BackHolmes beyond Doyle
Arthur Conan Doyle's iconic character has served as source material for many writers. Here are 10 stories that stand out
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Mr Holmes, based on Mitch Cullin’s A Slight Trick of the Mind, opened in India on Friday. It is another in a long line of books, movies and TV shows inspired by Arthur Conan Doyle’s original books. Most readers will probably be familiar with the TV series starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman and the Guy Ritchie movies starring Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law. Readers of my generation will probably remember the Granada TV series starring Jeremy Brett and David Burke.
What many readers might not know is that the Holmes canon served as source material, or inspiration, for many writers. Even P.G. Wodehouse once said that his Wooster and Jeeves books were structured the same way many of Holmes’s cases were—a problem in London, a jaunt to the countryside, and then the climax and the successful return to town.
I have read many of the Holmes stories and books not authored by Doyle over the years. Here, from memory, are the books and stories that stand out. I have probably missed some, but it wasn’t difficult to come up with 10.
1. A Study in Emerald by Neil Gaiman. One part Doyle, one part H.P. Lovecraft and one part Gaiman, this short story isn’t what it seems, nor are the characters.
2. Moriarty by Anthony Horowitz. Darker than his previous Holmes novel, House of Silk, and, therefore, better.
3. The Last Sherlock Holmes Story by Michael Dibdin. This is a book in which we discover there is no Moriarty and that Holmes himself is Moriarty (although Dibdin gives readers the comfort of an ambiguous ending with Holmes telling Watson that Moriarty has framed him masterfully).
4. The Final Solution by Michael Chabon. I have loved Chabon’s works ever since I read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. The Final Solution is a wonderfully crafted little mystery featuring an old man, a talking parrot and a mute Jewish boy.
5. Sherlock Holmes: The Unauthorized Biography by Nick Rennison. Interesting if only for the effort involved—piecing together fragments from the story with actual happenings in those years, not an easy task given that Doyle sometimes goes back and forth.
6. The Problem of the Sore Bridge by Philip José Farmer. In The Problem of Thor Bridge (by Doyle), Holmes tells Watson, “A third case worthy of note is that of Isadora Persano, the well-known journalist and duellist, who was found stark staring mad with a match box in front of him which contained a remarkable worm said to be unknown to science." Farmer’s sci-fi short story has Raffles (the gentleman burglar) solve it. Raffles’s creator E.W. Hornung was Doyle’s brother-in-law.
7. The Seven-Per-Cent Solution by Nicholas Meyer. There is this little passage in The Sign of Four (by Doyle) when Watson comes in and sees Holmes injecting himself with something. Here’s how it goes: “Which is it today," I asked, “morphine or cocaine?" He raised his eyes languidly from the old black-letter volume which he had opened. “It is cocaine," he said, “a seven-per-cent solution. Would you care to try it?"
Moriarty is a good man in this book, Holmes’s childhood math tutor about whom the detective harbours drug-induced delusions. Watson eventually manages to get Holmes to sign up for a cure—a hypnosis treatment by Dr. Freud in Vienna. A cured Holmes saves Europe from plunging into war. Meyer had several other Holmes books as well, including The Canary Trainer.
8. The Beekeeper’s Apprentice by Laurie R. King. Featuring Mary Russell, who eventually marries Holmes, this book, the first in a series, features a young Russell, whom a retired Holmes (yes, he is living in the Sussex Downs) takes on as his apprentice.
9. The Italian Secretary by Caleb Carr. Two of the Queen’s retainers are killed and a ghost is the main suspect. Carr’s narration drags in parts, but his characterization of both the Holmes brothers is detailed and authentic.
10. The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes by Jamyang Norbu. Spiritualism, reincarnation, Huree Chander Mukherjee from Kipling’s Kim as the narrator, and Holmes (as Sigerson) during what Sherlockians call the Great Hiatus (the seven years between his seeming death in The Final Problem and his reappearance in The Adventure of The Empty House)—this book has it all. I’m disappointed Norbu hasn’t written more Holmes books.
R. Sukumar is editor, Mint.
Comments are welcome at feedback@livemint.com.
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