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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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Margery Allingham’s The Mind Readers

Margery Allingham’s The Mind Readers

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Allingham MindLately I’ve been looking at SF-like inventions or discoveries that turn up in crime/mystery novels, first with John D. MacDonald‘s The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything, and then with a variation on that same invention in an SF mystery, Spider Robinson‘s Kill the Editor/Lady Slings the Booze. This put me in mind of another example of mystery meets SF in Margery Allingham’s The Mind Readers (1965).

Allingham (1904-1966) is considered one of the mystery writers of the British Golden Age, along with Christie, Sayers, and their ilk, and her earlier novels certainly have a touch of that Jazz Age charm.

At first glance Albert Campion seems to be another variation on the gentleman sleuth with a friend on the force, a la Sayer’s Lord Peter Wimsey. The reader is given clear hints from time to time that he’s probably a younger son of a noble family, like Wimsey, but we never see Albert in family situations. He doesn’t live like a rich man, or a rich man’s son, and while it’s also pretty clear that “Albert Campion” is a pseudonym, we never learn his real name. Instead of the traditional English manservant, Albert employs Lugg, a former cat-burglar who’s lost his figure. Their relationship provides a great deal of the humour in the novels, but these books aren’t written for laughs. The characters may not take themselves very seriously, but they are serious about their work.

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Cast Your Spell on a Medieval Town in The Village Crone

Cast Your Spell on a Medieval Town in The Village Crone

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The Village Crone-smallI’m something of a collector (this may not come as a surprise). I collect vintage paperbacks, pulps, science fiction digests, comics, and lots of other paper ephemera.

But chiefly what I collect is games. Goodness, I have a lot of games. I hoard them in the basement. I drive to games auctions (like the marvelous Games Plus auction in Mount Prospect, IL), I track down obscure Amiga games on eBay, and I compulsively hunt every solitaire role playing game ever made.

I’m almost given up buying modern fantasy board games, though. Not that they’re not any good — far from it! — but even an obsessive like me has his limits. We’re living in a Golden Age of Board Games, and it’s a huge challenge keeping tabs on even a fraction of all the interesting games being released every month.

You know what I can do, though? I can try some of the games Amazon.com has deeply discounted every month. I’m not sure what the story is with these games — were they discontinued? Replaced with a newer edition? Did they flop? — but hey, I don’t actually care all that much. They’re super cheap, they look cool, and I’m ready to buy. Take my money.

I’ve been buying 1-2 every week for the past month or so, and some of them look pretty darn good. Like Fireside Games’ The Village Crone, an accessible Euro-style game with modular boards in which 1-6 players harvest spell ingredients, give their familiars secret tasks, casts spells, turn villagers into frogs, and compete for the power and authority that comes with being named Village crone.

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April Short Story Roundup

April Short Story Roundup

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oie_1724340vOE0YC88Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.

Another of 2016’s months has come and gone, which means it’s time to round up and review a batch of new short stories.

Swords and Sorcery Magazine #51  presented its usual complement of two stories in April. The first is by a newcomer to the magazine’s pages, Jason Ray Carney. “The Ink of the Slime Lord” gave me nearly everything I could want from a S&S story: a wicked sorceress, dire magics, a dashing pirate, and plenty of monsters.

A trio of evil sisters with dreams of dominion run up against powerful opponents:

The Three Sisters had established a cult centered on a book bound in human skin and inked with blood. This cult threatened the priesthood of Atok-the-Million-Eyed, and for this the sisters would be punished with impunity, the leaves of their philosophy scattered to the winds.

The youngest of the sisters, Mera, “was tenacious. She was able to put her head back on her body.” Revived, she sets off for the titular ingredient in order to bring her sisters back to life as well. Her quest builds in scope as she first faces off against a single wizard, then dives into the underworld in search of a certain pirate before making for a lost and ruined city and the temple of the demonic Slime Lord.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The Key West Private Eye – Gideon Lowry

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The Key West Private Eye – Gideon Lowry

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Leslie_SoftlyAs I’ve posted here at Black Gate, John D. MacDonald, author of the Travis McGee series (and much, much more) is my favorite writer. And I believe, one of the greatest American writers of the twentieth century, in any genre. His is the pre-eminent name in the subcategory of ‘Florida writers.’ Randy Wayne White’s Doc Ford, a marine biologist who lives in a stilt house, is McGee’s successor. I think White is a top-notch writer and I certainly recommend that series.

I’m not as up on this group as I used to be, but Carl Hiassen is probably the best-known Florida scribe these days. His biting satire and hilarious situations can be laugh-out-loud reading. In a similar vein to Hiassen are the works of Lawrence Shames. He also pokes fun at the absurdities of Florida life with a series of mostly unconnected books set in Key West. I recently read Virgin Heat and Mangrove Squeeze and got some chuckles, though his stuff is a bit raunchy for me.

There are others, of course, like Thomas McGuane (Jimmy Buffett’s brother in law), Geoffrey Norman, Lawrence Sanders, James W. Hall and John Lutz, to name a few; covering a wide range of styles. Today, I’m going to talk about John Leslie and his hard-boiled PI, Gideon Lowry.

There are only four books in the series, and it appears that no more will be forthcoming. This is a shame, because Lowry is an interesting character. Killing Me Softly was published in 1994 and Lowry is in his fifties. Except for a two-year vacation to Korea, paid by Uncle Sam, he has spent his entire life in Key West. He’s a true-blue Conch. And that matters, as the sense of tribe plays a big part of the series. Whether or not someone was one of “our people” was a major factor in how you responded to situations regarding them. But unlike his father, Lowry doesn’t simply identify with natives and locals.

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Shut Up, You Freak!!

Shut Up, You Freak!!

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Shut Up You Freak-small

Recently, as I watched the San Antonio Spurs pummel and demoralize the Oklahoma City Thunder, I was pummeled and demoralized myself, as I was smacked with a halftime commercial for the upcoming movie Alice Through the Looking Glass. Combine this with the recent rumors of a Beetlejuice sequel, and the conclusion is inescapable: it’s sixteen years into the twenty first century, and we haven’t learned a thing. Tim Burton just isn’t going to go away, and apparently there’s nothing that we can do to make him go away. (I know that the new Alice isn’t being directed by Burton, but he’s responsible for it in the same way that Nixon was responsible for the depredations of Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy.)

The man is seemingly bulletproof; no number of Rubberstamped, predictable, underperforming movies can stop him. “Tim Burton” is a firmly established pop culture brand, and it hardly matters that he hasn’t directed a good movie since the end of the last century. (I do make a partial exception for Big Fish, which wasn’t good, but was at least an ambitious, honorable failure. It also seemed to take something out of Burton; he’s never tried anything nearly as serious since.)

How did it come to this? Back in the day, I liked Batman, Ed Wood, and The Nightmare Before Christmas as much as anyone. I was initially underwhelmed by Mars Attacks but later came to appreciate it. Now, however, I greet the announcement of every new Tim Burton project in precisely the same way I greet every new American commitment in the Middle East: “Oh God — we’ve already done this, and it never works!”

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Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Insidious Doctor Fu Manchu, Part Seven – “Karamaneh”

Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Insidious Doctor Fu Manchu, Part Seven – “Karamaneh”

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NOTE: The following article was first published on May 23, 2010. Thank you to John O’Neill for agreeing to reprint these early articles, so they are archived at Black Gate which has been my home for over 5 years and 260 articles now. Thank you to Deuce Richardson without whom I never would have found my way. Minor editorial changes have been made in some cases to the original text.

The_Mystery_of_Dr._Fu-Manchu_cover_1913-227x350karamaneh-1“Karamaneh” was the sixth installment of Sax Rohmer’s serial, Fu-Manchu first published in The Story-Teller in March 1913. The story would later comprise Chapters 16 and 17 of the novel, The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu (initially re-titled The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu for U.S. publication). The story opens with Nayland Smith, Dr. Petrie, and Inspector Weymouth preparing a dragnet around the area where Dr. Fu-Manchu is known to have a base of operations. They have no illusion that they will capture the doctor himself, but hope to round up enough of his minions to deal a significant blow to the enemy.

Smith and Petrie are among a dozen Scotland Yard men combing the area. As they pass by a gypsy encampment, Smith recognizes one of the gypsies as a disguised dacoit who is wanted for murder in Burma (where Smith serves as police commissioner). While they fail to apprehend the man, they succeed in capturing the female gypsy before she can escape. The disguised gypsy woman turns out to be the mysterious slave girl who has repeatedly saved Petrie’s life since Smith first involved him in the affair. Rohmer does an excellent job of conveying Petrie’s mixed feelings of compulsion and revulsion when faced with this dangerous and exotic woman.

The reader shares Petrie’s ambivalence towards this complex character. She is beautiful and graced with a foreign otherness that defies precise identification and she has risked her own life several times in order to save Petrie, yet she has also willingly participated in the murder of countless other innocent men. Rohmer makes much of her unabashed stare that few men would be able to hold. Petrie is fascinated with her, but also feels ashamed that the object of his affection is opposed to all that defines a British subject at this point in time.

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The Birth of the Novel

The Birth of the Novel

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daphnis-and-chloeIn my last post, I described one product of the Hellenistic period of ancient art as the invention of the novel. This surprised many people, who thought that the novel was an invention of a much later time. So of course, being an academic of leisure (she says as she ducks a flying juice box), I had to say more about it.

Some scholars do date the invention of the novel to the Modern period in Western Europe. I will display my ignorance and say I do not know why this is. Many books exist outside of English, outside of the Modern period, and in fact outside of the Western hemisphere that easily qualify as novels, so it is difficult for me to see this claim as much more than chauvinism. But if someone wants to correct me on this point, I am willing and eager to be enlightened. Or to fight you on it.

The first novel that we have comes from somewhere between the 2nd Century BCE and the 1st Century CE. It is a positively charming little book called Callirhoe, and it describes the travails of a beautiful young woman who marries her true love, an equally handsome young man named Chaereas. Shortly after their wedding, he kicks her in a fit of jealous rage and she dies.

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The Granddaughter of Fu Manchu

The Granddaughter of Fu Manchu

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MSMM 0181Mike Shayne, the redheaded tough guy private eye, was introduced in the decidedly more lighthearted detective novel, Dividend on Death penned by the pseudonymous Brett Halliday in 1939. The character was an instant success and Michael Shayne (as he was initially known) quickly became a cottage industry leading to another 77 (mostly hardboiled) detective novels through the mid-1970s, over 300 short stories through the mid-1980s, 11 B-movies in the 1940s, a radio drama series that lasted nearly a decade, an early 1960s television series that made it for a full season, a TV tie-in Dell comic book that lasted three issues, and his own magazine digest that ran for nearly 30 years. The character may seem like just another clichéd private eye today, but over the years a number of very talented authors hid behind the fedora and turned-up collar of “Brett Halliday” – Bill Pronzini, Dennis Lynds, James Reasoner, Frank Belknap Long, and the ubiquitous Michael Avallone among them.

The reason we have turned our attention to this particular ginger with the mean disposition is a trilogy of stories that appeared in Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine in 1981 and 1982 featuring a character known as the Black Lotus. As the storyline developed “Brett Halliday,” in this instance James Reasoner, strongly suggested the Black Lotus was the granddaughter of Fu Manchu. Mr. Reasoner was cautious and did not name names, of course, but elements of the three stories read like a Sax Rohmer tribute – including the Black Lotus’ real identity, Leiko Smith sharing the surname of the protagonist of the Fu Manchu stories, Nayland Smith. The character’s first name (which is Japanese, rather than Chinese) was likely borrowed from Leiko Wu, the love interest from Marvel Comics’ contemporaneous Master of Kung Fu series (1973-1983) which licensed the Fu Manchu characters from Rohmer’s literary estate. I first learned of the Black Lotus storyline from Win Scott Eckert’s very useful Fu Manchu chronology. My friend, Don O’Malley was kind enough to send me scanned copies of the three issues in question in order that I finally have a chance to read them.

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More Metal on Metal: Swords of Steel II edited by D.M. Ritzlin

More Metal on Metal: Swords of Steel II edited by D.M. Ritzlin

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oie_905944pvOdEQohFrom its emergence out of the hard rock genre, heavy metal has drawn from the inspiration of swords & sorcery. “The Wizard” is the second track on what is considered the first metal album, the eponymous Black Sabbath. Uriah Heep upped the ante with its albums Demons and Wizards and The Magician’s Birthday. Manowar’s epic song “Battle Hymns,” from the album of the same name, channeled all the blood and thunder of heroic fantasy into 6 minutes and 55 seconds. Behold:

Gone are the days, when freedom shone – now blood and steel meet bone
In the light of the battle’s way, the sands of time will shake
How proud our soldiers stand, with mace and chain in hand
Sound of charge into glory ride, over the top of their vanquished pride

Other bands have gone as far as spinning songs directly from actual stories and novels. The Sword, for example, has Game of Thrones-inspired “To Take the Black,” and Manilla Road drafted both the plot and title of of a Robert E. Howard story for their “Queen of the Black Coast.”

The point is, metal and S&S have been fist in glove for many a year now. They have the same penchant for extremes — the big gestures not the subtle, small ones. The idea that heavy metal musicians could turn their love for S&S into prose makes perfect sense.

And that’s exactly what D. M. Ritzlin has encouraged, starting with last year’s Swords of Steel, an anthology of heroic fantasy written by members of heavy metal bands. While I gave it a mixed review, I was utterly sold on the idea. The authors’ ardor was undeniable, even overwhelming weaknesses in some of the stories. Each story was illustrated with a work of hand-drawn lo-fi art that harks back to sketches on the backs of D&D character sheets and murals painted on the sides of vans. Flaws be damned, I enjoyed the book and was happy to learn that a second volume was being planned.

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