{"id":10895,"date":"2024-03-18T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-03-18T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10895"},"modified":"2024-05-08T08:08:24","modified_gmt":"2024-05-08T12:08:24","slug":"behind-that-clever-mask","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10895","title":{"rendered":"Behind That Clever Mask"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Quite a few contemporary short story writers look to Victorian England\u2014and the Great Detective\u2014for their inspiration. Yet there are aspects of Holmes\u2019s erudition, personality, and behavior that Conan Doyle leaves discreetly unstated. Most notably, libido. We\u2019ll get to how authors of several stories in Belanger Books\u2019 recently published Sherlock Holmes: A Year of Mystery 1885<\/em><\/a>, address that gap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Readers can miss some of the more subtle aspects of the Great Detective\u2019s character, as well, if they focus too intently on his cleverness. Author Shelby Phoenix believes that focus obscures \u201cthe full richness of Holmes\u2019s character\u201d\u2014eccentric, complex, yes, but also compassionate. Holmes keeps \u201cthe full colors of his personality\u201d to himself, she says, showing them only in flashes and cracks. Holmes has a strong moral sense and can admit when he\u2019s wrong, George Jacobs says. DJ Tyrer believes his occasional fallibility allows for a more well-rounded character than readers may imagine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prolific Holmes pasticher (is that a word?) David Marcum, among other authors in this collection, emphasizes the humanity that hides beneath the fa\u00e7ade, \u201cin the way that Mr. Spock insisted that he was Vulcan, denying and covering his human side,\u201d while \u201csome of his best scenes were when the mask slipped.\u201d One of Marcum\u2019s favorite aspects to the stories is the long, healthy friendship between Holmes and Watson, built on loyalty and, yes, a sense of humor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When readers merely wait for Holmes to solve a crime, says George Gardner, they miss seeing his thought process and logical reasoning, as in \u201cThe Adventure of theDancing Men,\u201d which lays out the detective\u2019s code-breaking methods. Holmes\u2019s conclusions aren\u2019t magic; his cleverness is earned. But Holmes isn\u2019t just a thinking machine, as Paul Hiscock points out, he\u2019s 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 \u201cend up cold and lifeless.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Phoenix aptly summed up, \u201cTo focus only on what his mind is capable of doing is falling into his trap.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

In this Volume<\/em>
Authors Gustavo Bondoni and Kevin Thornton commented that Holmes fans shouldn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s \u201cThe Adventure of the Lock Hospital,\u201d an ex-soldier clergyman and Watson\u2019s old friend bring to his attention the plight of a falsely accused young woman headed for a \u201clock hospital.\u201d 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\u2019s been misdiagnosed with syphilis, and her future is precarious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Under English law at the time, police could pull aside any woman they merely \u201cthought\u201d was a prostitute, forcibly examine her, and send her to a \u201clock hospital\u201d 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.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Darby\u2019s story, Holmes must identify the machinations behind the young woman\u2019s arrest, while Dr. Watson strives to arrive at a correct diagnosis. And the pair isn\u2019t above using some unorthodox, if dubiously lawful, methods\u2014living up to the word \u201cAdventure\u201d!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my story, \u201cA Brick through the Window,\u201d which I\u2019ve written about previously<\/a>, 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\u2019d imagine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shelby Phoenix\u2019s \u201cSherlock Holmes and the Six-Fingered Hand Print\u201d 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\u2019s 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\u2019s survival is at stake. As Phoenix says, the satisfying outcome of this story is more evidence of Holmes\u2019s deeply ingrained, if idiosyncratic, moral sense. And, she says, it reflects his wry remark in \u201cThe Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle\u201d: \u201cI am not retained by the police to supply their deficiencies.\u201d The authors mentioned above expertly portray Holmes\u2019s many facets. Their stories in Sherlock Holmes: A Year of Mystery 1885<\/em><\/a> are:
George Jacobs – \u201cThe Mystery of the Cloven Cord\u201d
D.J. Tyrer – \u201cThe Japanese Village Mystery\u201d
David Marcum – \u201cThe Faulty Gallows\u201d
George Gardner – \u201cThe Adventure of the Damaged Tomb\u201d
Paul Hiscock – \u201cThe Light of Liberty\u201d
Gustavo Bondoni – \u201cThe Burning Mania\u201d
Kevin Thornton – \u201cTracks Across Canada\u201d and \u201cTracked Across America\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Quite a few contemporary short story writers look to Victorian England\u2014and the Great Detective\u2014for their inspiration. Yet there are aspects of Holmes\u2019s erudition, personality, and behavior that Conan Doyle leaves discreetly unstated. Most notably, libido. We\u2019ll get to how authors … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1335,61,174,29],"tags":[1906,2166,275,2165],"class_list":["post-10895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-amateur-detective","category-character","category-first-draft-blog","category-writing","tag-crime","tag-detective","tag-sherlock-holmes","tag-short-stories"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2PJ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10895"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10900,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10895\/revisions\/10900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}