The Hounds of the
Hollywood Baskervilles, by Elizabeth Crowns, is a mystery novel set during the
Golden Age of Hollywood. Struggling young private detectives Babs Norman and
Guy Brandt are trying to keep their business alive by unmasking the force
behind the dognapping of Asta from the Thin Man movies and Basil
Rathbone’s cocker spaniel, among other canines.
Hijinks ensue, not the
least of which is the embarrassment that follows “Sherlock Holmes” losing his
dog. For good reason the book has been compared to Hollywood screwball comedies of the 1930s and
40s. We put the author under the magnifying glass to learn more.
Q. This book is much different
from your Time Traver Professor trilogy. What prompted you to go in that
direction?
Boy, oh boy is it different!
That’s saying it mildly. Obviously, while having Arthur Conan Doyle as one of
the featured characters in the Time Travel Professor series and, by the way,
there will be one more book before that adventure is complete, I read not only
about him and what he wrote in the Sherlockian Canon, but many of his other
books like The Lost World, obvious from the most recent book in that
series, A War in Too Many Worlds. So much of it is a mashup between that
and H.G. Wells’s The Island of Doctor Moreau. Those books, however, are
in the “alternate history” genre which is a subgenre of science fiction and
fantasy.
I’ve been veering away from that
direction and into good old-fashioned traditional historical mysteries and
started with contemporaries or inspirations for Doyle, like Poe and Agatha
Christie, but for some reason I couldn’t seem to divorce myself from the humor.
My agent and I got into a debate when it came time to pitch this project to
publishers. She wanted to label my novel as a cozy, and I disagreed. Usually
when I describe a cozy mystery to someone unfamiliar with the term, I say,
“Think of Murder She Wrote.” Cozies might have dead bodies or other
crimes, but there never is a lot of blood or violence and no graphic sex. It’s
always implied or behind closed doors.
When I think of a cozy, it has an
amateur sleuth. It takes place in a quaint small town. It’s a Hallmark mystery
with someone who owns a bakery or works as a librarian. It’s usually a female
who is dating the town’s sheriff, and she has a “talking” cat or dog. Yes, I
know I’m exaggerating about the talking pet, but there are quite a few cozies
where someone might have a magical or psychic cat—but not in my books. As
Sherlock Holmes would say in The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire, “…no
ghosts need apply,” but there are authors who do that, and some do the
paranormal element well. I have a hero dog in my book, but he’s more like a
self-taught search and rescue dog and smarter than the actual K-9 on the police
force.
Hounds of the Hollywood
Baskervilles
falls into the subgenre of soft-boiled crime, versus hardboiled noir, because
it involves two professional private eyes in the large city of Los Angeles. They
might be young and inexperienced and sometimes make blunders, but they have
legit licenses and this is the way they make their living. In noir, everyone
seems bad-to-the-bone with a bleak ending. Hounds has a feel-good
ending, and many of the characters will prove themselves worthy of redemption.
Q. Basil
Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, William Powell, and Myrna Loy are among the major characters
in this book, with Errol Flynn and Humphrey Bogart in minor roles. Dashiel
Hammett and Lillian Hellman also appear. How long did you spend researching the
people and the era of this book before you began writing?
I laugh when
I’m asked to do an author interview and one of the questions is: “Do you have a
hobby, or what do you do in your spare time?” Who has spare time? Writing
historical fiction, which I can’t seem to tear myself away from, takes an
enormous amount of research. The name I go by in my ASH investiture is A
Collector of Obscure Volumes from The Adventure of the Empty House. As
you can imagine, I own a crazy library collection beyond Doyle. Besides a lot
of nonfiction and biographies, I try to read a lot of fiction written in the
time period that my novel is in and, of course, I watch a lot of Turner Classic
Movies. A little less than two years ago, I won a trivia contest at a prominent
mystery convention. Apparently, I was the only one in the entire room who had
read the book version of The Thin Man and knew a specific thing
different in the book than from the movie. I’d tell you, but if you read my
book you’ll find out.
Q. Which
came first—the plot or the research? In other words, how much of the storyline
emerged from immersing yourself in that time and place?
The answer to
that question will surprise you. Obviously, in writing my alternate history
series with Doyle, I had to read the Canon over and over. Besides A Study in
Scarlet, where Holmes meets Watson for the first time, the other stand-out
story for me has always been The Hounds of the Baskervilles. It was also
the first of the fourteen Rathbone-Bruce films. What’s ironic is that both
Rathbone and Doyle had something in common—they hated being typecast. Doyle
wanted to kill off Holmes and write other things. Rathbone wanted to return to
theater and Shakespeare.
But getting
back to your question, my background is in film production and film history.
One of my best friends, who sadly is no longer with us, used to be an actress
in Hollywood during the forties. She gave me the legal rights to her life
story, but the challenge of putting those adventures into print was she wasn’t
famous. However, she was the type of person who always read mysteries and
watched everything from Murder She Wrote on television to TCM to NCIS
and Law & Order. If she wasn’t watching a mystery on television, she
watched Animal Planet or Nat Geo Wild, because she was a major animal lover. One
day, the lightbulb went off in my head. I told her, “I figured out how to write
your story. We’ll turn you into an actress-turned-PI and you will solve
mysteries. How does that sound?” She loved that idea and gave me her blessing.
She was my inspiration for Babs Norman who would solve celebrity cases. Who
would be her first big client? That’s where my Holmes background came in. During
the forties, Basil Rathbone was synonymous with Sherlock Holmes in Hollywood.
Q. From the
title onward, there are a lot of Sherlockian references and Easter eggs in this
book—such as characters named Jefferson Hope and Wiggins—as well as Canonical
quotes. Is it fair to say this book owes a lot to our Baker Street hero?
Dan, you know
the answer to that. But of course! Also to Basil Rathbone. As a kid, I
grew up in Cincinnati just like you. Having only three network channels on an
analog television set, my only exposure to Holmes was through the old Basil
Rathbone films on Saturday afternoons or late at night. William Gillette? Who
was he? I didn’t luck into Granada Television or Jeremy Brett until much later,
and I had a lot of catching up to do.
Q. What’s
next for the B. Norman Agency?
In the last
chapter of Hounds, the reader discovers that one of the missing dogs
belonged to Humphrey Bogart. He and one of my hero private detectives exchange banter
and business cards. So now, I’ll let you play Sherlock Holmes. If Hounds
takes place and solves the crime towards the end of 1940, in what famous movie does
Humphrey Bogart star which is filmed and released in 1941? That’ll clue you in
to what the next major crime novel is about. Now, I’ll keep my mouth shut and
let you do the sleuthing.
Q. What
question haven’t I asked that you want to answer?
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