Search Results for: Sherlock Holmes

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The Shannara Chronicles

Comments 7 comments

I was reading fantasy before I discovered Sherlock Holmes and it’s still one of my two favorite genres. Now, one of my favorite series’ has finally been brought to the screen. Last October, Fletcher Vrendenbuergh posted about his re-read of Terry Brooks’ classic, The Sword of Shannara. Sword, loved by many (me among them) and reviled by many, was a huge hit upon release, appealing to the horde of Tolkien fans who wanted more of that style of fantasy. It’s a…

Read More Read More

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The R-Rated Nero Wolfe

Comments 4 comments

Sure, I’m all about Sherlock Holmes and Solar Pons, which you are certainly aware of if you read The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes every Monday here at Black Gate (blatant self-plug). But of all the mystery (and swords and sorcery, for that matter) series that I read and love, Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe tales hold the top spot for me. You can a get a primer on Wolfe from this post I wrote in the summer of 2014. And…

Read More Read More

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: 2015 Links Compendium

Comments 5 comments

So, for the first post of 2016, I think the most important thing to recognize is that I made it to the end of my second calendar year at Black Gate without getting axed (it helps that I work cheap. As in, ‘free.”). By my reckoning, The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes has appeared here every single Monday morning for the past 96 weeks. As I had serious doubts that John O’Neill would even approve  a Holmes-themed column (I mean,…

Read More Read More

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Solar Pons & the Dead Fishmonger

Comments 2 comments

August Derleth created Solar Pons as a successor to Sherlock Holmes. You know that, of course, because I’ve written about Pons several times and I mention him at the bottom of every post. A Praed Street Dossier was a collection of Pons odds and ends written by Derleth, related to the ‘Sherlock Holmes of Praed Street.’ Included were some “Notebook” entries, attributed to Dr. Parker. Derleth would write two more “Notebook” installments for The Pontine Dossier, the newsletter of the Praed Street…

Read More Read More

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Don’t Piss Off Sherlock Holmes

Comments 0 Comment

A few weeks ago, I speculated a bit on what might have really happened in “The Problem of Thor Bridge.” I had already offered you, good reader, a few alternatives to Watson’s recorded accounts, such as this one for “The Abbey Grange.” I believe that “The Illustrious Client” is one of Doyle’s better tales. Granada also made a fine version for their Jeremy Brett series. This week, I again veer from Watson’s (dare I say, ‘fawning’) view of matters. SPOILERS SPOILERS…

Read More Read More

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: “Rudolph’s Performance Review”

Comments 1 comment

Last year around this time, I posted a short, short story I wrote, “Watson’s Christmas Trick,” which was based on Arthur Conan Doyle’s own “How Watson Learned the Trick.” If you missed that, click on over for a little Holmesian holiday fun. Or click on this post from last year, which looks at a few Holmes pastiches for the season, including one of my all time favorite anthologies, Holmes for the Holidays. Though I don’t use it too often when…

Read More Read More

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Was Holmes Fooled in “Thor Bridge”?

Comments 1 comment

Part of the fun of being a Sherlockian (I use the term to mean someone who has read the stories and delves into them, studying and possibly writing about them: not having watched the BBC television show Sherlock and expounding the wonders of Benedict Cumberbatch) is speculating on the stories. In a post last November, I posed that perhaps Holmes was actually fooled by Lady Brackenstall in “The Adventure of The Abbey Grange.” I don’t think that actually happened, but…

Read More Read More

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Stanford Does Holmes and More…

Comments 1 comment

I don’t know how many Holmes and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle related books I have on my shelves. But it’s certainly several hundred. And I know almost every one of them and where they are. Some days, I like to simply pull various volumes out, look at them a bit and put them back. And once in awhile, I run across something I had forgotten about. Such happened to me as I was trying to decide what to write about…

Read More Read More

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Vincent Starrett’s intro to The Adventures of Solar Pons

Comments 10 comments

I received my DVD of Ian McKellan’s Mr. Holmes in the mail and anxiously popped it into the player, with the expectation that I would be writing about it for this week’s post. I fell asleep during the first try. Hey: I’m 48 years old and by the time my son is asleep and I settle down in front of the television, I’m near my own bedtime. It happens. It took two further sessions to complete the film. It was…

Read More Read More

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Edgar Smith’s ‘The Implicit Holmes’

Comments 0 Comment

By sheer numbers, Sherlock Holmes is more popular than he has ever been. This is in large part due to the massive success of BBC television’s Sherlock, which is an international sensation. The Robert Downey Jr. movies also contributed to a revival of interest in Holmes before that. Anecdotal evidence isn’t as good as objective, but it can still be valid. There are Holmes fans that have never actually read any of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s sixty stories (the Canon)…

Read More Read More