Victorian nerd

Victorian nerd

May 01

That’s me! A bit. Mostly Sherlock Holmes – there’s a lot of good Holmes stuff going on and it seems to be reaching some sort of critical mass.

Caleb Carr, for example, wrote a pair of excellent novels about a psychiatrist that hunts down a serial killer in 19th Century New York, stories often compared to the Holmes canon, even though the characters are quite different. Mark Frost wrote a series of books about Arthur Conan Doyle, acting as a sort of Watson to a Holmes-like man of mystery.

Hell, even the last episode of Dr. Who had a slight Holmesian slate to it, at least to me. Firstly, there was a reference to Dr. Bell, who was a teacher to Doyle, and is credited as being the inspiration for Holmes’ style of detection. And secondly, there was Queen Victoria herself, and the point about how often someone had tried to assassinate her. See, here’s where it gets wierd.

Caleb Carr recently wrote (and I just finished reading) The Italian Secretary, which is a Sherlock Holmes novel, commissioned by the Doyle estate – and thankfully, it was pretty darn good (a lot of the pastiche books are so-so.) The whole story revolves around a mystery at a Scottish estate, one occasionally used by Queen Victoria when she travels to Aberdeen (as she was doing in the Dr. Who episode) and I can only hope the BBC will perhaps attempt a dramatization of it (just not with Rupert Everett, please.)

Just as I was finishing that one, I heard about Shadows Over Baker Street, a collection of short stories that mix Holmes with Lovecraftian horror (I guess our cultural overlords would insist on calling it a mash-up, but I refuse.)

And it gets even better – while seeking the Shadows book, I randomly spot on the shelf a new book entitled Holmes on the Range. I read the dust jacket and then bought it immediately. The story is essentially about two brothers in New Mexico, cowboys, who read of Holmes’ cases in Harpers magazine (Holmes is considered real in this book, unlike the Frost books, where he’s a work of fiction) and attempt some “deductifying” themselves. Awwweeesome. You can read the short story that lead to the novel, here.

But before I get to that, there’s The Locked Room, which is, I think, the eighth book in the Mary Russell series by Laurie R. King. Essentially the stories pick up where Doyle always suggested Holmes would end up, retired in the countryside, tending bees. There, he meets the young Mary Russell, who’s very nearly Holmes’ equal. I say very nearly, as the character is more a mix between Homes’ logical thinking and Watson’s heart. In every respect she’s a good stand in for Irene Adler, The Woman. I haven’t heard the response of other fans to these books, but there are 8 of them, after all. The most recent of which I’m reading now.

Really, there’s never a good time to have a cold, as I have now, but if you have to stop and stay in bed, you might as well have a lot of good stuff to read.

WikiWikiWhack: Sherlock Holmes, Caleb Carr, Laurie R. King