The Remains of Sherlock Holmes

by Paul W. Nash

In the vault of the National Westminster Bank in Marylebone High Street, London, an iron deed box lay undisturbed for eighty years. When, under the terms of its deposit, the box was opened in the spring of 2010 it was found to contain the manuscript records of fifty-six previously unknown cases of Sherlock Holmes, written by Dr John H. Watson between around 1890 and 1930.

This is the fancy behind The Remains of Sherlock Holmes. The author, Paul W. Nash, has held true to the spirit of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original stories, placing a seemingly-insoluble mystery in the theatre of an imagined London which we are all just too young to have known. He has also extended the genre with tales which, in some cases, Watson considered too shocking for the reader of his own age, or which trespass gently on other paths of fact and fiction. The reader will learn the truth of the death of Dorian Gray, and how the advanced Darwinian theories of Professor Beaumont affected his fate and that of his wife.

In these seven stories Holmes and Watson encounter actors and actresses, giants and dwarves, beasts and scholars, servants and masters, murderers and addicts, secret societies, an hotelier with a nursery rhyme on his lips, a hunchback, a huge sapphire and the most curious gentleman’s club in London. At the last the reader is held close by Watson and drawn towards the moment of Holmes’s death.

Nash says of the book ‘No one can hope to match the original stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. But I have done my best to capture the spirit of Doyle’s writing, the atmosphere of London in the recent past, and the essence of Holmes’s character and his relationship with Watson (which can be seen in so many later detectives and aloof thinkers, from Hercule Poirot to Fox Mulder and Mr Spock).’

This is a book for anyone who wishes Doyle had written more adventures for his great detective, or wonders what strange cases Watson might have recorded and kept secret, against the day when the world was ready.

248 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2010

Reviews

[trishtrash · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Dr. Paul W. Nash hereby asserts his rights as the moral author of this book.”

Well, I should say he does. Not in this legally fluffy-sounding piece of additional copyright info, but by virtue of having successfully become the narrative voice of Dr. John Watson, acquired through talent or practice a recreation of the writing style of Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle, both in nuance and ‘in the spirit of’, and by bringing back to the modern reader the career of Sherlock Holmes, not as a rebranding or retelling but stamping the authority and fun of the original tales back into the business.

There are seven stories in this small, neatly published collection, scattered in chronological order through the journaling of Dr. Watson, tucked away for ‘later publication’, for reasons made clear at the start of each tale. The first, as others have noted, is the weakest, getting by, really, on the interest provoked in having a new Sherlock Holmes story to read at all, and by managing to be an ordinary, adequate Sherlock Holmes story. It has its moments of promise that stand out, less as highlights of the story and more as an assurance that the reader can trust that the author has the ability to ‘do’ Holmes. The pair’s temporary removal from London doesn’t help launch us back into that world, for a start, which might have been a deliberate challenge on the part of Nash, but which fell a bit flat, if so.

The important thing is, though, that each story, even the weaker first, has its perfectly tuned atmosphere of the Victorian crime genre with a dash of novelty, of mystery, of brilliant deductive method, the type of case which would be brought to, and accepted by, Sherlock Holmes. ‘The Mystery of Dorian Gray’ is the most obvious example, a sublime collision of literary titans rendered modestly and insightfully by Dr. Watson so as to blend nicely with the less eye-catching titles. The title story, ‘The Remains of Sherlock Holmes’, is my favourite story, including a little – a very little – sentimentality at the end of Holmes’ career with John Watson. ‘The Mystery of the Camden Rose’ is the best in terms of plotting, to my mind, and I can forgive Dr. Watson, trained military gentleman, losing his revolver to an ape in ‘The Adventure of the Professor’s Assistant’ because, well, I admire bravery and Nash carried this bizarre story off with a certain panache.

[Extremely minor negative point: I wish Dr. Nash hadn’t succumbed to the temptation to use the word ‘afoot’. In any capacity, but particularly because the phrasing ‘I knew then that something was afoot with Holmes’ doesn’t sound right anyway.]

The littering of footnotes and other recovered titles hint at further ‘lost’ gems secreted away by Watson for the day they could be brought to light. I will read them, should they ever be made available to the public, because the Dr. Watson of Doyle and Nash are essentially the same character, and I am glad that, with all the updating and revisiting going on, someone has taken up the mantle of seeing Doyle’s creation outwit the criminals of that very particular London.

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was given a copy of this book for the purpose of writing a review.

At the beginning of the book the reader is told that an iron deed box was deposited in the vaults of the London Westminster Bank with strict instructions not to be opened for 80 years. On April 1, 2010 that box was finally opened and was found to contain the memoirs of one Dr. John H. Watson, the friend and cohort of the one and only Sherlock Holmes. The memoirs contained 50+ cases of Sherlock Holmes that were never published to the public, for fear and/or knowledge that they were too grotesque and horrifying to the 1890-1930 public. This is how Dr. Paul Nash came to print the 7 cases contained in this book.

I , the reader, felt this was an ingenious way for Dr. Nash to have us believe it to be just a continuation of Doyle's work. Dr. Nash has done a wonderful job of constructing new Holmes' cases, yet all the while making you believe that Doyle had actually socked away a wealth of work for future generations to find. Although you can tell someone else has written in Doyle's style and that it is not truly Doyle, it is very subtle. I find no large inconsistencies that would make me write anything bad about this book. My favorite two cases were "The Mystery of Dorian Gray" and "The Remains of Sherlock Holmes", while my least liked case was "The Adventure of the Surrey Giant". I hope that this book will lead to Dr. Nash revisiting his "Doyle-esque", "Holmes/Watson" writing style and publishing more of those "supposed" 50+ case files. I would happily read more of his work.

[Ali · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was sent this book ( a lovely hardback edition) by the Librarything Early Reviewers programme. It seemed perfect for me as I love Sherlock Holmes. I know several writers have resurrected the great detective and written new stories about him, and although I have only read some of them, I love the idea that a character is so beloved and has become so mythologised that he never really goes away.

In this book there are seven new stories, stories apparently "discovered" recently which Watson considered too shocking for publication at the time. The events recorded in these stories range in date from 1882 to 1929. In them we meet: giants and dwarves, a silent valet, servants, masters, addicts and murderers. We discover the truth behind the death of Dorian Gray, and through the eyes of his great friend Dr John Watson how Sherlock Holmes met his own end in 1929. I thought these stories, and the characters stayed pretty well true to the original, and I hope Conan Doyle would approve.