Sherlock in Lego
What a bonkers idea! To recreate in LEGO scenes depicted by Sidney Paget from Sherlock Holmes’ stories. How can this possibly work? And yet LEGO enthusiast P. James Macaluso jr has done just that and for at least thirteen stories from the canon.
Apparently he sources his figures from existing collections, such as the Harry Potter sets, since the LEGO company has not yet realised the potential of Sherlock Holmes.
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The latest in the series, but the first I have seen, plopped through my letterbox the other day. It’s called A Baskerville Curse and is of course based on The Hound of the Baskervilles which by happy chance I recently reread. I have to report it is utterly delightful.
This time Mr Macaluso has decided to take one further step and structure it in the form of an Alphabet book. How childish, you might think, and yet I am not about to hand the book on to my grandson for two reasons. First, I want to keep it for myself. And secondly, the words chosen are hardly ones in the average seven-year-old’s lexicon: Jeopardy, Quagmire, Tor… Plus one I had to look up: Zoothapsis. You may be ahead of me, dear reader, but in case you haven’t a clue, it means ‘a premature burial’, and is a word I shall now be using at every possible opportunity.
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In fact, Mr Macaluso looks for his inspiration to the fantastical and creepy work of Edward Gorey, who also produced illustrated Alphabet books for adults. With A Baskerville Curse, I also received Mr Macaluso’s earlier A Sherlock Holmes Alphabet (I is for Irene, H is for my own dear Mrs Hudson, Z is for Zu Grafenstein, with explanatory notes), as well as instructions on how to build your own 221B Baker Street out of Lego.
Mr Macaluso appears to be almost as eccentric as his creations. Now living in England with his wife and dog and teaching English as a foreign language, he has recreated himself from the American academic who wrote a thesis on Descriptions and comparative studies of the hominin dental remains from Dmanisi, Georgia. And yet after all isn’t it most fitting that a keen fan of Sherlock Holmes started life as a forensic anthropologist.
All P James Macaluso’s books issued by MX publishing and are available from Amazon.
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
