Search Results for: Sherlock Holmes

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 9 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

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Ramblings on REH

Comments 14 comments

In a way, Robert E. Howard’s career is similar to that of Dashiell Hammett. Both men had huge impacts on their genres (Howard wrote many styles, but he’s best known for his sword and sorcery tales). Both were early practitioners in said genres. Both men wrote excellent stories for about a decade. And both men ended their careers on their own. Hammett, who seemed more interested in a dissolute lifestyle than in writing, effectively walked away from his typewriter. He…

Read More Read More

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The Moriarty Chronicles

Comments 3 comments

Perhaps my favorite Sherlock Holmes pastiche is 1974’s The Return of Moriarty by John Gardner. In it, Professor Moriarty (who did not perish at the Reichenbach Falls) is a Victorian Era godfather, with a criminal organization the envy of the American mob in the Roaring Twenties. A sequel followed it the next year, The Revenge of Moriarty. The trilogy was completed with Moriarty, just a few weeks before Gardner passed away in 2008. Having completed one muddle of a screenplay…

Read More Read More

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: By Crom – Are Conan Pastiches Official?

Comments 25 comments

Today’s post is actually about Robert E. Howard’s Conan, but (in a stunning surprise) it’s got some Sherlock Holmes at the foundation. No, Conan never met the great detective… Hopefully you’ve been checking in on our summer series, Discovering Robert E. Howard. There are plenty more posts coming, so stay tuned. While I very much like Howard and his works, I came late to his stories and I’m certainly no expert. There is one area I’ve found…curious, which relates to…

Read More Read More

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Shovel’s Painful Predicament

Comments 4 comments

I wanted to have a little bit of fun this week. You, enlightened reader, have heard about William Gillette’s curtain raiser play, The Painful Predicament of Sherlock Holmes, because you wouldn’t dare miss a PLoSH post, right? I am a serious fan of both Sherlock Holmes and the hard boiled genre of mystery fiction (which you also know because you’ve read the many columns I’ve written on both subjects…). Since Painful Predicament.. is a parody of Holmes, I decided to…

Read More Read More

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Sherlock Season 3 – What Happened?

Comments 20 comments

Now, it’s certainly possible that I’m clueless (and I do LOVE Without a Clue), but I don’t think I’ve got the following all wrong regarding BBC’s Sherlock. Except for the grumpy old man contingent (‘Get Sherlock out of modern day!’), fans of Holmes, including scholarly geeks like me who make their own newsletter, overwhelmingly liked this new show and the three episode season one. I don’t know too many Holmes fans (other than GOM group: see above) who disliked this show. Even…

Read More Read More

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Sidney Paget Draws the Great Detective

Comments 5 comments

Last month, I mentioned that it was illustrator Sidney Paget who first adorned the head of Sherlock Holmes with a deerstalker. Along with Frederic Dorr Steele, Paget is certainly one of the two most significant illustrators of the great detective. Baker Street Essays is one of my two, free, online newsletters. The most recent issue (#5, February 2014) contained my essay, “The Illustrated Holmes.” Strongly influenced by Walter Klinefelter’s excellent (though black and white) book, Portrait of a Profile, I…

Read More Read More