Susan Knight's Blog, page 7
April 2, 2020
‘The Scrapbook of Sherlock Holmes’ reviewed
The Scrapbook of Sherlock Holmes by Archie Rushden is an inventive and enjoyable little collection of stories, the starting point behind them being a supposed recent discovery during building works at Charing Cross Station. These, as we are informed in the introduction, revealed a long bricked-up part of the left luggage office which was found to contain a wicker hamper bearing the date Nov 11 1918. Inside, among other things, was a leather attaché case embossed with the initials Dr J H W.
The quick-witted among you will already have detected whose case it was: none other, of course, than Sherlock Holmes’ faithful sidekick and memoirist, Dr John H Watson. No one will be surprised, moreover, to learn that the manuscript inside the case contained hitherto unknown accounts of Sherlock Holmes’ adventures, ten in all.
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What is particularly engaging here are the ways Archie Rushden [right, looking suitably Edwardian] has woven into some of his stories references to existing tales. Thus the case of The Augean Stables is recounted by Holmes to Watson to pass the time while they are travelling by wagonette to confront Stapleton in The Hound of the Baskervilles.
I also enjoyed the author’s lively style and witty images, as exemplified in the following extract:
‘Not another word, Mrs Hope-Mapperley, ‘snarled the inspector, as he glanced around our room like a lion-tamer who has momentarily misplaced his lion, yet knows it to be somewhere at hand.’
If I have a quibble at all, it is that the stories are rather too short, but then of course it is always better to leave the readers wanting more rather than giving them too much.
‘The Scrapbook of Sherlock Holmes’ is available from Amazon in paperback or Kindle format.
Buy ‘Mrs Hudson Investigates’ at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mrs-Hudson-Investigates-Susan-Knight/dp/1787054845 or at https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1787054845/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0
Now also available on Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/Mrs-Hudson-Investigates…/…/B081PDMJ9Z
March 26, 2020
Book Review: Dead Ringers
Dead Ringers, the latest collection by Robert Perret, consists of eleven stories which previously appeared separately in other anthologies or reviews, including some of the earlier MX books of New Sherlock Holmes stories.
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The plots are pleasingly preposterous and often quite lurid, some revisiting familiar tales from the canon, such as A Study in Scarlet or The Copper Beeches. Others tread new ground. The Bogus Laundry Affair takes the reader into the sinister underworld of London, while The Adventure of the Pharaoh’s Tablet, toys with the occult. The longest story and the final one in the book, For King and Country, starts in the First World War, with Watson at the Somme discovering a mysterious roomful of corpses neatly seated round a table. With more plot twists than a corkscrew, and a side trip to Turkey, the story ends in post-war France and a well-deserved retirement plan.
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Robert Perret [right] is an author based in Idaho, a Sherlockian scholar and member of the John H. Watson society. He describes in the introduction how he first came to Sherlock in his youth through an old paperback in a local library but it was not until years later when he found the Complete Stories in a Costco of all places that he really became hooked. Looking further he discovered, as did I, that there were and are an army of fans writing their own pastiches and decided to give it a try himself. Since when, he hasn’t stopped.
The result is this most entertaining volume. Published by MX publishing, it is available from Amazon in book and Kindle format:
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=DEad+Ringers+Perret&ref=nb_sb_noss
https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=Robert+Perret+Dead+Ringers&ref=nb_sb_noss
Buy ‘Mrs Hudson Investigates’ at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mrs-Hudson-Investigates-Susan-Knight/dp/1787054845 or at https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1787054845/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0
Now also available on Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/Mrs-Hudson-Investigates…/…/B081PDMJ9Z
March 20, 2020
Some Solace in Self Isolation
In these days of self isolation, I am most grateful to have received a box set for Christmas of DVDs of the complete Sherlock Holmes collection, with the superlative Jeremy Brett playing the detective. Last night I pigged out on two of them from the later years, The Adventure of the Three Gables and The Adventure of the Dying Detective.
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While staying basically faithful to the original stories, the former in particular contains many elements of high melodrama missing from the written version, presumably to make it more exciting to watch. The episode opens with a young man dressed as a toreador enacting a bull fight for the delectation of his mistress, with another masked man playing the bull. The toreador turns out to be one Douglas Maberley, who presents the lady with the bull’s ear. However, she discards both it and him in preference to the young blond bull-impersonator, who also happens to be a lord. Maberley makes a scene, but is dragged out and beaten up by two thugs while his cruel mistress watches from a window with a smile on her face.
It is only after he dies that Holmes is brought in to the case by Maberley’s grandmother, initially on another seemingly unrelated matter. However things are never what they initially seem and of course Holmes soon gets to the bottom of the whole sordid business.
The episode shows Brett at his most mannered, with the unhealthy pallor and puffiness that marked his later years. Yet it is utterly appropriate to the the grand guignol tone of the piece.
In Conan Doyle’s story of The Adventure of the Dying Detective, we start with Holmes apparently lying at death’s door and only then do we discover what has led up to this. The TV episode, however, starts with the back story, which it fleshes out in considerable detail, taking the poor victim, Victor Savage, into the opium dens of London before he succumbs to the villainous plot that almost does for Holmes as well.
Savage is played here by Hugh Bonneville looking absurdly young. Fans of Downtown Abbey or Paddington, will be well acquainted with this engaging actor.
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I was interested, as well, to see Roy Hudd in a cameo part, having just heard of the comedian’s death on March 15 at the age of 83. His style of humour never appealed to me: the title of his autobiography, A Fart in a Colander, indicating its somewhat unsubtle nature. However, as an actor Hudd showed considerable talent. I was also interested to learn from the obituaries that he was an authority on old time music hall.
There are sixteen episodes in the box set, which should keep me going for a while. And when I have watched them all, well, I can just start over again.
Buy ‘Mrs Hudson Investigates’ at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mrs-Hudson-Investigates-Susan-Knight/dp/1787054845 or at https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1787054845/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0
Now also available on Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/Mrs-Hudson-Investigates…/…/B081PDMJ9Z
March 3, 2020
Mrs Hudson Takes the Stage
Another riveting and highly entertaining read from Barry S Brown. In this, the sixth of his Mrs Hudson novels, the eponymous cockney landlady remains the mastermind behind the Sherlock Holmes detective agency. Once again, real people and events are most effectively mixed into the fiction.
This time the action centres on an actual 1901 run at London’s Lyceum theatre of the play Sherlock Holmes, which featured, in the role of the detective, the American actor William Gillette.
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There is even a walk-on part by a youthful Charlie Chaplin in the very early days of his career. This isn’t artistic licence, at least not too much of it. As the Epilogue informs us, the fourteen-year-old Chaplin did indeed play the role of the Pageboy in the play [left]. A reviewer at the time wrote that ‘Master Charles Chaplin… shows considerable ability and bids fair to develop into a capable and clever actor.’
Other real people appearing in the novel include the anarchist Peter Kropotkin and Arthur Conan Doyle himself. It is all very ingenious and more than a bit cheeky, especially when Dr Doyle recognises Watson, said to be a fan of Doyle’s Egyptian adventure yarn, Tragedy of the Korosko, as ‘something of a writer himself’.
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The murder, for of course there has to be one, is of a young American woman who is working in the theatre as wardrobe mistress, a job subsequently taken over by Mrs Hudson in the course of her investigations. She has to find out was the young woman’s murder a threat to Gillette himself or are there even more sinister forces at work?
Weaving international politics into a carefully engineered plot that culminates with an escape featuring a thrilling balloon ride, Barry S Brown has written a mystery that will delight and divert. I look forward to his next book.
Mrs Hudson Takes the Stage will be published on April 9 and is available for pre-order at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hudson-Takes-Stage-Baker-Street/dp/1787055213 and at https://www.amazon.com/Hudson-Takes-Stage-Baker-Street/dp/1787055213
Buy ‘Mrs Hudson Investigates’ at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mrs-Hudson-Investigates-Susan-Knight/dp/1787054845 or at https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1787054845/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0
Now also available on Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/Mrs-Hudson-Investigates…/…/B081PDMJ9Z
February 18, 2020
‘A Miserable Bungler’
That is how Sherlock Holmes describes another fictional detective, Monsieur Lecoq, in The Study in Scarlet. Lecoq was the creation of French author Émile Gaboriau in a popular series of novels dating from 1866.
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Despite Holmes’ dismissive remarks – Lecoq, he said, ‘had only one thing to recommend him, and that was his energy’ – it is widely accepted that the character of the French detective was a major influence on Conan Doyle. Like Holmes, he employed a scientific, forensic method in the solving of crimes.
Unlike Holmes, however, Lecoq was a reformed criminal and that takes us back to the man who inspired Gaboriau. François Eugène Vidocq was no fictional creature, although his notorious memoirs may well be infused with a high degree of make-believe. Born in 1775, he was a rotten egg from the start, stealing from his parents, a criminal by age thirteen. His very colourful life included frequent incarcerations in prison and many escapes, often with the assistance of the numerous women he charmed.
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Finally, tired of always being on the run, Vidocq [left] offered his services to the police as an informer and spy, often using disguises to gain information. One report has him getting into Napoleon’s good books by helping recover an emerald necklace stolen from the Empress Josephine. In 1812 he set up the first detective bureau in the world, the Brigade de la Sûreté, and it was almost entirely due to him and his motley band of poachers turned gamekeepers that the crime rate in France was reduced by 40 per cent between 1812 and 1820.
Eventually, in 1834, having fallen foul of his bosses, Vidocq went his own way, opening the world’s first private detective agency, Le Bureau des Renseignements,.
His colourful life inspired many writers. He was a friend of Balzac whose character Vautrin in Le Père Goriot is clearly based on Vidocq. We can recognise him, too, in Monsieur Jackal, the mysterious head of the Paris Sûreté in Dumas père’s Les Mohicans de Paris (1854–59). Even Hugo’s Jean Valjean and Inspector Javert have some Vidocq in him.
But his fame spread far beyond France, his methods influencing Scotland Yard to set up the Criminal Investigation Department. He inevitably pops up in fiction in the English-speaking world, too. In 1841, Edgar Allan Poe writes in The Murders in the Rue Morgue that ‘Vidocq was a good guesser, and a persevering man. But, without educated thought, he erred continually by the very intensity of his investigations.’
This is surely unfair. Vidocq has been credited with instigating such scientific methods as ballistics, crime labs and criminal databases. He was the first to make plaster casts of footprints and invented a tamper-proof paper to confound forgers and embezzlers. No one knows exactly the number of crimes he solved over his long career.
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His Memoirs were translated into English and became massively popular, so it seems very likely that Conan Doyle was well aware of him. Did Vidocq then actually inspire Holmes? At least we can find a definite chain linking the two, through Lecoq and others. And there is a very funny short video from Cracked, entitled Sherlock Holmes Is Based On A Real Guy (Who Was Even Cooler). Watch it and make up your own mind.
Buy ‘Mrs Hudson Investigates’ at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mrs-Hudson-Investigates-Susan-Knight/dp/1787054845 or at https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1787054845/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0
Now also available on Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/Mrs-Hudson-Investigates…/…/B081PDMJ9Z
February 4, 2020
Société Sherlock Holmes de France
Having just returned from a week in the rural south-west of France, I decided to check to see if there was a Sherlock Holmes society in France. It turns out there is and a very active one it is as well.
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The Société Sherlock Holmes de France (SSHF), founded in 1993, has more than 2,500 members and, although its activities spread country-wide and far beyond, the heart of it lies in the tiny village of Saint-Sauvier in the very centre of France where the Society’s president, Thierry Saint-Joanis (left), has converted his home into 221B Baker Street.
The Society’s motto is ‘The one thing Sherlockians should not be serious about is taking themselves too seriously’. Every year, for instance, usually in January or February, there is a Goose Banquet, referring back to the story of The Blue Carbuncle. The programme includes not just the feast itself, but exhibitions, conferences, guided tours and so on.
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In addition there is the lottery of Windigate’s Goose Club, created by Saint-Joanis, which as the website tells us is ‘often imitated but never equalled’. Everyone attending is encouraged to bring a Holmesian present, a sort of Kris Kindle which acts as their lottery ticket. If they don’t bring, they aren’t in and can’t win.
This year, exceptionally, the celebration will take place in Normandy in May to commemorate the birthday of Conan Doyle (May 22) and Queen Victoria (May 24).
Another object of the SSHF is to show and strengthen the links between Sherlock Holmes and France. One enthusiast describes dining with other Sherlockians at the Hotel du Louvre where Holmes catches a spy in The Bruce Partington Plans, and toasting Conan Doyle in the hotel where he spent his first wedding night.
Between 1993 and 1994, Saint-Joanis and the SSHF campaigned vigorously to have Jeremy Brett awarded the Légion d’Honneur, just as the medal had been awarded to Sherlock Holmes one century earlier as recorded in The Golden Pince-Nez. To Jeremy’s delight, the campaign was a success, although sadly he died before he could travel to France to attend the official ceremony.
Buy ‘Mrs Hudson Investigates’ at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mrs-Hudson-Investigates-Susan-Knight/dp/1787054845 or at https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1787054845/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0
Now also available on Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/Mrs-Hudson-Investigates…/…/B081PDMJ9Z
January 24, 2020
Visions of Reichenbach
Every January the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin where I live exhibits its collection of thirty-one watercolours and drawings by the artist, JMW Turner. The English collector, Henry Vaughan, bequeathed the paintings in 1900 on condition that they only be shown in January when the light is weakest to protect them.
The tradition continues even though the print gallery where they are on display is only lit now by dim artificial light.
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Among the wonderful works shown is one of Turner’s several watercolours of the Reichenbach Falls, which the artist visited in the first decade of the nineteenth century. I can’t help wondering if Sidney Paget ever saw Turner’s work, other versions of which are held in the Tate Gallery in London, when drawing up his own splendid image. [Turner’s watercolour, right, Paget’s version below]
But what exactly inspired Conan Doyle to make this dramatic landscape the scene of Holmes’ and Moriarty’s struggle to the death as recounted in The Final Problem? It is of course well known that by the time Conan Doyle travelled to Switzerland in 1893, he was heartily sick of his creation and planned, against his mother’s wishes, to finish him off.
There are various versions of how he came to fix on the Falls as the scene of Holmes’ demise (though of course, as with Mark Twain, rumours of Holmes’ death turned out to have been greatly exaggerated). In one account by Henry Lunn, a former missionary who was later to set up Lunn’s Travels, it was while in Switzerland with another friend, the Reverend Dawson, that Conan Doyle told them, ‘I have made up my mind to kill Sherlock Holmes; he is becoming such a burden to me that it makes my life unbearable.’ Lunn continued, ‘It was the Reverend W J Dawson who suggested the spot, the Reichenbach Falls near Meiringen where Conan Doyle finished the great detective, so I was an accessory before the fact.’
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Dawson himself admitted his involvement, stating in a magazine article that ‘it is a tribute to Dr Doyle’s sense of artistic fitness that he finally selected this spot for the tragedy. The water pours over a curving precipice into a huge cauldron, from whose black depth rises a cloud of vapour, through which the morning sun flashes innumerable rainbows. The eye vainly searches the abyss for any bottom; the depth seems infinite, and the thunder that rises from the boiling cauldron is terrific.’
Another more flippant version has Silas Hocking, another popular author of the day on another hike, telling Conan Doyle, perhaps a trifle impatiently, ‘If you are determined on making an end of Holmes, why not bring him out to Switzerland and drop him down a crevasse. It would save on funeral expenses.’
Whatever the truth of the matter, over he went (apparently), clutching on to Moriarty, only to reappear several years later when the author responded to cries from fans and to offers he could not possibly refuse, explaining the detective’s survival in as perfunctory way as that of Bobby in Dallas.
But if you happen to be in the vicinity, please visit Dublin’s National Gallery and wallow in the glory that is Turner’s depiction of the Falls before the painting is stashed away until next January.
Buy ‘Mrs Hudson Investigates’ at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mrs-Hudson-Investigates-Susan-Knight/dp/1787054845 or at https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1787054845/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0
Now also available on Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/Mrs-Hudson-Investigates…/…/B081PDMJ9Z
January 19, 2020
‘My dear Holmes,’ I ejaculated
The comedy channel, Dave, was airing one of those endlessly repeated episodes of QI the other night and I was watching it in a vague sort of way. My ears pricked up, however, at Stephen Fry’s next question. ‘What did Watson do twice as many times as Holmes?’
If you have ever seen the programme, you will know that the answers often involve smutty innuendo and so I wasn’t surprised when, after a few puzzled mumbles, Jimmy Carr ejaculated ‘Ejaculate.’ This proved to be the right answer and one which predictably then incurred a lot of schoolboy giggles from the male panel members.
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Apparently, as Stephen explained, there are 23 ejaculations in total in the canon (more guffaws), with 11 belonging to Watson. He then went on to mention a few examples, all of which gave rise to even greater mirth, particularly the quotation from The Man with the Twisted Lip: ‘So he sat as I dropped off to sleep, and so he sat when a sudden ejaculation caused me to wake up… The pipe was still between his lips.’ Or from the same story, Mrs St Clair’s husband ejaculates at her from a second-floor window.
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Setting all this naughtiness aside, it’s well known that Stephen Fry himself is a great aficionado of Sherlock Holmes, and has been so, in fact, since his childhood, having as he recounts first borrowed the stories at the age of eight or nine from the mobile library near his home. He became hooked immediately and apparently has the distinction of having been being the youngest member ever of the Sherlock Holmes Society, joining while still in his teens. In 2004 he won Celebrity Mastermind with obscure specialist questions on Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. His readings of the stories are available as audio books and he portrayed Sherlock’s brother Mycroft (left) in Guy Ritchie’s fun fantasy film, Sherlock Holmes: The Game of Shadows in which Robert Downey junior played the detective, with Jude Law as Dr Watson.
So, with all this evidence of devotion, we can allow Fry one or two cheap jokes. And actually, the QI skit was rather amusing.
Buy ‘Mrs Hudson Investigates’ at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mrs-Hudson-Investigates-Susan-Knight/dp/1787054845 or at https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1787054845/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0
Now also available on Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/Mrs-Hudson-Investigates…/…/B081PDMJ9Z
'My dear Holmes,' I ejaculated
The comedy channel, Dave, was airing one of those endlessly repeated episodes of QI the other night and I was watching it in a vague sort of way. My ears pricked up, however, at Stephen Fry’s next question. ‘What did Watson do twice as many times as Holmes?’
If you have ever seen the programme, you will know that the answers often involve smutty innuendo and so I wasn’t surprised when, after a few puzzled mumbles, Jimmy Carr ejaculated ‘Ejaculate.’ This proved to be the right answer and one which predictably then incurred a lot of schoolboy giggles from the male panel members.
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Apparently, as Stephen explained, there are 23 ejaculations in total in the canon (more guffaws), with 11 belonging to Watson. He then went on to mention a few examples, all of which gave rise to even greater mirth, particularly the quotation from The Man with the Twisted Lip: ‘So he sat as I dropped off to sleep, and so he sat when a sudden ejaculation caused me to wake up… The pipe was still between his lips.’ Or from the same story, Mrs St Clair’s husband ejaculates at her from a second-floor window.
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Setting all this naughtiness aside, it’s well known that Stephen Fry himself is a great aficionado of Sherlock Holmes, and has been so, in fact, since his childhood, having as he recounts first borrowed the stories at the age of eight or nine from the mobile library near his home. He became hooked immediately and apparently has the distinction of having been being the youngest member ever of the Sherlock Holmes Society, joining while still in his teens. In 2004 he won Celebrity Mastermind with obscure specialist questions on Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. His readings of the stories are available as audio books and he portrayed Sherlock’s brother Mycroft (left) in Guy Ritchie’s fun fantasy film, Sherlock Holmes: The Game of Shadows in which Robert Downey junior played the detective, with Jude Law as Dr Watson.
So, with all this evidence of devotion, we can allow Fry one or two cheap jokes. And actually, the QI skit was rather amusing.
Buy ‘Mrs Hudson Investigates’ at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mrs-Hudson-Investigates-Susan-Knight/dp/1787054845 or at https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1787054845/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0
Now also available on Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/Mrs-Hudson-Investigates…/…/B081PDMJ9Z
January 14, 2020
Mrs Hudson Reviewed
I was thrilled and honoured to receive an endorsement for Mrs Hudson Investigates by Mark Mower in the latest issue of the journal of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London:
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I believe this is Susan Knight’s first
collection of stories about the investigative abilities of Sherlock Holmes’s esteemed housekeeper, Mrs Martha Hudson. And a triumph it is too. The book contains seven tales,
all told with great clarity and affection. Not all are full-blown investigations, but each has its place in helping us to understand the character
— and hitherto unrecognised talents — of dear Mrs Hudson. Throughout the volume we have occasional glimpses of “the doctor” and “Mr H”, but it is Mrs Hudson who rightly remains centre
stage. This is an extremely humorous book that shines a light on the domestic arrangements at 221B which we rarely get the opportunity to read
about. Let’s hope the author has further stories planned.
It is always a delight to receive the journal, so beautifully produced. The latest edition is as usual packed with intriguing and entertaining articles such as ‘Did Sherlock Holmes have Aspergers?’ by Tom Cutler, ‘The Origins of Sherlock Holmes and the Road Hill murder’ by Barry Langston (the investigation of a notorious crime in 1860 which inspired The Moonstone, and the Sherlock Holmes stories), and ‘The Mystery of Dr Watson’s Club’ by Seth Alexander Thévoz, honorary librarian of the National Liberal Club.
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In addition, the journal is packed with fascinating snippets of information such as the revelation that during the summer, Edinburgh university exhibited a statue of ‘Oor Sherlock’ inspired by the popular Scottish cartoon character, Oor Wullie. And I should have loved to have seen the Christmas lights at the junction of Baker Street and Marylebone Road, depicting Mr Henry Baker’s goose, complete with blue carbuncle.
Buy ‘Mrs Hudson Investigates’ at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mrs-Hudson-Investigates-Susan-Knight/dp/1787054845 or at https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1787054845/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0
Now also available on Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/Mrs-Hudson-Investigates…/…/B081PDMJ9Z
