friends in those days, our friendship only interrupted when I went to live in America. He was an enthusiastic cricketer -- he could have played for any first-class country -- and he used to have cricket weeks at his place in the country, to which I was almost always invited. And after a day's cricket and a big dinner he and I would discuss literature."

Unsurprisingly, Wodehouse goes on to say that he could never get A.C.D. to talk about Sherlock Holmes. He then goes on to spin a three-age fantasy about Holmes actually being Moriarty before concluding:

"P.S. Just kidding, boys. As the fellow said, there's no police like Holmes."

Really, I have to love a guy like that.

What surprises have you found on your Sherlockian bookshelves?

The Apochryphal Sherlock Holmes

When I was a young lad holding my very own copy of Doubleday's The Complete Sherlock Holmes, I thrilled to the assurance on the cover that this volume contained "every story Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ever wrote about the most famous detective in fiction."

But I think it was not long after that I became aware that Sir Arthur actually wrote quite a bit about the Master that was not included between the covers of The Complete. For sure there were a couple of sketches -- "How Watson Learned the Trick" and "The Field Bazaar" -- and a couple of plays -- The Speckled Band (also known as The Stonor Case) and The Crown Diamond.

Good arguments could also be made for canonizing "The Lost Special" and "The Man with the Watches," in which Holmes does not appear by name but certainly by inference. There is also an outline for a never-written Holmes story called "(The Adventure of) the Tall Man."

For the sake of convenience (and also because I believe it to be true), in this blog post I will refer to everything mentioned in two previous paragraphs as "the core apochrypha."

My library is graced with three collections of Holmes apochrypha, each with their own strengths.

Sherlock Holmes: The Published Apocrypha, selected and edited by Jack Tracy and published by Houghton Mifflin in 1980, was the ground-breaker. Some of the works had never been published before. In addition to all of the core apochrypha, the volume includes James M. Barrie's "The Adventure of the Two Collaborators," William Gillette's two plays, and Arthur Whitaker's "The Case of the Man Who Was Wanted," once thought to be by Conan Doyle.

The Final Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, collected and introduced by Peter Haining and published by Barnes & Noble in 1995, has the core apochrypha except for The Speckled Band play, various commentaries by Sir Arthur on the subject of Sherlock Holmes, a list of the author's favorite Holmes stories and how he arrived at the list, and a couple of mystery tales.

These are fine and useful books, but for me the gold standard is Leslie S. Klinger's The Apocrypha of Sherlock Holmes, the tenth volume in the Sherlock Holmes Reference Library from Gasogene Books. Richly annotated like the other nine, it includes all of the core apochrypha plus the play Angels of Darkness. The latter, based on A Study in Scarlet, lacks Sherlock Holmes but not Dr. Watson.

I'm glad I own all three books, for none of the three contains it all.

What's your favorite bit of Apochrypha from the hand of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle?

A Shelf Full of Sherlock

As nice as it is to have the entire Canon in two or three volumes, some multi-volume editions have much to recommend them as well. Two in particular stand out -- The Oxford Sherlock Holmes and The Sherlock Holmes Reference Library.

These two annotated sets make great companions because they come at the texts from different reference points.

The Oxford edition came out from Oxford Press in 1994 under the general editorship of Owen Dudley Edwards. I have both the hardback and paperback versions. The excellent footnotes, providing both history and literary criticism, assume that Arthur Conan Doyle wrote these stories.

In The Sherlock Holmes Reference Library, published by Gasogene Press in the early 2000s, editor and annotator Leslie S. Klinger takes the same Sherlockian viewpoint of his Annotated Sherlock Holmes: These memoirs were written (mostly) by John H. Watson, M.D., to whom Dr. Conan Doyle was friend and literary agent.

Each volume has an introduction by a noted Sherlockian. As a bonus, there are ten volumes, with the tenth devoted to the Apocrypha. More about that in a future blog post.

Less scholarly is The Sherlock Holmes Collected Edition, published in England by Leopard. Although the edition I own says it was published in 1996, all of the introductions by well known British literary figures (from Eric Ambler to C.P. Snow) are copyrighted 1974. Black with white lettering, they look great on the shelves.

Also with "curb appeal" is the Book-of-the-Month-Club edition from 1994. Each has a different paisley print on the end, making an attractive appearance when all nine are shelved together. This is an inexpensive edition, without introductions, that often shows up in both paperback and hardback editions at Half-Price Books.

I'm sure there are many other wonderful matched sets, especially in paperback. What am I missing?

Happy Birthday, Mr. Holmes!

Today is the Feast of the Epiphany, the Twelfth Day of Christmas . . . and the birthday of Sherlock Holmes.

Nowhere in the Canon does it say this. But someone -- I believe it was an American Sherolockian -- deduced the date and it is now commonly accepted.

Since playing games is a traditional birthday activity, this is a good time to consider 221 B Baker Street: The Master Detective Game. Better Holmes & Gardens recently posted about this on Facebook. It's a great game. Unfortunately, I'm not a great game player.

About a generation ago, when the game first came out and I was still in the newspaper business, I had a great excuse for writing about it: Its creator is a native of Cincinnati, my home town and the city of my newspaper. His name is Jay Moriarty, and he also worked in television writing for such Norman Lear shows as "All in the Family" and "The Jeffersons."

Those many years ago I sent Jay a copy of my radio play "The Wrong Cab," later published in Baker Street Beat. He called me from Hollywood with some very kind comments about it. That's the only time that Hollywood has ever called me -- and it most likely will be the last!

When I went to my library shelves I was surprised to find that, in addition to the original board game that is still sold, and the VCR version, I also own a later and rarer iteration called "The Time Machine." Jay's sister, my friend Lynn Hammersmith, also owns the later game.

Long before I met Lynn or talked to Jay, I knew their father. He was a kind and funny little Irishman who always reminded me of a leprechaun. He was a stockbroker (not a stockbroker's clerk). And his name was (wait for it) . . . James Moriarty.

What's your favorite Sherlock Holmes game?

The Complete Sherlock Holmes

One of the joys of having a significant Sherlockian library is being able to choose in which particular edition one wants to re-read a story this time around.

Going to my shelves as I prepared to delve into the Canon again, I was surprised to find how many versions of the Sacred Writings I have in one-, two-, or three-volumes. Perhaps you have several of them as well:

• The Complete Sherlock Holmes from Doubleday. This may be the best known and most widely circulated version. I have several copies of both the one-volume and the two-volume editions of various ages. I love it not only because it's the first Complete I ever owned, but because the Christopher Morely introduction is one of the best ever.


• The Annotated Sherlock Holmes, edited by William S. Baring-Gould and published by C.N. Potter in two volumes. I also have the one-volume version. This book opened a whole world of Sherlockian scholarship for many of us. It's a must for any serious Holmes reader.


• The New Annotated Sherlocked Holmes, edited by Leslie S. Klinger and published in three volumes by W.W. Norton & Co. This is a worthy successor to the Baring-Gould classic. Our younger son, Mike, gave this to me.
  


• The Complete Illustrated Strand Sherlock Holmes. This is a facsimile edition in three volumes, handsomely boxed, with very fine print. Our daughter, Beth, gave this to me. An avid Holmes collector who couldn't find a copy tried for years to get mine away from me. That makes it really special.


• The Complete Illustrated Novels and The Complete Illustrated Short Stories. This two-volume set is from Chancellor Press. The illustrations are from The Strand, but the pages are not facsimiles of the magazine.


• Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Short Stories, Vols. I and II. This is a lovely boxed set of paperbacks from Bantam, with a delightful introduction by mystery wrtier Loren D. Estleman, focusing largely and insightfully on John H. Watson, M.D.


• The Complete Sherlock Holmes two-volume boxed hardback edition from Tess Press has the same Estleman introduction.
  


• The Complete Sherlock Holmes Collectors Library Edition. This is an oversized volume published by Barnes & Noble. It has illustrations from The Strand and an introduction by David Stuart Davis.


• Tutto Sherlock Holmes. The Canon in Italian! It's a big one-volume yellow paperback from Newton & Compton Editori.


• The Adventures, The Later Adventures, The Final Adventures is what the Heritage Club calls its three volumes of Sherlock Holmes, which together include all 60 stories. These are truly handsome books corrected and edited by Edgar W. Smith and with an introduction by Vincent Starrett.

What's your favorite Complete Sherlock Holmes?

A Comedy in Four Acts

Almost everyone interested in Sherlock Holmes has seen, read, or at least heard of the play of that name by William Gillette. But have you have heard of Sherlock Holmes by Ferdinand Bonn?

I'll give you a hint: The subtitle of Bonn's 19o6 play is "Detektivkomödie in vier Aufzügen."

Through the kindness of Carolyn and Joel Senter, proprietors of Classic Specialties, I own a copy of this play as published by Baskerville Bücher in 1994. The volume is very instructive because it includes an introduction in English as well as German, along with a scene by scene synposis in English. The play itself is in the original German.

The illustration on the cover is quite satisfactory, giving us a line drawing of a very Pagetesque Holmes.

According to the introduction by Michael Ross, more than 10 different Sherlock Holmes plays appeared in German-speaking countries between the years 1905 and 1913 alone. Curiously, most of them -- like Bonn's play -- were comedies or farces.

Bonn's was among the most successful. It was performed for 239 nights at the author's own Berliner Theater and was published in the year of its first performance.

Although the plots draws heavily on Gillette's play and on the Canon (especially "The Final Problem" and "The Adventure of the Empty House"), a look at the "Personen" of the drama shows that many of our favorite characters are AWOL. There is no Irene Adler, no Professor Moriarty, no Lestrade, no Mrs. Hudson, no Mycroft. Even (shudder) Dr. Watson is missing!

No wonder, then, that this work -- however admirable it might be in some ways -- is not well known in English. Still, I am most grateful to have it in my library.

The Question Our Grandson Asked

"Was that your first Sherlock Holmes book, Papa?" asked Vince, soon to be eight years old.

My answer was either "yes and no" or "yes, sort of." I forget which.

The book in question, one of a few hundred in my Sherlockian library, was Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (no definite article) published by Whitman Publishing Co. of Racine, WI. The volume was intended for children, but the stories are not adapted in any way -- although only eight stories, not the full Baker Street dozen. (There's no "Scandal in Bohemia," for example.)

I owned a book just like this early in life. Somewhere along the way, though, I lost it. Later, I was able to acquire two copies at different times -- one of which I promised Vince I will someday give to him if he retains his current interest in Sherlock Holmes.

My library contains several other books that were important to be in my early development as a Sherlockian. I originally borrowed The Boys' Sherlock Holmes, Profile by Gaslight, Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street, 221B: Studies in Sherlock Holmes, and The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (among many others) from the public library.

What a joy it was later to be able to actually own my own copy of each, in many cases one exactly like the edition I had encountered as a child! What a treat to be able to held them in my hands and page through whenever I want!

What are some of the significant and sentimental books in your Sherlock Holmes library?

Holmes and Watson at the Easter Rising

Kieren McMullen has described his new novel, Sherlock Holmes and the Irish Rebels, as a boys' adventure story. That it is, and a good one. But I can't help but think that female Sherlockians -- especially Irish lasses -- might enjoy it as well.

Part of the appeal of the book to me is the time frame. The post-1914 adventures of Holmes and the faithful Watson have always been a source of enjoyable speculation to me, and this tale concerns the events leading up to the Easter Rising of 1916.

Mycroft Holmes has enlisted his younger and more energetic brother, still in the guise of the Irish-American Altamont, to infiltrate the Irish Volunteers, find out their plans, and -- if possible -- stop the looming rebellion.

The great detective calls in Watson, who is back in military harness at Lt. Col. John Watson, RAMC, but going by the name of Dr. Thomas Ryan. They reconstruct the Baker Street menage as they board in Dublin with a certain Mrs. McGuffey, who turns to be Mrs. Hudson using her maiden name.

Although this is primarily an adventure and war story, there is also an appropriately criminous subplot that Holmes manages to uncover even amid the fog of approaching war.

The fact that we know what is going to happen on Easter 1916 while the characters do not know the future makes the story more suspenseful rather than less so. And it gets increasingly exciting as our heroes approach their rendezvous with history.

The author of Watson's Afghan Adventure and a serious student of Irish history, McMullen has filled his book with real people and historically accurate incidents. It's as if Holmes and his troupe had stepped into history, much like Zelig in the Woody Allen film of that title. And we all know that anything can be made just a little better with Holmes & Co. as part of it!

Sherlock Holmes Among the Fairies

My good friends Joel and Carolyn Senter, proprietors of Classic Specialties, were shocked to learn that I enjoyed Tracy Revels’s novel Shadowfall. I was a bit surprised myself. And I like the new sequel, Shadowblood, maybe even more.

On the surface, these books would seem to run contrary to my tastes. Pastiches almost always disappoint me because of their failure to convincingly imitate the original, often at a very basic level. It’s not rare to find Holmes and Watson addressing each other by their given names, for example, which they never did. In addition, many pastiche plots seem to me to be simply un-Holmesian, not the kind of case he took on in Canonical tales.

How in the world, then, could I enjoy a series of books in which Holmes is portrayed as half fairy? It took me a while to figure that out myself.

The answer has to be that these stories are so far from the original that I simply suspend disbelieve and don’t even compare them to the Canonical stories. This is some alternate-universe Holmes, not the one we know. Once I accept that, I can settle back and enjoy Tracy Revels's good writing and the excellent plot.

Shadowblood begins with a client who claims his daughter is more than 100 years old. Not surprisingly, then, the plot involves the fabled Fountain of Youth. That takes Holmes and Watson to St. Augustine, Florida, by way of Paris and Prague. The tale is well-researched and peopled with interesting characters that include a Seminole showman, a blind photographer, and the central figure in one of the most infamous murder trials in U.S. history.

All in all, suspending disbelief, I found it to be a fast and engaging read.

Twice Named Tales

If you acquire a lot of books about Sherlock Holmes, sooner or later you will have fun (and confusion) about titles.

For Christmas of 2009, my friend Steve Winter gave me two pastiches by L. Frank James. A Study in Truth was published in 2005 by Singing Tree Pres. An Opened Grave was published in 2006 by The Salt Works. Both are paperbacks. Judging two books by their covers, you might guess the newer book to be a sequel to the older. In truth, they are the same novel.

My library contains several examples of books being renamed, often at the time of paperback publication.

Edward Aubrey's 1980 novel Sherlock Holmes in Dallas, in which the Master investigates the Kennedy assassination, went into paperback a few years later as The Case of the Murdered President.

In an interesting reversal of that hardcover-to-paperback pattern, I have both The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures in paperback and a later edition in hardback called simply New Sherlock Holmes Adventures. The book was edited by Mike Ashley.

Obviously, that was only a small change in title. Similarly, The Encyclopaedia Sherlockiana by Jack Tracy was altered only slightly to become The Ultimate Sherlock Holmes Encyclopedia.

The opposite of two titles for one book is two books with one title, which can also confuse an acquirer of books. Almost two decades after Tracy's landmark work, Matthew E. Bunsun produced another Encylopedia Sherlockiana.

And don't confuse The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes edited by Sebastian Wolfe in 1989, a fine collection, with the famous Ellery Queen book of the same name.

Have you ever been confused by book titles?

The Luck of a Non-Collector

In my very first blog post, I noted that I am not a collector. Now comes proof. Here's a passage from my mystery novel No Police Like Holmes:

Bob Nakamora, acting as auctioneer, held up a volume about the size of a normal hardback book but with a faded red cover of paper. The illustration showed Holmes in his dressing gown.

"Here we have a rare edition of The Incunabular Sherlock Holmes," he announced. "There were only three hundred and fifty signed and numbered copies printed by the Baker Street Irregulars in 1958. This is number" -- he opened the cover just a crack and peered inside -- "ninety-four. What am I bid?"

The bidding starts at one dollar and closes at ten dollars. This caught the attention of Paul D. Herbert, BSI, the Official Secretary of the Tankerville Club. Paul is a collector. After reading No Police Like Holmes, which is dedicated to him, Paul wrote to me the following:

"The Incunabular Sherlock Holmes is listed three times on the Antiquarian Book Exchange for the prices of $117, $200, and $250 respectively, so Chalmers got quite a bargain at the auction. Of course, it might have been a beat-up copy but then he probably wouldn't have even bid. The real story is the identity of the fool who donated the book to the auction."

As it happens, I own the very copy of that book -- number ninety-four-- described above. I don't know who donated it to the Cincinnati Public Library where I bought it at a library sale 30 years or so ago, but I'm quite grateful. I paid 25 cents.

Holmes Among the Witches

Some of the most memorable cases of Sherlock Holmes flirted with the supernatural or other-wordly, notably including “Adventure of the Devil’s Foot,” “The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire,” and The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Now comes Joe Revill with a novel of Sherlock Holmes called A Case of Witchcraft, a third-person account in which Holmes is assisted not by Watson but by real-life occultist Aleister Crowley. Together they investigate the presumed murder of a clergyman who was poking into witchcraft in the Northern Isles in 1899.

It’s a thoroughly researched tale of bewitching witches that comes to a dramatic and satisfying conclusion. Holmes has a great line when he says: “I would a thousand times rather be the rescuer of a living man than the avenger of a dead one.”

Being a bit of a fundamentalist about Holmes, I enjoy non-canonical Holmes stories best if I read them as though they are the adventures of an alternate-universe Holmes – a Holmes as he might have been in other circumstances. That is a reading attitude that certainly helped me with this book.

Joe Revill’s hasheesh-smoking, socialist Holmes views God as “a mythical character, whom Man has invented as the embodiment of all that which he most admires.” By contrast, the canonical Holmes appears to be a theist despite his admiration of Winwood Reade’s The Martyrdom of Man. One might argue that when he tells Dr. Watson in 1914 that the East Wind coming is “God’s own wind nonetheless” he is using the term as Revill’s Holmes does, but I would not find that argument convincing.

The theology of Sherlock Holmes is worth mentioning in any consideration of this novel because many of its pages are devoted to the subject as Holmes engages in theological dialogue with other characters..

For an alternative view – and a Holmes that is different from the canonical one in another direction – check out An Opened Grave by L. Frank James, also published as A Study in Truth. In this book Holmes travels back to Jerusalem at the dawn of Christianity and becomes a believer in the Resurrection while Watson remains a skeptic.

Different Holmes for different folks, I suppose.

Watson Was a WHAT?

Ever since reading Kieran McMullen's blog post about a female Dr. Watson, I've been thinking of Rex Stout's scandalous essay "Watson Was a Woman." I haven't written about it until now only because I wanted to first retrieve a certain letter from my safety deposit box.

Stout delivered his astonishing revelation orally at meeting of the Baker Street Irregulars on the night of January 31, 1941. Ellery Queen, in the book In the Queen's Parlor, called it an H-Bomb -- H for Holmes, of course.

The talk appeared in book form in several places, including the Edgar W. Smith-edited Profile by Gaslight, where it is followed by Dr. Julian Wolff's rebuttal, "That Was No Lady." I hope you can find a copy of the book and read both; I am simply not up to the task of summarizing their very entertaining verbal gymnastics.

Long an admirer of Stout's Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin mysteries, I wrote the author a letter when I was 14 years old asking him which story he considered his best and positing the outrageous theory that Archie was the true author of "Watson Was a Woman."

Displaying the graciousness which always characterized him, Stout took the trouble to write a young boy the letter above, which I keep in my safety deposit box 45 years later.

The postage on the letter was five cents, but to me the contents have always been priceless.

Murder Most Delightful

The connection between Felicia Carparelli's Murder in the Library and Sherlock Holmes is not as strong as you might think from the silhouette of the Deerstalkered One on the cover, but in the end it turns out to be crucial.

Never mind that anyway. More importantly -- at least for me -- this is a delightful modern-day mystery with a solid plot, engaging characters and good writing. It is fun and often funny.

Cards on the table: It's hard to be objective when you're reviewing a book written by someone who has already given your own book a glowing review. But I took the challenge and tried to approach Murder in the Library with the same objectivity that I once brought to news stories as a reporter and editor.

Even discounting for bias, there is a lot to love in this first novel, starting with the quotes that head each of 24 chapters. The range of people quoted is both impressive and hilarious when considered in relationship to each other -- from Hamlet to Curly Howard of the Three Stooges, from Mae West to Immanuel Kant.

Lead character Violetta Aristotle, a 32-year-old widowed librarian born to a Greek father and an Italian mother, has a wonderful voice and wonderful romance with the chief policeman investigating the murder of two of Vi's fellow librarians.

Although the tone of the novel is light-hearted, the denouement is heart-pounding. By the time I got to the end, my favorite words of the book were "to be continued." I eagerly look forward to the next adventure of Violetta Aristotle.

It is Always 1895

Perhaps the most famous of all Sherlockian poems is the sonnet 221B by Vincent Starrett. I like the second stanza so much that it appears permanently on the right side of this blog.

The first eight lines go this way:

Here dwell together still two men of note
Who never lived and so can never die:
How very near they seem, yet how remote
That age before the world went all awry.
But still the game’s afoot for those with ears
Attuned to catch the distant view-halloo:
England is England yet, for all our fears–
Only those things the heart believes are true.

There is much to like there, but for my taste the first two lines seem very strained, as if the author were reaching too far for a rhyme.

I prefer the end of the same author's classic essay "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes," later incorporated into the book of the same name, which conveys much the same mood as the poem. Here's the final paragraph:

But there can be no grave for Sherlock Holmes or Doctor Watson . . . Shall they not always live in Baker Street? Are they not there as one writes? . . . Outside the hansoms rattle through the rain, and Moriarty plans his latest deviltry. Within, the sea coal flames upon the hearth and Holmes and Watson take their well-won ease . . . So they still live for all that love them well: in a romantic chamber of the heart, in a nostalgic country of the mind, where it is always 1895.

The phrase "it is always 1895" is a familiar one for Sherlockians, but even some who recognize Vincent Starrett as its originator may have forgotten that he used it twice.

What is your favorite poem or poetic writing about Sherlock Holmes?