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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Erle Stanley Gardner on Mysteries

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Erle Stanley Gardner on Mysteries

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ESGMystery Grand Master Erle Stanley Gardner, best known for his Perry Mason books, was a prolific letter writer. He was also an emotional letter writer and when he was unhappy about something, he would dash off a no-holds barred missive to his agent, Bob Hardy, or William and Morrow President Thayer Hobson, like the one below. They were the equivalent of today’s Facebook rants. A book collecting Gardner’s letters would be great reading.

From 1924 through 1926, Gardner sold over three dozen stories to various magazines. That hectic pace continued and in 1933, after a few rewrites, his first Perry Mason book, The Case of the Velvet Claws, came out. He was constantly writing short stories, novels and even nonfiction books for the rest of his life.

But in the thirties, he was having trouble placing stories in the usual magazines and his struggle to break into the higher paying, glossy ‘slicks’ continued. Some of this was due to the behind-the-scenes work of his former agent.

Bob Hardy had died of cancer and his wife Jane had taken over the company. She and Gardner butted heads until he terminated their relationship. As he feared, she badmouthed him throughout the industry and it hurt his sales.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Thoughts on The Sussex Vampire

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Thoughts on The Sussex Vampire

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Sumatra

Sussex_PagetIt seems somewhat curious that we find three references to Sumatra in the Canon. Two of those are to unrecorded cases, which makes matters even more intriguing. Sumatra is the sixth largest island in the world and a part of Indonesia.  Indonesia was ruled by the Dutch for over three hundred years, including the entirety of Sherlock Holmes’ career (Japan occupied Indonesia during World War II and the country gained autonomy after that). I have visited Indonesia twice, as my wife was born and raised there.

In “The Sussex Vampire,” Holmes mentions the Matilda Briggs, “a ship associated with the giant rat of Sumatra, a story for which the world is not yet prepared.” In “The Dying Detective,” Culverton Smith was a planter who lived in Sumatra. We are also told at the beginning of “The Reigate Squires” that Holmes was on the verge of collapse after foiling the colossal schemes of Baron Maupertuis, which involved the Netherland-Sumatra company.

Three references to people or things with Sumatran ties. Could tea somehow be related? Indonesia was one of the world’s leading tea producers until World War II. The region of Sumatra was the second-largest tea producing region in Indonesia. Was the death of Culverton Smith’s nephew somehow associated with the activities of Baron Maupertius, for whom Culverton Smith worked or was otherwise associated?

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Not Impressed With “The Mazarin Stone”

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Not Impressed With “The Mazarin Stone”

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Mazarin_StickCurrent writers of Sherlock Holmes stories (such stories are known as ‘pastiches’) are held to the standard of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s originals. And rightfully so. But that’s not to say that all sixty of Doyle’s tales featuring his famous detective are of the same quality. Followers of the great detective debate the merits of various stories. I myself am less than thrilled with “The Dying Detective,” since Holmes doesn’t do much of anything in it. He’s less mobile than Nero Wolfe in that one.

But I can’t think of too many fellow Sherlockians (and I don’t mean followers of the BBC television show) who are enamored with “The Mazarin Stone.” I definitely am not and consider it one of the weakest in the entire Canon. Of course, if you haven’t read it, you probably should do so before continuing. You’re back? Good.

The Play’s the Thing

Jack Tracy’s The Published Apocrypha contains the full text of the play The Crown Diamond, as well as an informative essay. “The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone” and The Crown Diamond are pretty much the same story and share much dialogue, differing only in a few minor details.

One of those details worth noting is that Colonel Sebastian Moran is the villain in play, whereas it is Count Negreto Sylvius in the story. Using Moran makes sense, since playgoers likely would know the character, based on his feature role in “The Empty House.” Both men like air guns and are big game hunters, so the real difference is negligible.

Dennis Neilson Terry starred as Holmes in the stage production of The Crown Diamond.  It’s nowhere near as good as Doyle’s play, The Speckled Band, which I wrote about in this post.

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You Live in Pellucidar: The Weird Inner World of Cyrus Teed and the Koreshan Unity

You Live in Pellucidar: The Weird Inner World of Cyrus Teed and the Koreshan Unity

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model-of-cellular-cosmogonyWhen Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote At the Earth’s Core (1914) and Pellucidar (1915), he brought to a summit the previous century’s passion to explore the fantastic possibilities of what lies below the crust of the Earth. Numerous Victorian scientific romances arose from these theories about the interior of the planet. It’s only natural that once you state, “The world is round,” you follow up with, “Yeah, but what’s inside it?”

A man named Cyrus R. Teed provided perhaps the strangest answer of all: “You.”

Cyrus Teed, his theory of Cellular Cosmogony, and the utopian religious commune movement that arose from it are among the most beguiling offshoots of hollow earth theories. They’re also a peculiar parallel with Burroughs’s fantastic adventure tales. Cyrus Teed believed in a concave inner world with the sun at its center, similar to the popular theory of John Cleves Symmes. But for Teed there was no reason to search for an entrance to the Earth’s interior, because the human race was already living in it. In other words, Pellucidar is real, and it’s your home.

The tale of Cyrus Teed and the Koreshan Unity is a curious historical footnote. But it has intriguing things to say to readers of fantasy and science fiction, as well as to historians interested in the utopian communes that ballooned and popped across the U.S. in the nineteenth century. Edgar Rice Burroughs certainly knew about it, since after writing At the Earth’s Core he kept notes on different hollow earth theories. (The fictional ERB even mentions this in Tanar of Pellucidar.) His curiosity is easy to understand, especially when it leads to discovering something like this…

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes – A New Solar Pons Omnibus

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes – A New Solar Pons Omnibus

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Copper_OmnibusIf you want to read my thoughts on the season four (and hopefully series) finale of BBC’s Sherlock, click on over and read it at my blog. Because today The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes is going to talk about Solar Pons.

August Derleth, the creator of Solar Pons, passed away in 1971. Derleth’s final collection, The Chronicles of Solar Pons, a mix of previously released stories and ones never published, came out in 1973. Surprisingly, Pons would be back within a decade! In 1979, Basil Copper would release three collections of tales: The Dossier of Solar Pons, The Further Adventures of Solar Pons and The Secret Files of Solar Pons. There would be three more collections, as well as a novella. Copper had written horror books for Derleth’s Arkham House imprint and he seemed like a good choice for continuing the stories.

Unfortunately, Copper’s Pons connection did not have a happy ending. He helped Arkham House editor Don Turner compile an omnibus edition of all of Derleth’s released Pons stories. However, Copper chose to do some ‘corrective editing’ of the originals, which caused a furor among the Pontine faithful. You can read Jon Lellenberg’s essay on this topic in The Solar Pons Gazette (page 45). Peter Ruber also wrote an excellent account, but I don’t have permission to reprint that.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Let’s Talk About The Dying Detective

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Let’s Talk About The Dying Detective

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Dying_ConreyLast week I wrote about the season four opener of BBC’s Sherlock, which was an improvement on season three and the abysmal Abominable Bride. But the second episode was yet another huge disappointment, so I’m not going to bother with a negative post about it. However, I’m going to talk about the Canonical story it was based on.

It’s no huge surprise that The Lying Detective was based on Arthur Conan Doyle’s tale, “The Dying Detective.” As far as that goes, The Lying Detective was actually a decent adaptation of the original story. That’s damning with faint praise, however, as I consider “The Dying Detective” to be one of the weakest stories in the Canon.

Appearing in December of 1913, it was the forty-sixth Holmes story to be published. It was one of just eight stories included in His Last Bow.

THE STORY

SPOILERS – I’m going to talk about a story that’s been out there for over one hundred years. And it features the most popular fictional character of all time. If you REALLY don’t want to be tipped off, jump over here and spend fifteen minutes reading it. You have been warned!

Holmes starves himself, looks ghastly, lays in bed, insults Watson, the villain comes over, helpfully confesses, is arrested and Holmes reveals that the was faking it. Yep, that’s the whole thing. Holmes lies in bed for all but a few seconds of the story (he jumps up to lock Watson in the room). No deducing, no finding clues, no nothing. His work in trying to pin a murder on Culverton Smith all happens beforehand.

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Modular: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About The Temple of Elemental Evil

Modular: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About The Temple of Elemental Evil

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the-village-of-hommlet-moathouse

Chainmail re-enactment of T1: The Village of Hommlet
at Garycon II, 2010 (click for bigger version)

Okay — maybe a bit of hyperbole there. About a month ago, I wrote about my favorite AD&D module, T1 – The Village of Hommlet. I mentioned that its follow-up, The Temple of Elemental Evil, was delayed for several years before Frank Mentzer completed it. Read on to learn about how Gary Gygax developed Hommlet and the Temple through play sessions and my deduction of why Temple was delayed for a few years.

Gygax and Rob Kuntz were constantly adding new levels and different environments to the dungeons under Castle Greyhawk as the players continued to eat up new content, always wanting more. Gygax began focusing his attention on developing a new region, with a campaign focusing on Hommlet and the Temple of Elemental Evil. With his game simply growing too big, Gygax split it, giving Greyhawk and its dungeons to Kuntz while he continued to work on Hommlet and the Temple.

Gygax’ son and a friend were starting to play, so Gary used the Hommlet campaign as a new, low level adventure for them, distinguishing it from the high level Greyhawk play. Gygax was busy developing TSR products and the Greyhawk Supplement (I) had come out for the Original Rules.

The Hommlet campaign was different than the Greyhawk dungeon delves. There was a village, with a smithy, an inn, a local elder, set in a rural environment. The party could role play in the village then move on to the dungeons of the Temple. It’s possible that Gygax ran players through some iterations of Hommlet and the Temple in late 1975 and into 1976.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: George Mann’s Holmes

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: George Mann’s Holmes

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holmes_associatesLast week I wrote about two Titan Books novels from James Lovegrove. I mentioned that there are two distinct lines of Holmes pastiches from Titan (actually, there are other books that don’t fall in either category, such as Kareem Abdul Jabaar’s Mycroft Holmes novel). The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes started as reprints and added new books into the mix and are generally more traditional stories.

The other features more elements of horror, steampunk and/or the supernatural and George Mann’s two novels are part of this line. He has also edited three anthologies for Titan, including a neat little book called The Associates of Sherlock Holmes.

Associates includes thirteen stories; all focusing on a character found in one of Doyle’s sixty original Holmes tales. It’s a neat idea and there are some interesting and creative stories in the mix. The aforementioned Lovegrove’s “Pure Swank” tells us the real story about Barker, Holmes’ ‘hated rival upon the Surrey shore,’ going back to when he was an Irregular.

Hugo Award winner Tim Pratt’s “Heavy Game of the Pacific Northwest” takes Colonel Sebastian Moran to the state of Washington in 1892 to hunt what seems to be Big Foot. It’s a good hunting story that paints quite a portrait of the amoral Moran.

Ian Edington’s “The Case of the Previous Tenant” brings the best of the official force, Surry’s Inspector Baynes, to London. A Viking sword and some borrowing from “The Devil’s Foot” make for a fun read.

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Vintage Treasures: Watership Down by Richard Adams

Vintage Treasures: Watership Down by Richard Adams

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watershipdown“I announce,” read the Times of London’s review in 1972, “with trembling pleasure, the appearance of a great story.”

This is not the typical language of a contemporary book review, but then the book in question, Watership Down, was not a typical book. It was and is a fantasy with wide crossover appeal, a mythic adventure with rabbits as the principal characters. That’s right, rabbits: those long-eared good-for-nothings whom we humans largely dismiss as being dumber than a box of rabbit-sized rocks.

Having read and adored the book in my early teens, I determined it was time to share it with my twelve-year-old son, who still craves his daily dose of bedtime story. And why not? I’d get to read a tale I had not revisited for more than thirty-five years, and I’d get to gauge my son’s reactions every step of the way.

To say he was impressed would be an understatement. As we approached the closing chapters, he wanted extra, before-bed reading time, but in the same breath kept exclaiming how he didn’t want to finish. “Are there more books about Hazel and Bigwig?” he asked. “Are there?”

Spoilers follow. If by some terrible chance you, gentle reader, have not read Watership Down for yourself, then please, close this page. Go do something else. Purchase a copy of Watership Down, for example. You can always return here once you’ve read to “The End.”

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Cthulhu Casebooks & Nightmares

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Cthulhu Casebooks & Nightmares

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lovegrove_shadwellIn the early 1900’s, Maurice Leblanc had his French detective, Arsene Lupin, face off with Herlock Sholmes. I think you know who he’s battling – spelling disregarded. 1965’s A Study in Terror sent Holmes after Jack the Ripper on movie screens and in 1988, and Sax Rohmer biographer Clay Van Ash brought Holmes and Fu Manchu together in Ten Years Beyond Baker Street. Crossovers have become more and more popular over the years. James Lovegrove currently has Holmes interacting with the Cthulhu mythos.

I don’t do a lot of book reviews here at The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes because I generally don’t like to reveal spoilers. And it can be tough to talk about the strong points of a book without giving away key elements. But sometimes, especially with older books, that’s part of the price of the post. So, I’ll try to limit revelations in this one, but be warned: There be spoilers here!

Lovegrove, who has written several non-Holmes books, is part of Titan’s stable of new Holmes authors. Sherlock Holmes and the Shadwell Shadows is the first of a trilogy, with Sherlock Holmes & The Miskatonic Monstrosities due out in Fall of 2017 and Sherlock Holmes and the Sussex Sea Devils to wrap things up in November of 2018.

The basic premise of the book (yea, the trilogy) is that Watson made up the sixty stories in the Canon. He did so to cover up the real truth behind Holmes’ work. And that’s because the truth is too horrible to reveal. In a nutshell, Watson has written three journals, each covering events fifteen years apart, to try and get some of the darkness out of his soul.

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