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Author: Bob Byrne

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: A Century of John D. MacDonald

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: A Century of John D. MacDonald

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MacDonald_WSJIt’s no surprise, given the title of this column, that I’ve written more Sherlock Holmes-related posts than about any other topic. What is surprising to me, given that I know myself fairly well, is that I’ve only done one post about John D. MacDonald. You can read some stuff I’ve written about him over on my own blog, Almost Holmes, here and here and here. But perhaps because I haven’t been able to delve deeply enough into re-reading and analysis, I’ve not come back to him at Black Gate. Until today.

Yesterday marked the one hundredth anniversary of John MacD’s birth. When MacDonald died in December of 1986 of heart-related problems, he was one of the most influential and popular authors in America. Thirty years later, while he is still respected and cited by many writers, including John Jakes, Randy Wayne White and others, he’s somewhat forgotten. Which is both sad, and something that I would like to ponder on for a future post as well.

A quote from Stephen King:

“John D. MacDonald has written a novel called The End of the Night which I would argue is one of the greatest American novels of the twentieth century. It ranks with Death of a Salesman, it ranks with An American Tragedy,”

A quote from me, Bob Byrne (I admit, I don’t quite have the cachet of that King fellow):

“John D. MacDonald is one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century: In any genre. He was a skillful storyteller and a first-rate social commentator.”

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Mycroft’s Job

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Mycroft’s Job

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Mycroft_SP1One of the things I enjoy about being a Sherlockian (no, I don’t mean a fan of the BBC television show) is the way ‘one thing leads into another’ and you can explore all kinds of avenues and lanes, wandering here and there, encountering interesting stuff. That was a long sentence!

I was fortunate enough to be included in the upcoming MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories – Part V. In the early part of my story, The Case of the Ruby Necklace (yes, I know, captivating title), I had cause to include a passage from A Study in Scarlet:

“Well, I have a trade of my own. I suppose I am the only one in the world. I’m a consulting detective, if you can understand what that is. Here in London we have lots of Government detectives and lots of private ones. When these fellows are at fault, they come to me, and I manage to put them on the right scent. They lay all the evidence before me, and I am generally able, by the help of my knowledge of the history of crime, to set them straight. There is a strong family resemblance about misdeeds, and if you can have all the details of a thousand at your finger ends, it is odd if you can’t unravel the thousand and first.”

“And these other people?” I asked, regarding the many strangers that visited our rooms for private sessions with Holmes. I had wondered if he were not some kind of fortuneteller and too embarrassed to tell me so.

“They are mostly sent on by private enquiry agencies. They are all people who are in trouble about something, and want a little enlightening. I listen to their story, they listen to my comments, and then I pocket my fee.”

“But do you mean to say,” I said, “that without leaving your room you can unravel some knot which other men can make nothing of, although they have seen every detail for themselves?”

“Quite so. I have a kind of intuition that way. Now and again a case turns up which is a little more complex. Then I have to bustle about and see things with my own eyes. You see I have a lot of special knowledge, which I apply to the problem, and which facilitates matters wonderfully. Observation with me is second nature.”

 

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Of Necromancers and Frog Gods: Part Two (The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes)

Of Necromancers and Frog Gods: Part Two (The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes)

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FROG GOD GAMES

Last November, I did a post on the history of Necromancer Games. I wrapped up with, “And there, our saga of Necromancer Games draws to a close. But our story has most certainly not come to an end.” That’s because Slumbering Tsar would rise from the ashes and a new RPG company would be built on its foundations. Welcome to Part Two: Of Necromancers & Frog Gods.

Waking the Tsar

FGG_DesolationShortly after Necromancer hung it up, co-founder Bill Webb established Frog God Games just to publish Greg Vaughan’s The Slumbering Tsar as a fourteen-part subscription saga, to be issued as one massive book at the end of the project.

Starting at 7th level, Tsar is divided into three books. If you want to start from 1st level, I suggest using The Wizard’s Amulet and/or The Crucible of Freya, then part of Tomb of Abysthor as a 1st through 6th level lead-in. The Lost City of Barakus is another excellent option, though not as thematically linked. Though it wouldn’t take much to give the villainous Devron a tie-in to Tsar.

Book one, The Desolation, is three installments (parts) dealing with a small settlement in the barren plains. It totals about 125 pages and gives the party a staging area for adventuring towards Tsar. Think of a Necromancer version of The Village of Hommlet – but way nastier. The story of The Army of Light at the very end of part one is worth it alone for me.

Part two includes the Ashen Waste: with such highlights as The Tomb of the Sleeping Knight (not a lot of sleeping going on here) and the burial mound of the barbarian warriors led by Tark. The Chaos Rift, featuring The Sepulcher of the Last Justicar, is even more deadly.

Part Three gets the party to the walls of Tsar, though it might well perish in The Boiling Land or The Dead Fields first. And a sticky situation waits outside the walls…

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Don’t Panic!

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Don’t Panic!

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BG_AdamsDontPAnicTo those who ascribe to Dirk Gently’s belief in the fundamental interconnectedness of everything (the working premise that made him the holistic detective that he was), you might be able to tie together today’s rambling post. If you do, feel free to explain it to me. My Sherlockian approach failed miserably in the attempt. I got to the point where, once I had eliminated the impossible, whatever remained, however improbable, must be the truth. Except what remained was still impossible.

(I wrote about the Gently books here and the television miniseries here. Go ahead and read them. You know you want to.)

And since I’m talking about a mega-successful series, that has sold/rated well in almost every medium short of Mime, you don’t get a Spoiler Alert. If you’re not familiar with Adams’ works, I don’t know why you’re reading this post anyways. Go read/watch/play/listen to some incarnation of this stuff.

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency is my favorite Douglas Adams book (many folks would like me to explain how that could be!). But I first came to Adams’ just like everybody else: through The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Note I use the unhyphenated spelling.

I wouldn’t tackle that controversy without downing at least two Pan Galactic Gargleblasters first. And since I would lose consciousness two swallows into the first one, we can put that issue to bed right now. And I don’t mean on one of the follopping mattresses from the swamps of Sqornshellous Zeta, either. There.

Now we can move along. Though if you want to delve deeper into the issue on your own, see Don’t Panic: The Official Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Companion by Neil Gaiman – pages 50-51.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Lt. Columbo

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Lt. Columbo

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Columbo_HandsUpThe mystery field is full of great detectives and private eyes, both amateur and professional, created by authors. Hercule Poirot, Nero Wolfe, Father Brown, Inspector Morse, Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, Mike Hammer, The Continental Op: and of course, Sherlock Holmes. The list goes on and on.

There have also been quite a few detectives created for television. McCloud, Matt Houston, Magnum PI and Jim Rockford to name a few. The germaphobic Adrian Monk was immensely popular. But perhaps the supreme television detective is Inspector Columbo.

A prototype Columbo, if you will (heck – even if you won’t), appeared in Enough Rope: a 1960 episode of The Chevy Mystery Hour, played by Bert Freed. It was then turned into a play, Prescription Murder, starring Thomas Mitchell, who died of cancer during its run.

Next, the play evolved into a two-hour television movie. The under-appreciated Lee J. Cobb was approached but unavailable and Bing Crosby turned down the part (imagine that). Though he was considered too young at the time, Peter Falk was given the part and the movie aired in 1968.

The network ordered another TV movie to see if a series was feasible. Ransom For a Dead Man did well and Columbo became part of a rotating series of shows, including Dennis Weaver’s McCloud and McMillan and Wife, with Rock Hudson.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Stephen Mangan’s Dirk Gently

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Stephen Mangan’s Dirk Gently

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Gently_TVbothLast week, I was writing my post for today. It was about the Houdini and Doyle miniseries, in which Stephen Mangan plays Arthur Conan Doyle, who was, of course, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. But, the principle of Zen Writing Navigation took me elsewhere.

There is a school of thought that says you should use a map when you are lost. Dirk Gently’s strategy is to find someone who looks like they know where they are going and follow them. He rarely ends up where he was intending to go, but often ends up somewhere that he needed to be. Back in 2010, Mangan played Gently in a pilot episode that was followed by three more episodes in 2012.

I followed Magnan and ended up writing this post, not one on Houdini and Doyle. And through this, once again proving the fundamental interconnectedness of everything.

Just as Sherlock Holmes was the world’s first (and greatest) private consulting detective, Gently was the world’s first, greatest and only holistic detective, created by the late Douglas Adams. I wrote about Gently here at Black Gate and if you haven’t read Adams’ two novels about him, you’re missing out on some terrific humor.

You might be familiar with the phrase, “Almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.” If you’re not, as soon as you finish reading this post, you need to read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Not watch the movie (which is better than people give it credit for), but read the book. Fortunately, this miniseries is closer to Gently than that phrase implies.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Mysteries at Hallmark

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Mysteries at Hallmark

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My wife and I enjoy watching murder mystery movies on Hallmark. More accurately, the Hallmark Movies and Mystery Channel (HMMC). Many of them had previously run on the Hallmark Channel that most folks are more familiar with. My previous cable provider didn’t provide HMMC at the tier I purchased, and many of my friends don’t have it either. It’s out there, but it’s not a low-tier feature in many systems.

Which is a shame, because there’s a lot of viewing for mystery fans. They air reruns of shows such as Hart to Hart, Matlock, Diagnosis Murder, Murder She Wrote and Perry Mason. And a staple of the schedule is Columbo. I haven’t seen every episode, but I’ve seen many of them several times and I never get tired of watching Peter Falk do his thing. “Uh, say, just one more thing…”

I also like a couple of old Hallmark franchises that have come to rest at HMMC.

Most folks knew Kellie Martin first as cute little Beckie (Becca) Thatcher in Life Goes On (a poignant, well done series) and later on as nurse Lucy Knight in ER. But from 2003 through 2007, she made eleven Mystery Woman movies for Hallmark. She played bookstore owner Samantha Kinsey, who constantly found herself involved in murders (that’s going to be a common theme in this post).

HMMC_KEllieMartin

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The MX Anthologies – All the Holmes You Need

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The MX Anthologies – All the Holmes You Need

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MXSeries_4
Hot off the presses!

David Marcum and I email each other. A lot! It is sort of a modern version of the HP Lovecraft – Robert E. Howard letter swapping. Without the gravitas. And the weirdness. And the literary importance. And the…oh, never mind. One Thursday afternoon in January of 2015, he sent me an email about a dream that he had had the previous night.

The dream (and the email) was about putting together a multi-author anthology of traditional Sherlock Holmes stories. As David typed, “There would be no weird Alternate Universe or present-day stuff, no Holmes-is-the-Ripper, nothing where Watson is at Holmes’s funeral or vice-versa. Etc. Essentially nothing that shockingly contradicts what is in the Canon.”

Earlier that morning, he had emailed Steve Emecz, his publisher at MX Books, about the idea. From that dream was born the MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories. Except more authors signed on and it grew to two books: then to three. Then came another volume in 2016. And a fifth, containing only Christmas stories, and a sixth, are on their way! In fact, I should be finishing my Christmas tale right now, not writing this post.

The four volumes have contained ten introductions/forewords/essays, five poems and over eighty new stories. That’s EIGHTY Holmes short stories (including a couple of plays) making their first book appearances in this series. I read Holmes stories at a pretty heavy pace and I’m still working my way through these volumes.

The first three books came out as a trilogy, split into time periods (1881-1889, 1890-1895 and 1896-1929). Volume IV followed as the ‘2016 Annual’ and it is expected that there will be at least one new collection yearly into the foreseeable future.

And every single author participating has donated their royalties to the restoration of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s former home, Undershaw, which, when completed, will be a part of Stepping Stones, a school for children with learning disabilities. As my sister Carolyn is severely mentally retarded, I can appreciate the generosity of every one of my fellow authors. Actions like this matter.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Dr. Watson for Comic Relief?

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Dr. Watson for Comic Relief?

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BruceWatson_EyesFor many (especially of a certain age), the image of Doctor Watson is that of a buffoon who provides little assistance and lots of laughs. And the “credit” for that perception can be laid at the feet of Nigel Bruce. Bruce appeared in fourteen popular movies opposite Basil Rathbone’s beloved Holmes, and he also played the good doctor in well over two hundred radio plays – most with Rathbone.

In the first two films, The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, he was a bit of a clown. But after the franchise shifted from Fox to Universal, that portrayal was understated compared to the next twelve movies he made with Rathbone. The scripts called for Bruce to play a dolt – his daughter said that the disappointed Bruce made up the term ‘Boobus Brittanicus’ to describe his un-Doyle like character.

The poem below appeared in Punch Magazine. Unfortunately, after digging through my shelves, I cannot find where I got this from (I thought that it was one of Peter Haining’s books, but that didn’t pan out). But it is from the nineteen forties, when Rathbone was the brilliant, active Holmes and Bruce provided comic relief.

I think it’s both an amusing and insightful commentary on the Bruce phenomenon:

The stately Holmes of England, how beautiful he stood
Long, long ago in Baker Street – and still in Hollywood
He keeps the ancient flair for clues, the firm incisive chin,
The deerstalker, the dressing gown, the shag, the violin.

But Watson, Doctor Watson! How altered, how betrayed
The fleet of foot, the warrior once, the faster than Lestrade!
What imbecile production, what madness for the moon
Has screened my glorious Watson as well nigh a buffoon?

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The Gloria Scott – The Real Story

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The Gloria Scott – The Real Story

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The only on screen Holmes to film The Gloria Scott- Eille Norwood
The only on screen Holmes to film The Gloria Scott- Eille Norwood

“The Adventure of the Gloria Scott” appeared in The Strand Magazine in April of 1893 and was included in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. In it, Holmes recounts a tale of his university days to Watson. It is one of two tales Doyle gives us before Holmes meets Watson – and the earliest of the pair.

Take a few minutes and go read it. Then, come on back here to Black Gate. Below, I’ve got a very different account of that tale. A very plausible one. So,, come play The Game with me!

Mister Holmes,

Things were not exactly as they seemed when you visited Donnithorpe so many years ago. You are aware that my son, Victor, became a wealthy man in India, overseeing the largest tea plantation north of the Ganges. But he died a few years ago of the fever, so he is beyond suffering and my own time grows short. The consumption is about to take me.

I am pleased to see that you turned those fine talents of yours to professional detectin’. I would like to think I played a small part in that, if you remember my words to you that first time you came to stay with us.

The papers I left for Victor to read after my supposed death told a made-up story, Mister Holmes. You might ask what event from my past could be so bad that I would prefer people, even my own son, to believe that I was a mutineer, rather than know the truth? Let me tell you and maybe you’ll understand.

I’ll wager there’s not a man alive who hasn’t done somethin’ he’s ashamed of. If there is, I’d like to look him in the eye. It was many a year ago that I was a young man in Liverpool, full of fire and life. I was a rough sort without too much schoolin’.

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