Alistair Duncan's Blog, page 67

The journey of a young Sherlockian

Are you interested in Sherlock Holmes? Wondering where to start? Read about one Sherlockian's journey.




http://napoleonofholmes.com/?page_id=93

This young lady can also be found on @believeinsh2012

I would observe though that her gallery of Holmes actors is missing two very important ones. Arthur Wontner and Ian Richardson.



For more information on Arthur Conan Doyle and his time at Undershaw please refer to my book, An Entirely New Country which is available through all good bookstores including Amazon USA, Amazon UK, Classic Specialities, and in all electronic formats including iTunes, Kobo, Nook and Kindle .
The Norwood Author  is available from all good bookstores, in many formats worldwide including Waterstones UK, Amazon UK,  Amazon USA, Barnes and Noble, Amazon Kindle, iBooks for the iPad/iPhone, Kobo Books, Nook.
Close to Holmes is available from all good bookstores, in many formats worldwide including Amazon USA,  Barnes and Noble,  Amazon UK,  Waterstones UK,  Amazon Kindle,  Kobo,  Nook  and iBooks for the iPad/iPhone.
Eliminate the Impossible is available from all good bookstores, in many formats worldwide including Amazon USA, Barnes and Noble, Amazon UK, Waterstones UK, Amazon Kindle, Kobo, Nook and iBooks for the iPad/iPhone.

Book Review – The Wrong Passage

This book is a comprehensive look at the Sherlock Holmes story The Golden Pince-Nez. It contains a facsimile of the original manuscript along with comprehensive annotation and supporting essays. It forms part of the excellent Baker Street Irregulars Manuscript Series.
The editors remark that it is an under-appreciated story which is a sentiment that I agree with. In many respects this is a classic whodunit involving a small number of characters within a relatively confined space. It is also, in my opinion, one of the best stories from The Return of Sherlock Holmes. This series of thirteen stories made regular use of the deliberate hiding of something or someone. Out of the thirteen The Norwood Builder, The Six Napoleons, The Second Stain and The Golden Pince-Nez all involved something or someone being deliberately concealed. That's nearly a third of the entire series.
The book opens with a look at the origins of the story – how it came into being and some curiosities about the manuscript itself. It certainly educated me on a number of aspects that I’d been ignorant of before. In particular, I found the details about the number of different floor plans that appeared in different editions of the story to be fascinating. The facsimile follows this history and it, in turn, is followed by a series of related essays. These look at the actual unrest in Russia that forms the backdrop to the story all the way to a look at the eponymous spectacles.
Anna's suicide and the spectacles themselvesIn my reading I noticed but one mistake and it was not serious. In an essay entitled Out of the Past, Bertram Fletcher Robinson’s detective Addington Peace is mentioned but is referred to as Addison Peace.

All in all, this is an excellent book. I would not say it was an entry-level volume though. If your interest in Sherlock Holmes is new and you desire to delve into some of the more esoteric aspects I would not recommend that you start your delving with this book.




For more information on Arthur Conan Doyle and his time at Undershaw please refer to my book, An Entirely New Country which is available through all good bookstores including Amazon USA, Amazon UK, Classic Specialities, and in all electronic formats including iTunes, Kobo, Nook and Kindle .
The Norwood Author  is available from all good bookstores, in many formats worldwide including Waterstones UK, Amazon UK,  Amazon USA, Barnes and Noble, Amazon Kindle, iBooks for the iPad/iPhone, Kobo Books, Nook.
Close to Holmes is available from all good bookstores, in many formats worldwide including Amazon USA,  Barnes and Noble,  Amazon UK,  Waterstones UK,  Amazon Kindle,  Kobo,  Nook  and iBooks for the iPad/iPhone.
Eliminate the Impossible is available from all good bookstores, in many formats worldwide including Amazon USA, Barnes and Noble, Amazon UK, Waterstones UK, Amazon Kindle, Kobo, Nook and iBooks for the iPad/iPhone.

Sherlock S3 - Filming starts today

The wait is, sort of, over. After last week's read-through, the filming of Sherlock Series Three Episode One begins today.



We know that it's episode one being filmed first as that was let slip prior to the read-through. We also know that the word "RAT" comes into it somewhere. In addition, we know that the episode will be based, to some extent, on The Empty House. I do wonder whether there will actually be an empty house though. Will our Sebastian Moran instead take a shot at Sherlock through the window of Barts?

Most importantly of all. Exactly how p*ssed off will John be and what form will his rage take.

Anything like this perhaps?




For more information on Arthur Conan Doyle and his time at Undershaw please refer to my book, An Entirely New Country which is available through all good bookstores including Amazon USA, Amazon UK, Classic Specialities, and in all electronic formats including iTunes, Kobo, Nook and Kindle .
The Norwood Author  is available from all good bookstores, in many formats worldwide including Waterstones UK, Amazon UK,  Amazon USA, Barnes and Noble, Amazon Kindle, iBooks for the iPad/iPhone, Kobo Books, Nook.
Close to Holmes is available from all good bookstores, in many formats worldwide including Amazon USA,  Barnes and Noble,  Amazon UK,  Waterstones UK,  Amazon Kindle,  Kobo,  Nook  and iBooks for the iPad/iPhone.
Eliminate the Impossible is available from all good bookstores, in many formats worldwide including Amazon USA, Barnes and Noble, Amazon UK, Waterstones UK, Amazon Kindle, Kobo, Nook and iBooks for the iPad/iPhone.

Credit where it's due

There are plenty of people out there who profess a great love for Sherlock Holmes yet, at the same time, show no interest in his creator. This has always struck me as down right weird. After all, the fans of the BBC adaptation Sherlock show an interest in the activities of its creators that sometimes borders on obsessive. Now is this because they find Moffat and Gatiss interesting in themselves or is it that they are interested in them purely as the spring from which the new stories pour forth?
In either event it is odd that Conan Doyle, as the ultimate creator, does not seem to get more attention. Come on folks. Without him you’d have no series, no fandom, nothing.
Who is more interesting? Creation or creator?
A great many authors of fiction end up bringing autobiographical elements of their own life or experiences into their work and Conan Doyle was no exception. His life can tell you (or hint at) the reasons behind so much of Sherlock’s world. Go on, pick up a (decent) biography of Conan Doyle. His life is fascinating and instructive.

For more information on Arthur Conan Doyle and his time at Undershaw please refer to my book, An Entirely New Country which is available through all good bookstores including Amazon USA, Amazon UK, Classic Specialities, and in all electronic formats including iTunes, Kobo, Nook and Kindle .
The Norwood Author  is available from all good bookstores, in many formats worldwide including Waterstones UK, Amazon UK,  Amazon USA, Barnes and Noble, Amazon Kindle, iBooks for the iPad/iPhone, Kobo Books, Nook.
Close to Holmes is available from all good bookstores, in many formats worldwide including Amazon USA,  Barnes and Noble,  Amazon UK,  Waterstones UK,  Amazon Kindle,  Kobo,  Nook  and iBooks for the iPad/iPhone.
Eliminate the Impossible is available from all good bookstores, in many formats worldwide including Amazon USA, Barnes and Noble, Amazon UK, Waterstones UK, Amazon Kindle, Kobo, Nook and iBooks for the iPad/iPhone.

The Lost World (1925) Silent Movie

For more information on Arthur Conan Doyle and his time at Undershaw please refer to my book, An Entirely New Country which is available through all good bookstores including Amazon USA, Amazon UK, Classic Specialities, and in all electronic formats including iTunes, Kobo, Nook and Kindle .
The Norwood Author  is available from all good bookstores, in many formats worldwide including Waterstones UK, Amazon UK,  Amazon USA, Barnes and Noble, Amazon Kindle, iBooks for the iPad/iPhone, Kobo Books, Nook.
Close to Holmes is available from all good bookstores, in many formats worldwide including Amazon USA,  Barnes and Noble,  Amazon UK,  Waterstones UK,  Amazon Kindle,  Kobo,  Nook  and iBooks for the iPad/iPhone.
Eliminate the Impossible is available from all good bookstores, in many formats worldwide including Amazon USA, Barnes and Noble, Amazon UK, Waterstones UK, Amazon Kindle, Kobo, Nook and iBooks for the iPad/iPhone.

Book Review - Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Bulgarian Codex

I was genuinely excited to read this book when I was handed a review copy. Why? Well, I knew that it satisfied my two most important criteria for a Sherlock Holmes pastiche. No crossovers and no magic.

What we find within its pages is more of a thriller than a traditional Sherlock Holmes adventure in which the Prince of Bulgaria hires Holmes and Watson to recover the eponymous Codex – a document that has much symbolic, perhaps spiritual, importance to his country’s morale.

The pace of the book is good and Symonds comes close, in my opinion, to the Watson style. Watson was always quite big on, perhaps, unnecessary descriptions of countryside and buildings – Symonds replicates this quite well although I think his Watson occasionally outdoes the original in the volume of such detail. There’s a fine line between useful description and literary padding and I think Symonds occasionally puts his foot on the wrong side of the line. However, it is a matter of personal taste and for some this level of detail could be welcome.

The key characters are pretty well drawn but the others are less so. This makes it relatively easy to know which characters to keep an eye on. This, in turn, takes a certain amount of guesswork (or deduction) out of proceedings. This is particularly true of one of the principal villains. As soon as he appeared on the page I just knew he was going to be at the bottom of something.

In a parallel with the story Sherlock Holmes and the Irish Rebels by Kieran McMullen we have a more conventional crime in the middle of this thriller. This was, to me, far more interesting than the political intrigue that was going on around it. However, its resolution, when it came, was a little like the dénouement from a Poirot mystery. All the points leading to the conclusion were revealed and made logical sense but, to me, it seemed impossible to have actually worked it out for yourself. Some of the clues were there but by no means enough. Then again perhaps I am just a little slow. I was also slightly less than happy with how Holmes went about ensuring justice. Although Holmes has done slightly similar things elsewhere in the Canon I do wonder if he was ever quite so cold-blooded.

The biggest problem with this book, at least in the beginning, was the seemingly endless paraphrasing of the Canon and references to past cases. Before the mid-way point of chapter two, I had counted paraphrasing or direct mentions from no less than four original adventures – A Scandal in Bohemia, The Bruce-Partington Plans, The Copper Beeches and The Second Stain. Mostly these were admitted to at the time of use but it was not always the case. To help you avoid missing any of the references Symonds later makes plain all links in a glossary (which seems a little out of place in a story).

This harking back to the Canon was a mistake in my opinion because it made it appear as though Symonds was attempting to convince me, the reader, how well he knows the Canon. Anthony Horowitz made this same mistake in The House of Silk. As readers, we really don’t need to be told how well or not you know the Canon. That will become apparent as we read your story. It is also fairly safe to say that all but the most devoted fans would probably not worry about the odd slip-up of chronology. All we need is a story that we enjoy and that takes us back to 1895 (so to speak). Conan Doyle himself got canonical references wrong so you can relax. All but the most stunning clangers will not trouble most people.

To sum up. This is a well paced story close to the Watson style. It all hangs together but it's not hard to work out who to watch or what their motives are. If you can accept this I think you will be entertained.






For more information on Arthur Conan Doyle and his time at Undershaw please refer to my book, An Entirely New Country which is available through all good bookstores including Amazon USA, Amazon UK, Classic Specialities, and in all electronic formats including iTunes, Kobo, Nook and Kindle .
The Norwood Author  is available from all good bookstores, in many formats worldwide including Waterstones UK, Amazon UK,  Amazon USA, Barnes and Noble, Amazon Kindle, iBooks for the iPad/iPhone, Kobo Books, Nook.
Close to Holmes is available from all good bookstores, in many formats worldwide including Amazon USA,  Barnes and Noble,  Amazon UK,  Waterstones UK,  Amazon Kindle,  Kobo,  Nook  and iBooks for the iPad/iPhone.
Eliminate the Impossible is available from all good bookstores, in many formats worldwide including Amazon USA, Barnes and Noble, Amazon UK, Waterstones UK, Amazon Kindle, Kobo, Nook and iBooks for the iPad/iPhone.

Win Young Sherlock Holmes books

Conference page http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ah/figs/figs-events-publication/holmes-conference

As part of the above conference there is a competition sponsored by Pan Macmillan. It will be judged by Andrew Lane the author of the young Sherlock Holmes stories.


If you are interested in taking part you can download the entry form here.

Competition Entry Form 




For more information on Arthur Conan Doyle and his time at Undershaw please refer to my book, An Entirely New Country which is available through all good bookstores including Amazon USA, Amazon UK, Classic Specialities, and in all electronic formats including iTunes, Kobo, Nook and Kindle .
The Norwood Author  is available from all good bookstores, in many formats worldwide including Waterstones UK, Amazon UK,  Amazon USA, Barnes and Noble, Amazon Kindle, iBooks for the iPad/iPhone, Kobo Books, Nook.
Close to Holmes is available from all good bookstores, in many formats worldwide including Amazon USA,  Barnes and Noble,  Amazon UK,  Waterstones UK,  Amazon Kindle,  Kobo,  Nook  and iBooks for the iPad/iPhone.
Eliminate the Impossible is available from all good bookstores, in many formats worldwide including Amazon USA, Barnes and Noble, Amazon UK, Waterstones UK, Amazon Kindle, Kobo, Nook and iBooks for the iPad/iPhone.

This week I shall be mostly reading....

For more information on Arthur Conan Doyle and his time at Undershaw please refer to my book, An Entirely New Country which is available through all good bookstores including Amazon USA, Amazon UK, Classic Specialities, and in all electronic formats including iTunes, Kobo, Nook and Kindle .
The Norwood Author  is available from all good bookstores, in many formats worldwide including Waterstones UK, Amazon UK,  Amazon USA, Barnes and Noble, Amazon Kindle, iBooks for the iPad/iPhone, Kobo Books, Nook.
Close to Holmes is available from all good bookstores, in many formats worldwide including Amazon USA,  Barnes and Noble,  Amazon UK,  Waterstones UK,  Amazon Kindle,  Kobo,  Nook  and iBooks for the iPad/iPhone.
Eliminate the Impossible is available from all good bookstores, in many formats worldwide including Amazon USA, Barnes and Noble, Amazon UK, Waterstones UK, Amazon Kindle, Kobo, Nook and iBooks for the iPad/iPhone.

Mr Chairman

I have volunteered my services to chair a panel at UCL's Sherlock Holmes: Past and Present conference.

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ah/figs/figs-events-publication/holmes-conference


For more information on Arthur Conan Doyle and his time at Undershaw please refer to my book, An Entirely New Country which is available through all good bookstores including Amazon USA, Amazon UK, Classic Specialities, and in all electronic formats including iTunes, Kobo, Nook and Kindle .
The Norwood Author  is available from all good bookstores, in many formats worldwide including Waterstones UK, Amazon UK,  Amazon USA, Barnes and Noble, Amazon Kindle, iBooks for the iPad/iPhone, Kobo Books, Nook.
Close to Holmes is available from all good bookstores, in many formats worldwide including Amazon USA,  Barnes and Noble,  Amazon UK,  Waterstones UK,  Amazon Kindle,  Kobo,  Nook  and iBooks for the iPad/iPhone.
Eliminate the Impossible is available from all good bookstores, in many formats worldwide including Amazon USA, Barnes and Noble, Amazon UK, Waterstones UK, Amazon Kindle, Kobo, Nook and iBooks for the iPad/iPhone.

The problem with reviewing books

I used to review a lot of books. Like many people I would mostly opine through the pages of Amazon. However, since around 2010 or so, I have largely modified my approach.
Why? Well it is quite simply because some people, for reasons best known to themselves, actually seem to pay some attention to what I say. It’s a compliment to be sure but the theoretical power it gives me is rather unnerving.
I think I've made my likes and dislikes (in Sherlockian/Doylean books) pretty clear. Yet, as an author who has received both positive and negative reviews, I know all too well the impact an overtly negative review can have (regardless of whether or not it is justified). It was for that reason, some time ago, that I took the decision to only post reviews of books I felt at least 50% positive about.
Trying to work on the old maxim – if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all – I have omitted reviewing books that have not pleased me. This allows the authors of books I've not reviewed to at least adopt the position of “perhaps he simply hasn't read it yet”. This of course assumes that they care what I think – most probably don’t.
But am I doing readers a disservice by this approach? Given the sheer volume of Sherlockian material (no matter how tenuous) out there, do I owe it to people to say if I think something is awful? Or should I let them find out for themselves? After all, people are not always going to agree with my assessment.


For more information on Arthur Conan Doyle and his time at Undershaw please refer to my book, An Entirely New Country which is available through all good bookstores including Amazon USA, Amazon UK, Classic Specialities, and in all electronic formats including iTunes, Kobo, Nook and Kindle .
The Norwood Author  is available from all good bookstores, in many formats worldwide including Waterstones UK, Amazon UK,  Amazon USA, Barnes and Noble, Amazon Kindle, iBooks for the iPad/iPhone, Kobo Books, Nook.
Close to Holmes is available from all good bookstores, in many formats worldwide including Amazon USA,  Barnes and Noble,  Amazon UK,  Waterstones UK,  Amazon Kindle,  Kobo,  Nook  and iBooks for the iPad/iPhone.
Eliminate the Impossible is available from all good bookstores, in many formats worldwide including Amazon USA, Barnes and Noble, Amazon UK, Waterstones UK, Amazon Kindle, Kobo, Nook and iBooks for the iPad/iPhone.