The Great Detective returns.
Author:
Mark Hodder, Mags L Halliday, Cavan Scott, Nick Kyme, Paul Mgrs, George Mann, Stuart Douglas, Eric Brown, Richard Dinnick, Kelly Hale, Steve Lockley, Mark Wright, David Barnett, James Lovegrove
Edited by George Mann
What They Say
Brand New Tales of the Great Detective.
The spirit of Sherlock Holmes lives on in this collection of fourteen brand-new adventures. Marvel as the master of deduction aids a dying Sir Richard Francis Burton; matches wits with gentleman thief, A. J. Raffles; crosses paths with H.G. Wells in the most curious circumstances; unravels a macabre mystery on the Necropolis Express; unpicks a murder in a locked railway carriage; explains the origins of his famous Persian slipper and more!
The Review:
What is it about Sherlock Holmes that makes him such an enduring figure, living long past his creator? There is no end of adaptations and homages out there in just about every genre imaginable and his influence can clearly be seen on countless pop culture figures. It would be easy to simply attribute this enduring quality to the fact that he is one of the first protagonists in the detective story genre, but it goes beyond that.
At their heart, mysteries are about answers. We play a game with the text and try to beat the detective to the answer. If we get it right then we feel intelligent. If we get it wrong—then, well, there’s always the next story and the promise of further questions. Beyond that, there is a comfort in knowing that there will be an answer. Unlike reality, which is seemingly ruled by chaotic, unknowable forces beyond our control, mysteries operate under the assumption that everything makes sense. There is a direct causal relationship between point A and point B and that relationship is knowable if we understand how to observe and recognize patterns. In a way, it’s a very mechanistic, very human, worldview, and perhaps no one embodies that more than Sherlock Holmes. This, more than anything else, helps explain why his adventures are still being told today in collections such as this.
The fourteen stories in this collection range from the traditional Holmes and Watson adventure to the more fantastic to the downright blasphemous. Each of them is well-written and entertaining, but three in particular deserve mention: “The Loss of Chapter Twenty-One,” “The Tragic Affair of the Martian Ambassador,” and “Woman’s Work.”
“The Loss of Chapter Twenty-One” concerns a fanciful meeting between Holmes and Sir Richard Francis Burton, one of England’s most revered adventurers. Holmes is summoned to Burton’s bedside by Algernon Swinburne, Burton’s friend and one of England’s premiere poets. Although dying, Burton is working tirelessly on translating The Perfumed Garden of Cheikh Nefzaoui, an Arabian manuscript concerning sex. A thief entered Burton’s apartment, killed a man, and stole the infamous twenty-first chapter, which described homosexual acts. Swinburne wants Holmes to find the culprit and retrieve the chapter without involving the police because the chapter would be considered pornography.
What makes this story so interesting is the intertwining of fact and fiction and the problems it raises about a society’s sense of morality and how that impacts the retaining of knowledge. It’s also a great deal of fun because Burton is portrayed as every bit Holmes’s equal in terms of powers of observation and deduction and the interactions between them—albeit brief—were very interesting to read.
“The Tragic Affair of the Martian Ambassador” mixes fiction and history. It posits a world where the Martians from H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds made contact and established diplomatic embassies on Earth. Holmes is brought in to solve the apparent murder of one such ambassador and in the process meets Wells, who is working for the embassy. This one is worth noting because it’s the weakest of the fourteen. The mixing of Sherlock Holmes and War of the Worlds just didn’t set well with me. It made the setting too fantastic, too far from the spirit of the character. Moreover, it just seemed unnecessary. Nothing particularly interesting or innovative came from paring these two stories together—unlike, for example, the book Sherlock Holmes: The Army of Doctor Moreau, which did a much better job of playing with pastiche. This story is worth mentioning because it also stands out from the others in the collection. In a way it does not seem to fit. Had the other tales been more fantastic then this might have worked better, but its inclusion just seemed odd and offputting.
The final story I will mention, “Woman’s Work,” will no doubt enrage Holmes purists, but it’s probably the best in this entire collection because it actively engages and deconstructs the standard narrative of Sherlock Holmes stories. The protagonist of this tale is Mrs. Hudson, the much put-upon landlady of Holmes and Watson. Traditionally, Mrs. Hudson served as comic relief, or as a method through which Holmes could arrive at a conclusion, typically by making an off-the-cuff remark that somehow manages to allow Holmes to make the final connection in the mystery. However, in this story, it’s Mrs. Hudson that does all the real detective work, typically while Holmes is lost in a drug-addled haze. Not only does this story turn the traditional Holmes tale on its head, but it also features the most realistic detective work in the collection, which I imagine is also the point. Holmes is often written as superhuman, and because we are often witnessing the events from Watson’s point of view, we are not privy to the piece of near-microscopic evidence that Holmes sees that wraps up the case. Holmes, Watson, and Lestrade don’t come off well in “Woman’s Work” but it’s a well-written story that goes beyond the typical Holmes tale and is definitely the crown jewel of this collection.
One of the aspects that makes this book work is that all of the writers are British. There’s a certain flavor to the word choice and placement, as well as a general attitude that’s difficult to describe but fits the character and the setting. It would be silly to say that only British writers could write Sherlock Holmes, but they do bring something to the table that can be missing when the character is tackled by others; a certain British-y-ness, for lack of a better phrase.
In Summary:
I don’t think that readers will ever get tired of Sherlock Holmes. There’s just something about the character that resonates with us to the point where even so-so standard stories featuring the great detective are fun to read simply because they involve him. Thankfully, the stories in this collection are better than so-so (with the exception of “The Tragic Affair of the Martian Ambassador”), especially the wonderful “Woman’s Work,” which delightfully deconstructs and subverts the traditional Sherlock Holmes tale. What makes this even better, though, is the fact that the writers are all British, and they bring to the table a certain ephemeral quality that suits the character and his setting very well. Overall, fans of Holmes would do well to check out this volume. Recommended.
Content Grade: A
Published By: Titan Books
Release Date: February 19, 2013
MSRP:$14.95
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