Search Results for: Sherlock Holmes

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of the Parson’s Son

I have been fortunate enough to contribute original stories to five volumes of the MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories series. The brainchild of my Solar Pons buddy, David Marcum, there have been THIRTY-SIX volumes so far, and that will be over forty by the end of the year. The stories are all authentic Holmes pastiches, emulating Doyle’s writings. No modern-age fan fiction nonsense (like, say, the road BBC Sherlock went down). The contributors donate their royalties, which goes…

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes – Holmes Shelfies (#1)

So…I found a kinda cool group over on Reddit. And it wasn’t LotR_on_Prime – yeesh. R/bookshelf is a subreddit where people post their shelfies. With over 2,000 books on 90-ish shelves/cubes, that appealed to me! I started with my Jack Higgins shelf, and then my Clive Cussler one. I’ve done a couple fantasy shelves, but mostly I’ve been sharing pics of my over-500 Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle books. And I’ve been adding a comment, talking about some of…

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Dark Winds – Good Show, Bad Hillerman

So, I wrote a three-part series, covering about 5,000 words, on Tony Hillerman and his Navajo Tribal Police series. I said this at the end of the third one: “Somewhere down the line, there will be a post about the four movies (and several failed attempts at such) made from these books.” Back in July of 2021, I wrote this essay, optimistically excited about AMC’s upcoming series based on Hillerman’s books. The six-episode series aired back in June, but I…

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: John Malkovich’s Poirot

And, we’re back!! Black Gate had some difficulties and was offline for last week’s regular spot, but the world is back to normal. Well, not really, but I’m here on Monday morning, anyways. I was really torn on what to write about for today’s column. Obviously, the final vote was in favor of The ABC Murders, starring John Malkovich. But it was a near thing. Recently, I watched the first couple episodes of Thunder in Paradise. That show, which is…

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Another Radio Poirot

A few weeks ago, I wrote about John Moffatt’s outstanding radio show, in which he played Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot. I think it is, and will remain, unsurpassed. Today, we’re going to go back and look at the first radio series starring the fussy little Belgian detective. By 1944, there had been a few radio appearances featuring Poirot. Including a production by Orson Welles, starring Orson Welles, for Orson Welles’ radio show. (It’s all about Orson). I’ll write about that…

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: A Brilliant Poirot (No, not Suchet this time)

I have a somewhat odd relationship with works of Agatha Christie. When I started down my life-long Sherlock Holmes path as a boy, I also read a Hercule Poirot book by Christie. Didn’t care for it. My voracious reading habit grew, but I never felt impelled to try her again. The movies didn’t interest me at all. I discovered Nero Wolfe around age thirty (I think), but still never bothered with Christie. It was the A&E television series starring Maury…

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Psych of the Dead

I could not figure out what to write about today. I re-watched Paul Newman’s Harper, and thought about a post on that – especially since I recently re-read the autobiography of screenwriter William Goldman. And I saw Unholy Partners, a good hardboiled newspaper flick with Edward G. Robinson and Edward Arnold. I re-watched three versions of The Hound of the Baskervilles (Ian Richardson, Peter Cushing, and Jeremy Brett), and Bruce Campbell’s My Name is Bruce. I read Mark Latham’s Sherlock…

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: At the Movies with Basil (Rathbone)

I started writing a regular column for Black Gate in March of 2014. I’ve covered a lot of ground, but today we’re going to try something new. Earlier this year, I was watching Casablanca (yet AGAIN) on TCM, and I decided to do do a running commentary about it on my FB page. I know a LOT about that movie. TCM showed it again a little over a month later, so I did it again. It was fun. I decided…

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: “The Adventure of the Tired Captain”

Twenty years ago, I had a short story published for the first time. Charles Prepolec and J.R. Campbell had not yet put out their four Gaslight collections of Holmes horror stories. Their initial book outing was a little collection called Curious Incidents. For some reason that escapes me now, I thought it would be clever to have a story in which Arthur Conan Doyle plays Dr. Watson. The part that made it really clever, was that he would be assisting…

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Holmes On Screen – All of ‘Em!

I started out with  a Holmes on Screen website many years ago, about the great detective’s appearances in film and on tv. Later, I added stage performances.  Eventually I took it down and moved on to Solar Pons, but I never lost my interest in the subject matter, and over the years, I’ve written over two dozen posts about Holmes on small and big screen. So, I figured I’d put up one post with links to all of them. I…

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