Several months ago, I was browsing our Local Independent Bookstore with Chad and his parents, and discovered a rather nifty trade paperback, The Original Illustrated Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle. It was a reproduction of all of the Holmes stories that originally appeared in The Strand magazine, together with their illustrations. I thought this was kind of a neat way to read the stories, and it was fairly cheap ($8 for what was effectively four volumes), but for some reason I was dithering over whether to buy it. Chad’s mom asked to see it as I was wandering around looking at other things; I, thinking nothing of it, handed it over. Five minutes later she walked up and handed it back to me, in a store bag, and said, “Happy Easter, Kate.” I was impressed—I had no idea she could be that sneaky . . .
Anyway, I appreciated the thought then, and now that I’ve actually got around to reading some of it, I appreciate the fact, too. Believe it or not, these are the first Sherlock Holmes stories I’ve read. (I may have read one of the novels when I was far too young to appreciate it, but I don’t really recall anything about it.) I have no idea how I managed to get this far without doing so, but I’m definitely enjoying them now.
The first set of stories was apparently collected as The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and includes some fairly famous ones. The first, “A Scandal in Bohemia,” is apparently our only in-canon glimpse of Irene Adler, who was always the woman to Holmes, probably because she managed to outwit him. She is the heroine of a series by Carole Nelson Douglas, which I may have to try after I’m done with the Holmes canon; I wasn’t impressed by her cat mysteries, but I think I have heard good things about these. A friend tells me that someone has advanced the meta-fictional theory that she and Holmes had an off-camera liaison which produced Nero Wolfe. I rather wish I hadn’t heard that before my first encounter with Holmes, because it was quite distracting . . .
These were mostly fun puzzles, though in a few places, I couldn’t help but remember Samuel Vimes’ famous opinion on Clues:
He distrusted the kind of person who’d take one look at another man and say in a lordly voice to his companion, “Ah, my dear sir, I can tell you nothing except that he is a left-handed stonemason who has spent some years in the merchant navy and has recently fell on hard times,” and then unroll a lot of supercilious commentary about calluses and stance and the state of a man’s boots, when exactly the same comments could apply to a man who was wearing his old clothes because he’d been doing a spot of home bricklaying for a new barbecue pit, and had been tattooed once when he was drunk and seventeen and in fact got seasick on a wet pavement. (Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay)
However, the puzzles were enjoyably imaginative and bizarre, even if they stretch credulity here and there. (For instance, I don’t buy that she would have called it a “speckled band.”) The odd thing is that I presently have very little sense of Watson’s personality. (And nevermind personality—as far as I can tell from these, Watson’s wife doesn’t have a name . . . ) I suppose this is the problem with starting with short stories; I’ve picked up A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four and will read those before going back to my nifty Strand collection. I’m looking forward to them.
If you ever run across Baring-Gould’s annotated edition of the Holmes stories, you might take a look at it. The footnotes, and the little essays on what Sherlockian enthusiasts have tried to deduce from the text evidence, are quite fascinating. (And it’s amazing how much mental energy people will put into debating what Watson’s middle name is, or how many times he was married….)
I believe the Baring-Gould biography is where the Holmes-Wolfe theory is laid out, or at least hinted at strongly.
As far as the annotated edition–I dunno, I might be happier not having the inconsistences pointed out to me so obviously. =>
Seriously, thanks for the pointer; it does sound interesting, in the right frame of mind.
Yeah, the Baring-Gould keeps pointing out all the continuity errors and explaining them away. I like continuity as much as the next gal, but sometimes I’d rather just enjoy the stories.
Didn’t much care for the Carole Nelson Douglas, simply because I have very strong ideas in my head about Irene, and I just don’t see her becoming a detective (plus, every writer always has the tendency to rewrite her as a soprano for some reason, even after Doyle specifically said she was a contralto). If I need feminist Holmes pastiche, I tend to pick up a Laurie R. King “Mary Russell” novel.
Be prepared for a quality dip by the time you get to Return and Memoirs. By the ’20s you can practically hear Doyle heaving a sigh over having to pull out his detective again. (I’ll admit to a sneaking fondness for “His Last Bow”, but mostly because it’s a war-espionage story, and a change of milieu for Holmes).
For me, the really fun part in getting my hands on a facsimile version of the Strand stuff was seeing how many of the Paget illustrations had been lovingly recreated in the Jeremy Brett series.
It’s interesting that you should have strong ideas in your head about Irene, considering she gets so little screentime.
Re: Laurie King, I understand that The Beekeeper’s Apprentice is quite famous, so it’s on my list for eventually.
And thanks for the warning about the quality dip.
Oh, hell. I can have strong ideas of a character that appears once for three or four pages and never again sees the light of day (e.g., “Clifton Baker” in Ernest Bramah’s Max Carrados story, “The Mystery of Headlingham Heights”). All they have to do is be cool. 🙂
I adore all of King’s novels, but feel I ought to mention that I read her for atmosphere more than plot. The plot will almost invariably be wrapped up a little too neatly in the last five pages, and if this infuriates you, she may not be your cup of tea. However, she’s great at building tension and maintaining it, as well as building cool environments and characters. You may want to try one of the standalones, like Folly first to see if you want to dive into one of the series.
I rarely try to guess whodunnit in mysteries or anything; indeed, prior to these, the mysteries I was reading most were Nero Wolfe books, where you can’t figure out whodunnit usually because Saul Panzer gathered the critical clue offstage. Atmosphere and characters are fine with me.
What I’ve noticed about the Holmes stories is that Conan Doyle cheats outrageously with Holmes’ deductions. Evidence not revealed to the reader, deductions that make no sense but still are correct, etc.
Evidence not revealed to the reader I’m sort of used to, from Nero Wolfe books. I’ve noticed that a number of Holmes’ deductions are quite dubious–there was one about the height of handwriting indicating someone’s strength of character, which I thought was just dopey. Like I said, I’m more in the Vimes camp (waits impatiently for her copy of Night Watch to ship).
But in a way even the bad deductions are fun–they keep me awake. =>
Extremely belated comment:
A friend recently lent me The Annotated Sherlock Holmes (vol. 1), and it’s a blast. The nitpicking with continuity and fact isn’t what I expected. To me, it mostly seems like members of the Baker Street Irregulars figuring out every last little thing that’s wrong or impossible, pondering bizarre retcons and readings to reconcile them — and then giving up with a nod and a wink and just enjoying the stories.
My favorite so far: when they noted that the events in “The Musgrave Ritual” couldn’t have happened the way they were described, because [rot13] zntargvp abegu fuvsgrq fhssvpvragyl orgjrra gur 17gu praghel naq gur yngr 19gu, fb gung Ubyzrf jbhyq unir orra cnpvat guvatf bss va gur jebat qverpgvba naq raqvat hc va gur jebat cynpr. All in good fun, and often fascinating.