The Recently Discovered Journals of Dr John H. Watson, M.D. Regarding the Life and Cases of the Great Detective, Mr Sherlock Holmes of 221b Baker Street, London. Reviewed by Catherine D. Stewart Pastiches of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories have been around for a long time, appearing within a few years of the great author's death and including such contributors as his grandson, Adrian Conan Doyle, and his biographer, the excellent John Dickson Carr. Part of the reason for this "proliferation of pastiche" is that Doyle's creation became the Gold Standard by which murder- mystery/crime fiction measured itself. Attempts at emulating "Holmesesque" crime writing were begun by Doyle's own contemporaries, notably his brother-in-law, E. W. Hornung, with the A. J. Raffles/Bunny Manders stories, beginning with The Amateur Cracksman, in which Raffles is Holmes (even down to physical description) on the other side of the law. As Richard Lancelyn Green states in his Preface to the above book, such reached it's "apogee with Sexton Blake, who actually had rooms in Baker Street" and the corpulent Nero Wolfe (a near perfect description of Mycroft Holmes), supposedly Holmes' illegitimate son by Irene Adler (see box below, Wold Newton Theory). Even the great Agatha Christie's Miss Marple and portly Belgian mastermind Hercule Poirot, were influenced by the great detective - indeed, one pastiche, The Adventure of Hillerman Hall, by Julian Symon, has the elderly Holmes being visited at his Sussex home by a very young Miss Marple. Doyle only wrote 60 Sherlock Holmes stories, but virtually every story has Watson referring, tantalisingly, to one or two never-recorded incidents, such as the "case of the Abergavenny Murders". Pastiche also panders to the human tendency to wander "what if.?". There is little doubt that Sir Arthur would eventually have written more Sherlock Holmes stories had it not been for the tragic downturn in his personal life. The horror of WW1, which killed his brother, son and nephew, and saw his belief that science would replace religion as a benevolent force destroyed by "man's inhumanity to man", basically ended his career as a "real writer". Becoming ensnared by spiritualists seeking respectability, one of Conan Doyle's last books, The Land of Mist, a Professor Challenger "adventure", is nothing more than a barely-fictionalised defence of spiritualism, Conan Doyle having callously despatched Mrs Challenger, Professor Summerlee and introducing a (blatantly) previously non-existent daughter. Pastiche enables us to explore the life of Sherlock Holmes in an alternative universe where, just as with P. G. Wodehouse's Jeeves & Wooster, World War 1 never happened. The New Sherlock Holmes Adventures is divided into four parts: The Early Years, The 1880s, The 1890s and The Final Years, each story having an introduction putting it into context with "the canon". All the contributing writers are Sherlockians, that is, they write as if Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was the publishing agent of a real-life Dr Watson, not a fiction writer, and some adhere to the Wold Newton Theory Universe (see box below). Part I contains only two stories, The Bothersome Business of the Dutch Nativity and The Affray at the Kildare Street Club, both told from the viewpoint of Dr Watson from a "many years after" stance, regarding Holmes who at the time was about 20-21 years old. Both quite good, the latter is the more "interesting" of the two in that it details Sherlock Holmes first bitterly acrimonious meeting with Colonel Sebastian Moran, right-hand man of Professor Moriarty. However, the first story clears up the discrepancy of Holmes attending two universities (remember, Conan Doyle wrote his stories as serials for magazines, and there were errors that slipped through, such as naming two different colleges, incorrect dating of cases before/after Watson's marriage to Mary Morstan, and of course, the famous "migratory war wound" of Dr Watson), by revealing that Holmes is in fact Irish, not English, and went to Trinity College, Dublin, before transferring to Oxford. Parts II, III & IV total 24 stories, including a rather good attempt at The Repulsive Story of The Red Leech, by David Langford in Part III, though somewhat disappointingly, no one tried to bring us the case of The Giant Rat of Sumatra, for which the "world is not ready" according to Watson. Included in Part II is The Adventure of the Dorset Street Lodger, in which Holmes catches an American serial killer, by sci- fi luminary Michael Moorcock, a devotee of things Victorian, as shown in his Dancers at the End of Time. Also in Part III, we have a rare "failure" case, a la The Yellow Face, namely The Adventure of the Suffering Ruler by H. R. F. Keating, in which Holmes' enthusiasm gets the better of him regarding one of Dr Watson's patients. Also in Part II, The Adventure of the Fallen Star by Simon Clark is a play on words, referring to both a literal and figuratively fallen luminary. A particularly good story in Part II again is The Case of the Sporting Squire by Guy N. Smith, which I mention because it contains a murder method that you don't get until it's explained. The reason I highlight it is because the New Sherlock Holmes Adventures are NOT murder/crime mysteries in the general sense of the words. These are Sherlock Holmes stories, but NOT Sherlock Holmes mystery stories. That is, to paraphrase the Foreword by Richard Lancelyn Green, they highlight previously unclear aspects of Holmes character and life, but not necessarily do they have him solving the sort of intricately puzzling cases that Arthur Conan Doyle dreamed up. This is by no means due to any deficiency on the part of the contributing authors, but the most ardent Sherlock Holmes afficianado must be realistic. It is difficult to "get inside" the head of another writer at the best of times, never mind nearly three-quarters of a century after his death. Also, to be blunt, the socio-political background that allowed Holmes to be such a great "observer" no longer exists. Victorian England was much more divided along class lines in Doyle's lifetime. It was possible for the average man on the street, never mind Sherlock Holmes, to take one glance at a passer by and be able to tell with 98% accuracy what that man or woman's occupation and social class was, just from their clothing or hat, since it was then de rigueur not to go outside without some sort of headgear, which was often more of an indicator of status than clothing. These days, hats are relegated to weddings and Lady's Day at Ascot, also, two men clad in jeans and T-shirt can follow one another down the same street and you cannot tell which is the builder's mate and which is the multi-billionaire stockbroker. The occupations that Holmes could draw conclusions from, such as a sailor's tattoo made from rare ink found only in China, are no longer applicable in our global economy where most items used daily by British people have usually got "made in Taiwan" on them. There is also the massive shift in social attitudes. The Yellow Face is the 1st Conan Doyle story that openly mentions Holmes' cocaine habit, and though Watson "disapproves", Doyle gives not a hint of the profound devastation such drug use really causes, and Watson comes across as treating Holmes's cocaine habit with the same not-too-serious disapproval of a parent admonishing a child not to eat too many sweets, perfectly reasonable considering heroin was viewed as a medical cure-all up until the early 1920s. In contrast, if a modern writer (such as those in the New Adventures.) were to incorporate Sherlock Holmes' drug addiction into a story with the same unconcerned not-really-worth-the-fuss attitude, there would be outrage from anti-drug campaigners and so on. Other stories reflect late 20th Century moral attitudes and cultural shifts, not the society in which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle lived. For example, in the introduction to The Affray at the Kildare Street Club by Peter Tremayne (Part I), Watson declares he "suppressed" the tale due to the bigotry of the era, because it highlighted that Holmes was a college friend of Oscar Wilde, famously imprisoned for his homosexuality at the instigation of the Marquess of Queensbury, shocked by the affair between Wilde and his son and heir, Lord Alfred Douglas. Again, this is a story Conan Doyle would never have written. He firmly believed that homosexuality was morally repugnant. It is impossible today to write such a story as "if you were Conan Doyle" because, thanks to the pernicious idiocy that is Political Correctness, the author would be vilified. Nowadays to disagree with homosexuality is considered disgraceful bigotry, but in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's lifetime, it was agreeing with it that was viewed as disgraceful. In some stories, such as The Adventure of the Faithful Retainer (Part III) and The Case of the Suicidal Lawyer (Part IV) the reader has guessed who/what/why within the first page, but what makes the stories still very good is the added nuances of Holmes' character and motivation that the authors bring out. Expecting them to be able to mimic the labyrinthine plot-turns of Conan Doyle is simply unfeasible. Again, as with The Affray at the Kildare Street Club, some stories, such as The Mystery of the Addleton Curse, would never have been written by Conan Doyle because it depends on a "public awareness" of nuclear science not generally seen until after the 1950s in order for the reader to "get it". However, regardless of the above factors, all the stories throughout are well written and good reading. The Wold Newton Universe Theory: This was an innovative and brilliant idea invented by sci-fi author Philip Jos Farmer to explain away why so many of the "Golden Age" heroes and villains (e.g., Holmes, Raffles, James Bond, Moriarty, Fu Manchu, John Roxton, Professor Challenger, Bulldog Drummond, "Doc" Savage, The Spider, G8, etc) were all tall, dark-haired, grey-eyed geniuses [really the result of later writers trying to emulate the success of Holmes by making their characters as much like Holmes as possible]. Farmer said that in 1795, a meteorite struck Wold Newton as two stagecoaches carrying 18 people passed by, and the radiation mutated their DNA., giving rise to genius IQ, unusual height, speed and strength, and dark hair/grey eyes. Providentially, the children and later descendents of the "18" intermarried, reinforcing the beneficial mutations and creating a "super-family" of good and evil bergeniuses. Thus Holmes was the cousin of Moriarty, both of them were cousins of Raffles, the three of them were cousins of Bulldog Drummond and so forth. The original "family tree" for the Wold Newton Universe can be found in Farmer's Tarzan Alive and "Doc" Savage, His Apocalyptic Life, in which Sherlock and Mycroft acquire a sister, Sigrina, whose son Sir Nayland Smith is the Nemesis of his cousin Fu Manchu. For a fuller explanation of the Wold Newton Universe, see the article on Philip Jos Farmer by Catherine Stewart. So what, besides the stories themselves, makes the New Adventures. such a good book? In two words: the extras. Editor Mike Ashley did not get people to write stories, bung them together in one place and then charge the maximum he could for them, he gave us a little bit more. Appendix I (pages 494-505) contain the chronology of Sherlock Holmes cases, which actually starts us off with his birth in 1853/4 and goes right to just past his last case in 1914. This chronology is invaluable to the reader because it explains the sometimes confusing state of the Holmes' stories. Sherlockians explain these inconsistencies as Dr Watson deliberately fudging facts to protect Holmes and other "great names" of the era, which is actually a much more fun way to look to at it than the mundane truth. In reality, Conan Doyle wrote his stories as serials for magazines (usually Strand) during a time of great public thirst for fiction but little editorial manuscript management, or to be blunt, rarely were things proofread. Besides the war wound, Conan Doyle sometimes dated cases right in the period when Watson was supposedly married to Mary Morstan (1888-1894) yet was seemingly a bachelor. The chronology also highlights "the missing year" (1884) and the Great Hiatus of 1891-1894, during which time the presumed dead Holmes was wandering Europe and the Near East after his plunge off the Reichenbach Falls. Minor errors like these slipped through, unnoticed until the individual stories were brought together in one book. The chronology is clear and easy to understand, and clears up some of the mysteries that readers have long been trying to work out for themselves - for example, that Watson's first marriage to Mary Morstan lasted six years from 1888 until her death in 1894, and that he remarried an unnamed woman circa 1902. The chronology also lists in italics the "cases" that "Watson" mentions but Doyle never wrote, and even better, lists the best pastiches of those cases written by other authors, so if you fancy reading a couple of pastiches to see what you think, you have the information on which to search the Web or take to your local bookstore. It must be noted however, that occasionally several different authors wrote different versions of the same "unwritten case", such as "the Camberwell poisoning case" mentioned by Watson in The Five Orange Pips. That story was written as The Adventure of the Gold Hunter by Adrian Conan Doyle & John Dickson Carr, The Case of the Camberwell Poisoning by June Thomson and The Case of the Camberwell Poisoners by Ken Greenwald, the latter two of which were set in different time frames. Finally, the chronology of Appendix I also highlights the potential for pastiche still left in the Holmes canon should anyone else wish to "have a go" - "Watson" directly named or described about 70 cases that Doyle never wrote, and even more tantalisingly, in The Final Problem, hours before his apparent death with Moriarty, Holmes remarked to Watson that he had "investigated over a thousand cases" Then there is Part 2 of Appendix II (pages 509-517), which lists the "Apocryphal Tales", i.e., those written by others than Conan Doyle, which feature Sherlock Holmes. It is a selective list, excluding all sci-fi and fantasy-based stories (e.g., Holmes versus Dracula or Ming the Merciless), whether serious or "spoof". It also excludes books where Holmes is not the central character, such as the Irene Adler series by Carole Nelson Douglas. The list is in alphabetical order by author surname, and also includes the year and name of publisher as well as the title. The icing on the cake is the fact that, where the title is not self-explanatory, a short prcis of the plot has been added to give the gist of the story. Finally, there are short bios of the contributors to the volume, which include such greats as renowned Sherlockian David Stuart Davies, and Michael Moorcock, more familiar to many as author of the Eternal Champion cycle of books dealing with those (un)fortunate enough to be the incarnation of the Eternal Champion, notably albino Prince Elric of Melnibon. Moorcock has long admired the Victorian world, creating alternate universe Victoriana in his Oswald Bastable books, and also in The Dancers at the End of Time. To summarise, there is not one "bad" story in the entire New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and the book is definitely a "keeper". 2002, C D Stewart