Category Archives: Character

Gabriel’s Moon & Havoc

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Pack your traveling clothes. These two books will take you on adventures far afield.

In Gabriel’s Moon, the new espionage thriller by William Boyd, a brief prologue tells how thirty-something Gabriel Dax is haunted by the house fire that took his widowed mother’s life and destroyed his childhood home. Gabriel has become a book author and travel writer, speeding off to one destination after another, trying to outrun the flames.

Now Gabriel is in Léopoldville (Kinshasha), capital of the newly established Democratic Republic of the Congo. A friend arranges a spectacular journalistic coup: an interview with the prime minister, the controversial, pro-Soviet Patrice Lamumba—a poor political choice for a leader sitting on a “gold mine” of uranium. Gabriel works hard on the Lamumba article, but his editors spike it. Lamumba, apparently, is old news. Kidnapped in a coup.

Rumors say Lamumba is dead. His editor says that’s not true, and if it were, he’d know it. Of course, it is true, and Gabriel slides into a mirror-world of truths, half-truths, and lies, delivered most convincingly of all. Someone desperately wants his interview tapes, in which Lamumba claimed US, British, and Belgian government operatives were out to get him. He named names.

It’s an exciting read as Gabriel zooms from one assignment to the next, from one strange encounter to another, and develops the self-preservation skills he seems increasingly likely to need. The story is packed with interesting, richly developed characters. Aside from Gabriel, there’s a Spanish artist whose star is falling; a young American woman with a dubious agenda; a CIA operative who uses a minor French author for his nom de guerre; his louche, hard-drinking, and slippery contact in Cadiz; an irritating Liverpool journalist; and a dogged insurance investigator who decades earlier doubted the official story about the deadly fire.

London, Warsaw during the Cold War, Spain, the Congo—Boyd captures them all as effectively as travel writer Gabriel himself might. It’s no surprise that award-winning Scottish author Boyd’s writing is top-notch. He’s a two-time finalist for the Booker Prize.

Christopher Bollen’s protagonist in the new psychological thriller Havoc is Maggie Burkhardt, an 81-year-old widow from Milwaukee, residing at a somewhat unfashionable hotel in Luxor, Egypt. She’s lost everything—husband, daughter—and is making up for their absences by trying to become a presence in other peoples’ lives and “fixing” their problems. Truth told, she’s an interfering busybody, and you may wish she’d get her comeuppance.

Probably you won’t expect her nemesis will turn out to be an eight-year-old boy. Otto Seeber is cunning, fearless, and the orchestrator of much of the havoc that descends on the Royal Karnak Palace Hotel. (This fictional hotel was in part inspired by Luxor’s Winter Palace Hotel, where Bollen got his first notion for this story and Agatha Christie wrote part of Death on the Nile. I’ve been there myself and can attest to the loveliness of the garden with its exotic birds, a frequent meeting place for Bollen’s characters.)

Only Maggie—and her archaeologist friend Ben—see through Otto’s mask of childish innocence to the demonic personality underneath. Ben’s husband, Zachary, having a belated stirring of paternal interest, draws the boy into their circle, and Maggie cannot avoid Otto. He has her in his sights and keeps her there.

Maggie attempts to arrange situations that will prompt Otto’s mother to return with him to Paris. Her plots only succeed in drawing her deeper into a cycle of retribution from Otto. It’s a chess game between them, with a core of malevolence that has prompted comparisons to Patricia Highsmith’s writing.

Bollen’s vivid descriptions seem exactly right. Egypt is a distinctive, “romantic” place, but an unfamiliar world. The rules are different there. Things can go wrong. And do. Maggie is a completely believable, if not completely likeable character. I thought I understood her and her flaws, but in the end, Bollen has some revelations in store that may lead you to reevaluate her. In short, Havoc is a beautifully stage-managed trip to another world.

Precipice

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One of the best books I’ve read this year is Robert Harris’s new political novel, Precipice. He has a penchant for looking at historical fact through the lens of fiction, and in this instance has a fascinating trove of detail to work with. The book begins in July 1914, when 27-year-old Venetia Stanley receives one of her frequent letters from UK Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith, 35 years her senior. The story isn’t a thriller in the conventional sense, but the stakes are so high, the risks so great, and the potential for serious crimes no more than a hair’s-breadth away that it earns its place in that category.

As the story begins, Asquith has been Prime Minister for six years. The country—is mere weeks from the beginning of the military catastrophe of World War I. Not only is the world “on the precipice” of disaster, Asquith himself is courting political calamity, with many, many tough calculations and decisions looming. Yet he finds time and mental energy to devote to this astonishing epistolary romance. It isn’t terribly surprising that a charismatic, handsome politician would have an affair. Goodness knows, political leaders are hardly models of marital fidelity. The surprise is the degree of his obsession.

The public first learned of this correspondence when about half the letters were published in 1982, and history buffs may be familiar with this story, but it was new to me. Thus, I was particular struck by Harris’s assurance that all the Prime Minister’s letters quoted are authentic, as are excerpts from other official documents. On his last day at Number 10, after being ousted by ambitious David Lloyd George, Asquith burned Venetia’s letters to him. Now Harris has created her half of the conversation in this book.

Asquith writes Venetia not just an occasional letter, but an astonishing 560 over a three-year period, at times as many as three a day. He writes them during deliberations of the war council, when he should be writing speeches, during cabinet meetings, and he sends her copies of telegrams and other official and secret correspondence. At critical points in the government’s deliberations leading up to and during the war, he is severely distracted.

You may start out with some sympathy for them both. He is under almost unbearable pressure, surrounded by officials whose motives are partially or wholly self-interested. He cannot confide in his wife, as Harris describes her, because she is highly opinionated and indiscreet. She wants so badly to be an insider, but her behavior assures she cannot be. When he first became Prime Minister, she referred to herself as the Prime Ministress, but he soon put a stop to that.

Harris invents a fictional Scotland Yard operative, Paul Deemer, who’s assigned to read their correspondence, which is being intercepted, and determine whether it’s being leaked to German spies. It’s filled with endearments, but also contains war plans, troop movements, and political maneuverings. Venetia knows more about what is going on at the top of British government than almost anyone else. Plus, she’s privy to the PM’s take on things, which in his hands-off, wait-and-see management style, plenty of other people would like to know.

Venetia, as Harris portrays her, justifies her closeness to Prime, as she calls him, because she serves a unique role as his confidant and safety valve. He relies on her judgment and loyalty. If that were the extent of their relationship (the full extent is unknown, but if you read between the lines of his correspondence, you may have an opinion)—it would be irregular, possibly traitorous, but understandable. Gradually, however, his preoccupation with her becomes oppressive.

As wartime events mount in their seriousness, the burden of all her special knowledge becomes almost unbearable, and she resolves to create a life of her own. She takes up a nursing course with an eye to tending wounded soldiers in France, a move the PM finds almost intolerable. She can no longer be available to him as often as he would wish and his letters take on a whining, wheedling tone, that you may find more appropriate to a fifteen-year-old boy, not a mature, successful man in his sixties. You may have to keep reminding yourself that these are his actual words.

As an experienced writer of historical fiction, Harris has a good eye for period detail and the telling anecdote that will create believable, almost overpowering drama. In a great many thrillers, you may not care all that much about the characters, but in Precipice, you do and you must. It’s a terrific book.

Order from Amazon here.

Looking for a Weekend Movie?

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Here are brief takes on four films we’ve seen lately. All have good points. The one I enjoyed most is first.

The Cowboy and the Queen
You may have seen previous coverage of horse whisperer Monty Roberts. Now you see him in a reflective mood, looking back over the shape of his career. Son of an abusive dad, he was determined not to follow that path (trailer). By watching horses in the wild, he began to understand how they communicated, and he adopted their approach in his training. “Breaking horses,” he says, amounts to breaking their spirit; they’re abused until they give up. He doesn’t do it that way. So, where does the Queen come in? We’re talking about Elizabeth II, late monarch of Britain, who read articles about Roberts and wanted him to coach some of her equerries in his methods. Like most traditional U.S. horsemen, they were skeptical. They relied on using their aggressive techniques for a week or two until the horse would accept a saddle and, ultimately, a rider. Roberts could achieve this in less than twenty minutes. The Queen comes across beautifully, and so does the cowboy! A real feel-good film. For a fictional take on humane horse-training, there’s the wonderful 2018 film, The Rider.

The Critic
You can’t fault Ian McKellan’s portrayal of an odious 1930s theater critic for a dying London newspaper (trailer). He delights in skewering the shows and performers he reviews, and, although at first I found him a nice contrast to the starchy newspaper publisher, when he roped an ambitious female lead into his manipulative schemes, I gave up on him. The performances are all good, but he’s no hero.
Rotten Tomatoes Critics’ Rating: 47%; Audiences: 73%.

Between the Temples
Ben Gottlieb (Jason Schwartzman) is the nebbishy cantor of a synagogue with a transparently ambitious rabbi (trailer). Through stress and anxiety, he’s lost his voice and is near suicide. Coming to his rescue (in more ways than one) is Mrs. Kessler (Carol Kane), his elementary school choral teacher. No one in their families is sure what the relationship is, exactly, they just know they don’t like it. Some good jokes, some outlandish family behavior. A pleasant film with a few slow spots.
Rotten Tomatoes Critics’ Rating: 85%; Audiences: 41%.

Skincare
This thriller loosely inspired by a true story, centers on a Hollywood entrepreneur who has developed her own line of facial products, using European (fancy!) ingredients (trailer). Her struggling business faces an existential crisis when a competitor moves in across the street. Violence ensues (nothing too graphic). Entertaining, and Elizabeth Banks is perfect as the increasingly frantic beauty maven. Coincidentally, I recently read a short piece about her in The New Yorker, where she talked about difficulty getting parts in her early career, in part because “I wasn’t pretty enough.” In this film, she’s a knockout!
Rotten Tomatoes Critics’ Rating: 65%; Audiences: 64%.

Weekend Movies? Fun, but not Must-Sees

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The Widow Clicquot

We liked the movie The Widow Clicquot, because, well—France, champagne, why not? You know, the orange label (trailer). The scenery was beautiful, and the film was directed by Thomas Q. Napper. Though the predictable plot didn’t break any new ground, it lulls you into a deep sense of enjoyment. In the early 1800s, the unexpectedly widowed Barbe-Nicole Clicquot (Haley Bennett) can either give up or resolve to implement the vision of her late, adored husband (Tom Sturridge) as to how a champagne winery should operate. The odds are against her.

Rotten Tomatoes critics rating: 85%; audiences: 85%.

Thelma

It’s exhilarating to see June Squibb, as an irrepressible 93-year-old woman doing her thing, not to mention the last performance of the late Richard Roundtree (trailer). Both of them made the film worthwhile, though it was a little disappointing that director Josh Margolin didn’t stretch them beyond the predictable. In the story, grandma Thelma is bilked out of $10,000 by a scammer pretending to be her grandson (Fred Hechinger). How she resolves to get her money back and becomes a superannuated action hero to try, is the plot. I must say that, although there are comic moments, having seen most of them in multiple viewings of the film’s trailer, not much was left to discover! Parker Posey, as Thelma’s daughter, is a terrifying helicopter mom. But, if you’re feeling old and cranky, it’s a good one.

Rotten Tomatoes critics rating: 99%; audiences: 83%.

Crime Fiction: Partners, Sidekicks, and Foils

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Paging through the notes I’ve taken on innumerable Zoom calls—book discussions, writing tips, publishing conundrums—one from a few months ago caught my eye. The Zoom was sponsored by the New York area chapter of Mystery Writers of America, organized and moderated by expert author Gary Earl Ross of Buffalo.

It was a discussion about “partners in crime” detection—the reasons why in crime fiction the principal detective so often has a sidekick. It’s quite a useful device, because a slightly dim or new-on-the-job partner gives the detective a reason for explaining (to the reader) what they’re doing and why they’re doing it in a natural-feeling way.

As I’m rereading all of Sherlock Holmes currently, Conan Doyle uses Watson in this way. He is not dull-witted (the Nigel Bruce portrayal notwithstanding), but he finds Holmes’s methods baffling. You can empathize with his confusion, especially when Holmes is attempting some high-wire mental acrobatics, and you can feel a tiny bit superior to Watson, confident that Holmes will have it all figured out, even if you can’t see how he gets from A to Z, either.

One characteristic of our fictional detectives that readers (and viewers and hearers) like is their perseverance. Tim Sullivan’s Detective George Cross is like that. He doesn’t give up on an investigation, even when his superiors insist the case is solved. He keeps at it and…he’s right. As Ross said, readers appreciate an investigator who works hard. Of course, it’s the #2 who’ll have to kick in the doors (I’m looking at you, Ben Jones).

In cozy mysteries the bake shop owner (etc.) and her confederates (shop assistant, sister, best friend) frequently encounter a kind of person they don’t generally have to deal with. These meetings inspire readers’ thoughts of how they would handle that kind of person or situation. And, in cozies, having these confederates around provides some safety in numbers.  

Partners can not only provide flashes of insight, they also earn their keep by inserting a bit of humor. The lead detective’s colleagues in the New Zealand cozy-adjacent television series Brokenwood (quite fun) are not only good investigators themselves, they contribute big-time to squadroom humor.

Conveying a sense of justice is good rationale for the genre. But that’s not always simple. I’m thinking about S.A. Cosby’s Razorblade Tears—one of his very best—and the uneasy partnership between two very different fathers. It’s that collaboration that lets Cosby explore highly fraught social territory.

Justice, of course, doesn’t always mean following the letter of the law, or even enforcing the laws. Having a partner lets a character thrash out those options. Here I’m thinking of The Plinko Bounce by Martin Clark—a wonderful tale about a public defender and his colleagues trying not to be outplayed by the man they’re defending. In crime stories, characters with a strong sense of right and wrong may find it in the law and, sometimes, outside it. In tricky situations, it’s great to have a partner you trust to hash things out with.

Another Taste of France: Bruno: Chief of Police

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Now that we’re all Frenchified from watching the Olympics and their stunning opening ceremonies, which showed the Paris at its best, we can take a breath and turn to some of the country’s many other charms.

Millions of UK and US readers have basked in the sunny French countryside via the books by the late Peter Mayle, author of 1989’s A Year in Provence. If you’re one of them, Martin Walker’s more recently written detective series will transport you to a similar, simpler time and place. A place where a meal is something to be lingered over (and described in mouth-watering detail) and a glass of wine is savored, even if it’s the not-all-that-delicious small batch created by your hillside neighbor.

Martin Walker’s series of seventeen mystery novels, published beginning in 2009, retains the witty, warm-hearted, utterly charming feeling Mayle exemplified. Bruno, Chief of Police, is the series opener. The chief’s actual name is Benoît Courrèges, but to everyone, he’s Bruno. His beat is the small town of Saint-Denis and surrounding countryside, located on the Vézère River in the Dordogne—some 450 miles west and a bit north of Provence.

Bruno uses a cell phone, relies on DNA testing, and uses other up-to-date forensic methods, but his real skill is understanding the psychology and behavior of Saint-Denis’s residents. His understanding of what methods will and will not work in getting to the bottom of crimes committed there is acute. Big-city police authorities and the head of the local gendarmerie are ever convinced they know best how to handle situations that arise. But, faced with Bruno’s local intelligence, they’re usually defeated in a most gratifying, often amusing, way—such as a gendarme’s attempt to arrest a boy for possession of a potato (on market day, no less!), which runs quickly aground.

Walker weaves significant contemporary concerns into his rosy descriptions of markets, cafés and wineries. For example, market day offers the opportunity for rule-obsessed EU inspectors to search out cheeses, pâtés, and meats that, despite new restrictions, continue to be produced and sold just the way the sellers’ parents and grand-parents did. A woman cited for selling eggs without the required date stamp actually buys her eggs at the supermarket, washes off the dates, and packages them up with a bit of straw and (don’t think about it) to sell to tourists as real country eggs. And tourists there are, with all their agendas and cultural mishaps.

Intruding on this idyllic existence is the occasional murder, rare for the area, but perfect for Bruno’s particular skills Some stories’ strong political undertow allows the author to explore residents’ attitudes about immigrants, social cohesion, wartime behavior, and the like, which give the stories considerable weight.

Bruno is more than the town’s chief of police. For one thing, he coaches the town’s children who want to play tennis. He thinks it’s A good way to get to know the next generation, whose members soon will enter the risk-prone years of adolescence. He travels the area’s indifferent roadways to visit farm families, keep tabs on their concerns, making numerous friendships among them. When he needs them, they cooperate.

Good food too is a preoccupation. Bruno is an excellent, if unfussy cook, and partakes of the best his region has to over, including the truffles found in the woods behind his house. (I’m salivating.) Naturally, he has a loyal basset hound, Gigi, to keep him company and manage his hunting expeditions.

Bottom line: Walker’s mysteries are a pleasant way to spend a few hours. More than that, the investigations he’s designed dig into many facets of rural life as it has been and as it changes. Not all of them are pretty, and the appearance of simplicity is only on the surface. Along the way he introduces you to interesting local characters and captures a few idyllic moments. You’re very likely to want more of both.

Walker is a former foreign correspondent for The Guardian, has written a number of nonfiction historical and political books and lives in France’s Périgord region.

Why Does Sherlock Holmes Endure?

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For the past few weeks, I’ve reported here the thoughts of some of today’s leading authors of Sherlock efforts to reproduce his world. These authors care passionately about the Holmes/Watson legacy. They demonstrated this through their contributions to the anthology, Sherlock Holmes: A Year of Mystery 1885, edited by Richard T. Ryan. It’s one of a series filling in the years 1881-1886, when almost no Holmes cases were reported. Contemporary writers, not content to assume the duo temporarily retired during that period, have enthusiastically created adventures to fill in the gap.

One last question I asked them was why Holmes and Watson have had such enduring reader appeal. (People who’ve seen these posts in social media have also weighed in on this question!) Author DJ Tyrer says that, for him, the attraction lies in the rapport between Holmes and Watson. Shelby Phoenix terms it their “genuine fondness for each other.” Tyrer says “There’s a depth to their relationship, their friendship, and their investigative partnership that is more than the sum of its parts.”

George Jacobs says that friendship helps anchor the sometimes aloof and calculating Holmes—“ultimately unknowable” says Katy Darby. Yet, Jacobs says, they’re both very likeable heroes, with Watson “the classic everyman,” so brave and loyal readers keep rooting for him, and with Holmes’s strong sense of morality—even when it contradicts that law or social convention. As Paul Hiscock points out, literature has many great detectives, but far fewer memorable sidekicks. “Readers can respect Watson, just as Holmes does. His relatability allows Holmes to be exceptional without alienating the reader.” (The duo of Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock comes to mind.) Frequent Holmes/Watson pasticher David Marcum finds the pairing an “amazing narrative device to show a brilliant person—someone always two steps ahead of what’s going on—from the perspective of the everyman narrator.”

Add to all that the strength of Doyle’s writing, especially his characterizations, says Hassan Akram: “His characters live and breathe.” Also, Doyle focuses on the crime, Phoenix points out, not on tension and distrust between characters, as many writers do today. Darby points out that, because the stories “are easy and fun to read, they’re often underestimated as the highly skilled work they are,” in terms of plot, action, and character development.

Author George Gardner believes that our continued exposure to these personalities and their world has made the stories “readily imaginable to the reader.” We instantly recognize the names of Lestrade, Mrs. Hudson, and Baker Street, but they are remote enough in time to give “an air of the fantastic to the stories.” Holmes is “the epitome of a detective” for many, many people, says Gustavo Bondoni, and readers have found his fog-covered streets a most evocative time and place. Even people who read his adventures in the World War I trenches, like Kevin Thornton’s grandfather, eagerly introduced them to later generations.

Developing and writing a story in the late-Victorian London setting, “is even more immersive than reading one,” says Akram. So, let’s see how he did with his story, generously larded with wry wit, “The Return of the Buckinghamshire Baronet.”

Here goes: A partially burned telegram is a clue to the distant town where Holmes believes a bank robber has hidden his loot. Holmes and Watson’s old acquaintance, a Baronet, lives there and is about to be married. He appears at Baker Street with the astonishing proposal that Holmes perform his “deducing” act at the wedding. (Holmes, not surprisingly, declines.) Still, the Baronet offers a week’s invitation to stay at his manor house before the ceremony, and there, another species of financial pandemonium soon erupts.

I asked Akram about his use of humor in this story, and he thinks “it’s more difficult to use humor to good effect when the characters are so familiar.” Thus, most of his story’s humor comes from their slightly dim friend and other minor characters. The personas of Holmes and Watson having reached “almost mythical” status, he says, requires that they be treated with complete respect. Doyle’s own sense of the absurd “has been underrated in the face of his more serious elements, though it’s clearly visible in a story like ‘The Red-Headed League,’ when Holmes and Watson burst into laughter on hearing the client’s story.”

The popularity of Holmes and Watson endures, regularly refreshed by the work of the authors mentioned above. Their stories in Sherlock Holmes: A Year of Mystery 1885 are:
D.J. Tyrer – “The Japanese Village Mystery”
Shelby Phoenix – “Sherlock Holmes and the Six-Fingered Hand Print”
George Jacobs – “The Mystery of the Cloven Cord”
Katy Darby – “The Adventure of the Lock Hospital”
Paul Hiscock – “The Light of Liberty”
David Marcum – “The Faulty Gallows”
George Gardner – “The Adventure of the Damaged Tomb”
Gustavo Bondoni – “The Burning Mania”
Kevin Thornton – “Tracks Across Canada” and “Tracked Across America”

Beware of Foreign Entanglements!

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While Victorian society often seems hidebound, clinging to a certain worldview (British is best), previous posts in this series have talked about how rapidly the world, and that world specifically, was changing. Travel was speeding up, the telegraph had been invented, laws were changing, and many Britishers had visited the Empire’s far corners, or, as in Katy Darby’s story, had served in the Army there. Of course, that wasn’t the only way Victorians learned about the rest of the world—it also came to them, for better or worse. In Belanger Books’s entertaining volume Sherlock Holmes: A Year of Mystery 1885, edited by Richard Ryan, contemporary authors look at any number of external influences on Holmes’s milieu.

These external forces are all the more consequential because, as George Gardner maintains, “no other historical period is so iconic and fully-formed in the mind of both reader and writer.” Or, as author Kevin Thornton put it, “with a Holmes story, there is no need for back story, to explain who the characters are, what they do, and what the story is about. It’s all there as soon as you mention Sherlock or 221B.” A situation ready-made for exciting surprises.

Certainly, it takes a vivid imagination to figure out how such well-known characters would have reacted to the era’s untoward events, like the Irish separatists’ bombings. Gardner’s story has Watson “jumping at shadows,” but Holmes takes a more measured view, seeming to believe “the hysteria and fear around the Fenian bombers were a larger threat than the bombings themselves.” Another example is in Shelby Phoenix’s story, which involves a shop selling Japanese pottery, “actually pretty popular back in Victorian England,” she says. Bringing goods to England for sale inspired her malefactor to do the same with people.

“While we often picture Holmes and Watson living in a generic Victorian London, the Year of Mystery concept has encouraged me to think about their place in history—about a series of unexpected events that could have happened in the existing historical context,” says author Paul Hiscock.

Here are two stories that exemplify the cross-cultural influences of the time.

“The Mystery of the Cloven Cord” by George Jacobs begins with a visit from Scotland Yard Inspector Gregson, who is bearing an unusual scarf. Cut in half and rolled like a rope, it was abandoned at the scene of an attempted murder. A similar scarf was left at a recent break-in. The victims heard a Bengali dialect. Holmes and Watson soon find themselves in the middle of a foreign intrigue in which miscreants looked to the Thuggees—“bandits and murderers who would roam India, killing and robbing travelers”—for inspiration and had brought their methods to England.

In 1885, hundreds thousands of Britishers visited a major exhibition of Japanese art and culture, which burned to the ground a few days before DJ Tyrer’s story, “The Japanese Village Mystery,” opens. Holmes and Watson become involved when the Village’s proprietor approaches them within days of the fire, fearful he’ll be charged with arson. Watson is called away from this meeting to visit his patient, WS Gilbert (who, in real life, engaged a Village tea server to coach his “three little maids” for The Mikado). Gilbert has been attacked by a black-clad man with a Japanese sword. A similar man is seen combing through the exhibition ruins, and the proprietor insists the man is “a member of that sect of assassins known as the Shinobi.” Once again, foreign entanglements have a dangerous side!

The authors mentioned herein cleverly use foreign influences and experiences to increase the intrigue in Holmes’s world. Their stories in Sherlock Holmes: A Year of Mystery 1885 are:
Katy Darby – “The Adventure of the Lock Hospital”
George Gardner – “The Adventure of the Damaged Tomb”
Kevin Thornton – “Tracks Across Canada” and “Tracked Across America”
Paul Hiscock – “The Light of Liberty”
Shelby Phoenix – “Sherlock Holmes and the Six-Fingered Hand Print”

Behind That Clever Mask

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Quite a few contemporary short story writers look to Victorian England—and the Great Detective—for their inspiration. Yet there are aspects of Holmes’s erudition, personality, and behavior that Conan Doyle leaves discreetly unstated. Most notably, libido. We’ll get to how authors of several stories in Belanger Books’ recently published Sherlock Holmes: A Year of Mystery 1885, address that gap.

Readers can miss some of the more subtle aspects of the Great Detective’s character, as well, if they focus too intently on his cleverness. Author Shelby Phoenix believes that focus obscures “the full richness of Holmes’s character”—eccentric, complex, yes, but also compassionate. Holmes keeps “the full colors of his personality” to himself, she says, showing them only in flashes and cracks. Holmes has a strong moral sense and can admit when he’s wrong, George Jacobs says. DJ Tyrer believes his occasional fallibility allows for a more well-rounded character than readers may imagine.

Prolific Holmes pasticher (is that a word?) David Marcum, among other authors in this collection, emphasizes the humanity that hides beneath the façade, “in the way that Mr. Spock insisted that he was Vulcan, denying and covering his human side,” while “some of his best scenes were when the mask slipped.” One of Marcum’s favorite aspects to the stories is the long, healthy friendship between Holmes and Watson, built on loyalty and, yes, a sense of humor.

When readers merely wait for Holmes to solve a crime, says George Gardner, they miss seeing his thought process and logical reasoning, as in “The Adventure of theDancing Men,” which lays out the detective’s code-breaking methods. Holmes’s conclusions aren’t magic; his cleverness is earned. But Holmes isn’t just a thinking machine, as Paul Hiscock points out, he’s always up for adventure. He cares for his clients and enjoys his work. If a Holmes pastiche overlooks this sense of excitement, he says, they “end up cold and lifeless.”

As Phoenix aptly summed up, “To focus only on what his mind is capable of doing is falling into his trap.”

In this Volume
Authors Gustavo Bondoni and Kevin Thornton commented that Holmes fans shouldn’t overlook the whole fascinating Victorian world with its atmosphere and its fog, its bright spots and blind spots. One of those Victorian blind spots is the bifurcated treatment of women (saint versus sinner). The three women authors in this collection took treatment of women as their theme.

Two of their stories key off of a major real-life debate in 1885 England: reform of the Contagious Diseases Acts. These laws were intended to counter the high rate of venereal diseases in the military, blamed on the prostitutes who camped out near army bases and navy ports. Dr. Watson, being both a doctor and former military man, had seen this problem up close, and had thought the laws were appropriate. That is, until in Katy Darby’s “The Adventure of the Lock Hospital,” an ex-soldier clergyman and Watson’s old friend bring to his attention the plight of a falsely accused young woman headed for a “lock hospital.” She was a former street-walker whose life turned around after the clergyman brought her into the church and found her a respectable job. Now she’s been misdiagnosed with syphilis, and her future is precarious.

(Under English law at the time, police could pull aside any woman they merely “thought” was a prostitute, forcibly examine her, and send her to a “lock hospital” for a period of months without trial. Available treatments were ineffective, even dangerous. The women lost their jobs, if they had them, and had to abandon their families.)

In Darby’s story, Holmes must identify the machinations behind the young woman’s arrest, while Dr. Watson strives to arrive at a correct diagnosis. And the pair isn’t above using some unorthodox, if dubiously lawful, methods—living up to the word “Adventure”!

In my story, “A Brick through the Window,” which I’ve written about previously, Holmes and Watson help crusading journalist William T. Stead. In real life, Stead not only fought the contagious disease laws, but also campaigned against the poverty leading London families to sell their young daughters into prostitution. Quite a spicy scandal at the time, as you’d imagine.

Shelby Phoenix’s “Sherlock Holmes and the Six-Fingered Hand Print” takes up the issue of female trafficking, in an atmospheric story of murder in a lowly Japanese pottery shop. Lord Byron Keeper, well-known gambler and man-about-town, has been entranced by the shopkeeper’s Japanese wife and is the chief suspect when the shady shopkeeper is murdered by someone who leaves behind a bloody six-fingered handprint. Only Holmes recognizes that two women’s survival is at stake. As Phoenix says, the satisfying outcome of this story is more evidence of Holmes’s deeply ingrained, if idiosyncratic, moral sense. And, she says, it reflects his wry remark in “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle”: “I am not retained by the police to supply their deficiencies.” The authors mentioned above expertly portray Holmes’s many facets. Their stories in Sherlock Holmes: A Year of Mystery 1885 are:
George Jacobs – “The Mystery of the Cloven Cord”
D.J. Tyrer – “The Japanese Village Mystery”
David Marcum – “The Faulty Gallows”
George Gardner – “The Adventure of the Damaged Tomb”
Paul Hiscock – “The Light of Liberty”
Gustavo Bondoni – “The Burning Mania”
Kevin Thornton – “Tracks Across Canada” and “Tracked Across America”

Letting Dr. John Watson Occupy Your Writing Brain

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Authors of the 14 pastiches in the recent anthology, Sherlock Holmes: A Year of Mystery 1885, edited by Richard T. Ryan, talked about how they time-travel from the 21st century back to the Victorian era for their stories.

Most of the anthology’s contemporary authors—including DJ Tyrer, George Gardner, and George Jacobs say re-reading some of the Sherlock Holmes stories gets them going. This, or watching one of the Basil Rathbone films, helps Hassan Akram “get into Watson’s mental atmosphere.” Tyrer uses the original stories to channel Watson’s voice and remind himself how Holmes talks. When Gardner starts writing, he tries to adhere to the stories’ basic structure: Watson sets the scene, a visitor arrives at Baker Street and explains the problem, Holmes (and sometimes Watson, too) investigates, the villain is apprehended, and the pair discuss the case in an epilogue. If Jacobs gets stuck, he finds a jumping off point by seeing how Conan Doyle approached an analogous situation in one of the stories. He also says that the audiobooks narrated by Simon Vance help him “keep the voice going in my head.”

As Gardner noted, “Watson has quite a direct voice suited for action scenes, but he still retains a Victorian flourish in some of his descriptions.” The language “has to be consistent not only with the era, but also with Watson’s social standing and experience,” Gustavo Bondoni says, adding that Watson is “a gentleman with a military (and medical past), he will think in very specific ways, and I don’t want to get out of that groove.” Katy Darby says “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but it has to be accurate, otherwise, what’s the point?”

The stories have to establish the right tone, too. Paul Hiscock says that the author guidelines for one of the first of the many Holmes pastiches he has written advised that Watson should always refer to The Great Detective as Holmes, not Sherlock. This formal touch, even within such a close relationship, helps establish that correct tone and, with all his experience, he says, “these days I barely think about it.”

David Marcum has written so many Sherlockian pastiches that the can afford to, as he says, “simply wait for Watson to speak.” He says he never knows more about the situation than does Watson, “who is in the middle of it and watching it unfold” (spoken like a true pantser). This makes the story all very immediate to him, and he says he can re-read one of his earlier stories and, “except for a few plot highlights, the whole thing is a surprise to me.”

Getting into Watson’s head? Kevin Thornton says, “A slightly pompous, middle-aged, educated white man? I think I have that covered.” LOL

Let’s take a closer look at Paul Hiscock’s captivating story, “The Light of Liberty,” dealing with political and fundraising difficulties surrounding the Statue of Liberty. Designed and built in France, the Colossus was to arrive (disassembled) in New York in 1885, there to await completion of its pedestal. But a key piece of the statue—the Flame of Liberty—has been stolen from a warehouse near the docks in Rouen.

Holmes and Watson journey to France to sort out this tricky diplomatic business, which is perfectly suited to Holmes’s deft touch. You’ll meet French Inspector Lapointe, even more reluctant to accept Holmes’s help than his English counterparts. Liberté!

See how these authors put fact and fiction together. Their stories in Sherlock Holmes: A Year of Mystery 1885 are:
D.J. Tyrer – “The Japanese Village Mystery”
George Gardner – “The Adventure of the Damaged Tomb”
George Jacobs – “The Mystery of the Cloven Cord”
Hassan Akram – “The Return of the Buckinghamshire Baronet”
Gustavo Bondoni – “The Burning Mania”
Katy Darby – “The Adventure of the Lock Hospital”
Shelby Phoenix – “Sherlock Holmes and the Six-Fingered Hand Print”
Paul Hiscock – “The Light of Liberty”
David Marcum – “The Faulty Gallows”
Kevin Thornton – “Tracks Across Canada” and “Tracked Across America”

Photo of Sherlock Holmes London statue by Oxfordian Kissuth, Creative Commons license.