Mark Frost co-created, co-wrote, and co-produced, Twin Peaks. That includes the 2017 reboot (which I abandoned early on. I’m a huge fan of the original series, but the restart did nothing for me.

He also wrote the two Fantastic Four films with Jessica Alba (which I said here, are better than people give it credit), as well as 42 episodes of Hill Street Blues, which was an extremely influential cop show in the eighties.

Frost wrote the dark James Spader movie, Storyville after Twin Peaks ended. And he also wrote a novel, which came out in 1993.

The List of 7 came about because Frost is a Sherlock Holmes fan. Not only is the novel’s protagonist none other than Arthur Conan Doyle and bits of his life are scattered throughout, but there are Holmes-isms aplenty. Thus, the book is a type of pastiche, though darker than any straight Holmes tale I’ve read.

A struggling young doctor who hasn’t yet created Holmes, Doyle receives a mysterious summons to what turns out to be a séance. Really creepy stuff happens, people die, a mysterious rescuer appears, and Doyle spends the rest of the book on the run from a dark conspiracy. Turns out that his completely fictional novel submission, The Dark Brotherhood, exactly mirrors a real group. And as you can guess by the name, it’s a really evil secret organization. Man, don’t you hate it when that happens!

Doyle’s rescuer, Jack Sparks, clearly has a lot of Sherlock Holmes in him, with some James Bond thrown in. And the main villain certainly brings to mind a ruthless Moriarty. Doyle is a pretty good version of, well, himself.

This is a pulp style horror yarn: More Clark Ashton Smith than Arthur Conan Doyle. It’s lathered in supernatural like a cheap medium in fake ectoplasm. Four hundred pages long, it rollicks along at a breakneck pace: another pulp characteristic. I think that Frost is an over-writer. He uses lots and lots of words. I don’t particularly mind his style, but it certainly feels a bit wordy. This book could be leaner. It works, but it’s noticeable.

I’m not much of a horror fan, but I am a great fan of Robert R. McCammon (I wrote about his nearly flawless ‘coming of age’ novel, Boy’s Life, here). The antagonist brought to mind the villain from his novel, Baal. And that ain’t nice. There is some unpleasant stuff in this book: there’s just no way around it. This secret group is evil.

Now, along with Doyle, we meet Bram Stoker, Prince Edward Albert, and a slightly renamed Sir William Gull (the latter two figuring prominently in the Royal Conspiracy theories about Jack the Ripper).

But you can’t finish a chapter without running into something Sherlockian, which is fun. Sparks has a place on Montague Street, he uses cocaine, he’s brilliant, he has a brilliant brother: you get the idea. The story also nicely dovetails into Doyle’s actual life.

After the main problem has been resolved, there are still a couple of nice little surprises left. If you don’t mind a supernatural edge to your Holmes-like story, this is a pretty good read. Frost really does keep things moving forward at a brisk pace.

I recommend The List of 7 as as a Pulp-style, supernatural thriller with a Sherlock Holmes/Arthur Conan Doyle overlay. That definitely works for me.

THE SEQUEL

Two years later, Frost followed up with a sequel, The 6 Messiahs.

Doyle is now an international success, though constantly pestered to bring Holmes back from his supposed death at the Reichenbach Falls. Jack Sparks and Eileen Temple, from the first book, had vanished from his life.

Doyle, accompanied by his (real-life) younger brother, Innes, is off to America for a speaking tour. Shenanigans on shipboard (I like that turn of phrase) draw Doyle into a plan to steal great religious texts as part of an evil plot. Really, Doyle can’t turn around without coming up against some great evil trying to take over the world. It’s like Miss Marple or bakers on Hallmark, finding a dead body every time they leave the house!

Turns out five folks have had dreams of a great black tower rising out of the desert and events bring heroes and villains together for an epic showdown. “Five,” you say? Yep, you’ll have to guess who the sixth messiah is.

Unlike List, Messiahs is very much an American/Old West adventure. And there’s a Mormon feel to the religious commune. It doesn’t feel as action-packed as its predecessor. This one moves forward at a more leisurely pace. I think it’s in part because there’s much less a sense of imminent danger for Doyle this time around.

Anyone who enjoyed List should certainly read Messiahs, though I think it is markedly the lesser of the two. Nothing wrong with it, just not as good a book.

Mark Frost will forever be known (with David Lynch) for Twin Peaks. But he’s also got a foot in the Holmes door with these two dark, Pulpy novels about Arthur Conan Doyle. I’d certainly like to see it become a trilogy, but after thirty years of silence about it, I don’t think so.

Check out The List of 7. You won’t be disappointed.

 

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Bob Byrne’s ‘A (Black) Gat in the Hand’ made its Black Gate debut in 2018 and has returned every summer since.

His ‘The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes’ column ran every Monday morning at Black Gate from March, 2014 through March, 2017. And he irregularly posts on Rex Stout’s gargantuan detective in ‘Nero Wolfe’s Brownstone.’ He is a member of the Praed Street Irregulars, and founded www.SolarPons.com (the only website dedicated to the ‘Sherlock Holmes of Praed Street’).

He organized Black Gate’s award-nominated ‘Discovering Robert E. Howard’ series, as well as the award-winning ‘Hither Came Conan’ series. Which is now part of THE Definitive guide to Conan. He also organized 2023’s ‘Talking Tolkien.’

He has contributed stories to The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories — Parts III, IV, V, VI, XXI, and XXXIII.

He has written introductions for Steeger Books, and appeared in several magazines, including Black Mask, Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, The Strand Magazine, and Sherlock Magazine.

You can definitely ‘experience the Bobness’ at Jason Waltz’s ’24? in 42′ podcast.