Search Results for: Sherlock Holmes

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Tying in the BBC Sherlock Special

Comments 3 comments

Back in July, what seems to be the most popular ‘The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes’ post appeared here at Black Gate. I looked at what I think went wrong with season three of the BBC’s Sherlock. I included the just-released ninety-second, ‘first look’ video for the upcoming Special, to be aired around Christmas. And I pointed out it seemed to be full of the “Look how clever we are” bits that I lamented in my post. Now, just about…

Read More Read More

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Frederic Dorr Steele

Comments 1 comment

Back in July, in a post on Sidney Paget, I wrote “Along with Frederic Dorr Steele, Paget is certainly one of the two most significant illustrators of the great detective.” Having covered Paget, now we look at Dorr Steele. In 1893, Doyle, feeling that writing Holmes stories was holding him back from more important works, did the unthinkable: he killed the world’s most popular detective. In 1902, he revived Holmes for one adventure in his most famous story, The Hound of…

Read More Read More

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: After the King

Comments 3 comments

Back in January, I wrote a post on Terry Pratchett’s Cohen the Barbarian. It was primarily based on the short story “The Troll’s Bridge,” which was included in the anthology, After the King. That anthology was subtitled, ‘Stories in Honor of J.R.R. Tolkien.’ It included tales by nineteen fantasy and sci-fi authors, ostensibly all told in the style of Tolkien. The more cynical among us might view this as a cheap way to cash in on the Tolkien name (back…

Read More Read More

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Holmes on Screen

Comments 4 comments

Holmes enthusiasts have their peculiarities. One of mine is that I enjoy just grabbing Alan Barnes’ Sherlock Holmes on Screen from the shelf and randomly reading about some past tv or film effort starring the great detective. Almost twenty years ago, I couldn’t find a single picture of Ronald Howard’s Holmes on the internet. So I scanned one from a book and that was the basis for HolmesOnScreen.com, which for about a decade, had more info about Holmes television and…

Read More Read More

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The MX Book of New SH Stories

Comments 4 comments

On October 1, The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories will be released, with a major party in London taking place to commemorate the event. It is a MASSIVE, three-volume collection containing 2 Introductions, 3 Forewords, 2 Poems, 2 Essays and 63 brand new Sherlock Holmes stories. In fact, it’s the biggest collection of new Holmes stories ever! The stories are arranged chronologically, with Part I covering 1881-1889 (23 stories); Part II including 1890-1895 (19 stories) and Part III…

Read More Read More

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Tolkien’s Necklace of the Dwarves

Comments 13 comments

I was a voracious reader of fantasy in my teens and early twenties. Moorcock, Tolkien, Lieber, Kurtz, Feist, Eddings, Brooks, Donaldson, Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms, Thieves World, Heroes in Hell; I devoured series fantasy. And later I would delve into McKiernan, Cook, Howard, Jordan and others. Now, in the past decade, I’ve made a couple of attempts to re-read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, but given up each time (I can say the same thing about Fritz…

Read More Read More

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Solar Pons – Who Needs a Hard Boiled Detective?

Comments 4 comments

Solar Pons has already made several appearances here in The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes. And previously, I wrote that Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe is my favorite detective series of them all. So naturally, I found a way to link them together into one post. Barely. Now, August Derleth was a born-and-raised Wisconsin boy, enamored with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s tales of the great Sherlock Holmes. He wasn’t much different than an awful lot of American youths in the nineteen…

Read More Read More

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Solar Pons & The Dorak Affair

Comments 1 comment

One of my favorite Solar Pons stories by August Derleth is “The Adventure of the Golden Bracelet.” If you’ve read that one, you know that an archeologist discovered a fabulous treasure horde at a mysterious woman’s house, made rubbings of the pieces, then found himself embroiled in a scandal when the items turned out to be stolen and no trace of the woman could be found. Pons figures things out and it’s quite a tale. Derleth didn’t spin this tale…

Read More Read More

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: What to Write About?

Comments 0 Comment

For the past 76 Monday mornings, The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes has appeared here at Black Gate. I’ve written a couple other posts, but this column is why they keep me around. Well, that and I work for free. Most of my posts involve (a little or a lot of) re-reading. Which means that more often than I would like, what I want to post on a particular Monday isn’t ready to go. For example, I’ve read ten books…

Read More Read More

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Ronald Howard – A Younger Holmes

Comments 8 comments

Sheldon Reynolds, an American producer, went to England looking for an actor to cast as Holmes in a new television series. Alan Wheatley had appeared in six televised plays (filmed live) for the BBC in 1951. Reynolds had much broader horizons. He found Ronald Howard, son of the famous English actor Leslie Howard. It was the senior Howard who insisted that Humphrey Bogart get to reprise his role of Duke Mantee when the successful play was turned into a film….

Read More Read More