The Moor by Laurie R. King

Set in late 1923, The Moor (1998) is the fourth in Laurie R. King’s Mary Russell series. It sees married couple Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes called to Dartmoor, famously the site of The Hound of the Baskervilles, to investigate a murder. In fact, the murder has some echoes of Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1901 novel, as it seems to involve yet another phosphorescent hound.

There have been sitings around the moor of a ghostly luminous carriage, along with a demonic hound. This is a real Dartmoor legend – the story of Lady Howard’s coach – which may well have inspired the Baskerville backstory.

The ghost of Lady Howard is said to ride at night in a coach made of the bones of her dead husbands. There is even a (real) song about it, dating back centuries:
 

My ladye hath a sable coach,

And horses two and four;

My ladye hath a black blood-hound

That runneth on before.

My ladye’s coach hath nodding plumes,

The driver hath no head;

My ladye is an ashen white,

As one that long is dead.

‘Now pray step in, my ladye saith,

‘Now pray step in and ride.’

I thank thee, I had rather walk

Than gather by thy side.

The wheels go round without a sound

Or tramp or turn of wheels;

As cloud at night, in pale moonlight,

Along the carriage steals.

I’d rather walk a hundred miles

And run by night and day

Than have the carriage halt for me

And hear the ladye say:

‘Now pray step in, and make no din,

Step in with me and ride;

There’s room I trow, by me for you,

And all the world beside.’

 
Investigating the legend and the murder, Holmes and Russell end up at Baskerville Hall, speaking to its owner, the last of the Baskerville line, and recalling the events of Holmes’s most famous case. Russell finally learns that the two legends – Howard and Baskerville – are being used by the guilty party to exploit local superstitions.
 
King clearly had fun writing in the Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould as a kind of guide to the moor. Baring-Gould (1834-1924) was a real historical figure, author of hundreds of novels, memoirs, and miscellany, including several books on Dartmoor. You can also blame him for 'Onward! Christian Soldiers', and he was the grandfather of William S. Baring-Gould, whose 1962 biography of Sherlock Holmes mingled canon and fancy in a manner that continues to influence how the character is understood.

Mary Russell uses these books to navigate the geography and mythologies surrounding her case, and occasionally meets with the near-nonagenarian who, in reality, died in January 1924, not long after The Moor’s setting.

Russell critiques as she reads, and grows frustrated at Baring-Gould’s wandering mind. Here, King is clearly indulging in literary – and researcher’s – criticism of her own, and the result is entertaining.
 
After finding (and block-quoting) a relevant anecdote from Baring-Gould’s memoirs, Russell reflects:
 

All my nerves tingled […] I knew something [discussed in this passage] was the key. […] I devoured the rest of the book, but again, Baring-Gould had finished playing with that shiny idea and did not return to it, not within those covers. […] I felt like throwing the volume across the room.

 
But herein lies a question. Why doesn’t Russell simply ask her friend, living handily nearby and apparently just waiting to turn up awkwardly at a party? Why does she need to read his published work, rather than just talking to him, and asking follow up questions?
 
Of course, it’s because King is working with the published work, and not with the man – so too, therefore, is Russell. But it kind of begs another question: why include him as a character in the first place?
 
Nonetheless, this is an entertaining, well-told story, I also want to give a final shout out to King’s/Russell’s snark. Who else could write, within just a few paragraphs, that one person ‘did not suffer from brevity of speech, although he [made up for it with] a considerable brevity of both wit and learning’ and another ‘did not seem overly gifted with subtlety of mind’? Fans of the Russell/Holmes series are bound to enjoy The Moor.

The Affair of the Mysterious Letter by Alexis Hall

A fun tribute to the Sherlock Holmes canon, The Affair of the Mysterious Letter (2019) is set in a fantasy world of magic, steampunk, and LGBTQ equality, within the straits of Victorian social mores.

Captain John Wyndham returns from war to his homeland and takes up rooms with an eccentric consulting sorceress, Shaharazad Hass, only to be confronted with a case involving an old flame of hers.

I came to this after reading Hall’s forthcoming gay rom com, Boyfriend Material, which is cute if upsetting in its honesty at times. The Affair of the Mysterious Letter is well worth the time of any queer Sherlockian.

The D. Case by Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini (and Charles Dickens)

Together, Carlo Fruttero (1926-2012) and Franco Lucentini (1920-2002) wrote several crime novels, short stories, and collections of criticism from the 1960s until Lucentini’s death. I’m not familiar with their work, but understand that they have a fair following in Italy and that The D. Case, or, the Truth about the Mystery of Edwin Drood (1989) is unusual, even given their trademark humour and strangeness.

In some ways, The D. Case is a work of criticism masquerading as a novel. In others, it’s a parody of detective fiction and the shoe-horning in of social commentary. Mainly, though, it’s just a weird and fascinating read.

There are two narratives here: Charles Dickens’ The Mystery of Edwin Drood, famously unfinished at his death, is republished chapter by chapter and interspersed with a ‘contemporary’ narrative in which multiple detectives from the pages of fiction gather together at a conference to try and determine the ending.

I have probably missed some, but these are the fictional detectives I spotted: Sherlock Holmes (and Watson), Hercule Poirot (and Hastings), Dr Thorndyke (and Astley), Nero Wolfe (and Goodwin), Philip Marlowe and Lew Archer who form an amusing double act, basically doing the same thing at all times – with one being famously considered a rip-off of the other, Father Brown, Superintendent Battle, Sergeant Cuff, Hercule Popeau, Toad-in-the-Hole (the anti-hero in Thomas de Quincey’s ‘On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts’), Porfiry Petrovich(!), Inspector Bucket, Gideon Fell, Dupin, and Maigret.

The detectives bicker and divide themselves into cliques – including over the question of whether The Mystery of Edwin Drood is a mystery novel or a psychological thriller. Plagiarism is a constant discussion, as character quarrel over whether Dickens plagiarised Wilkie Collins and whether Robert Louis Stevenson plagiarised Dickens. Hercule Poirot is forced at several points to confront the fact that he himself exists as a result of Agatha Christie plagiarising Marie Belloc Lowndes’ Hercule Popeau (there’s no mention of M. Poiret). Yes, the characters are perfectly happy in their own fictionality – including Inspector Bucket, who knows he was created by Dickens. Sherlock Holmes remains oddly silent because he knows that Arthur Conan Doyle contacted Dickens in a séance and asked for the solution. So, he already knows the truth.

Throughout, existing (real-life) theories and proposed solutions to Dicken’s novel are brought up and evaluated before Poirot presents the ‘truth’ – not only about how the novel should end but also why it was never finished. This theory, so outlandish and like something out of a crime novel that it works in a work of fiction and not in a work of literary criticism, is universally accepted and, at the end of the book, universally hushed up. The 'D.' in 'D. Case' turns out to stand for three things: Drood, Dickens, and the fourth solution proposed.

Since plagiarism forms such a lively element of the discourse throughout – including being at the heart of Poirot’s solution – it is interesting that Fruttero and Lucentini seem not to have been too bothered about copyright infringement. Perhaps this can be classed as parody, but I don’t really know enough about copyright law to know how it works. In my English translation (but not, a friend tells me, in the original Italian), Agatha Christie Limited is thanked for permission to use the character of Poirot – but no other author or estate is thanked, and there is no reference to the other Christie characters: Hastings and Battle. Nonetheless, The D Case counts technically as the first authorised Hercule Poirot continuation novel. Mystery upon mystery!

Mini reviews #20

Verdict of Twelve (1940) by Raymond Postgate. An excellent psychological mystery, with two strands: the puzzle of a child's murder, and an exploration of the private lives of the twelve jurors at his aunt's trial. The very first juror we meet has gleefully gotten away with murder in the past, making the whole thing an interesting take on the justice system at an increasingly frantic point in British history. The book is also worth reading for Postgate's ironic self-portrait in the figure of a self-important socialist intellectual, and for his thinly-veiled depiction of his brother-in-law, G.D.H. Cole, as a monstrous gay academic, Dr Holmes. Notwithstanding the presence of three distinct Edwards, it's an engaging and memorable novel.

The Secret Vanguard (1940) by Michael Innes. Unpopularity, I really enjoy Innes' adventure novels. They are so escapist: undeniable page-turners which draw you into a fantasy Britain in which everyone is wonderfully well-read and erudite. The Secret Vanguard is a kind of cross between a detective-mystery and an adventure thriller. There are vaguely-defined German spies and mad scientists who mostly swan around inhabiting John Buchan via the Romantic poets. And Inspector Appleby plays a big role but is, as usual, quite forgettable. The really memorable part is the protagonist, Sheila Grant. Described in the blurb to my edition as 'a most attractive heroine,' she is one of the more interesting, believable, and funny lead figures I've come across in earnest fiction of the late 1930s/early 1940s. I could have done without her love interest, Dick, who doesn't do much but, by virtue of his name alone, leads to some unintentionally hilarious passages.

The Hound of the D'urbervilles (2011) by Kim Newman. Sherlock Holmes's nemesis Professor Moriarty and his own sidekick Colonel Sebastian Moran take the lead in this extravagance of seedy Victoriana. Will appeal to fans of Neil Gaiman, Tape Five, etc.

The Husband's Secret (2012) by Liane Moriarty. The mixed reviews for this book baffled me initially, until I saw the original book cover and realised that many people had expected it to be a love story. Also, being published in 2012, it was slightly ahead of the 'husband' craze in crime thrillers.  That's my best guess: the narrative itself is utterly compelling and praiseworthy.  Our starting point is a relatively normal Australian wife discovering an envelope, addressed by her husband to her, 'to be opened in the event of my death.' The husband is still alive -- can she resist? What follows is a labyrinthine and very human psychological thriller following three sets of people whose lives and deaths intersect. I can't wait to read more by Moriarty.

Holmes Entangled (2018) by Gordon McAlpine. Gloriously accessible Sherlockian postmodernism. During the Second World War, Jorge Luis Borges visits a private detective with what he claims is a manuscript written by Sherlock Holmes himself. Holmes, we learn, was a well-known detective, occassionally helped by a 'middling scribbler' called Arthur Conan Doyle (who has pretty much gone mad, after becoming obsessed with fairies and speaking to the dead). The manuscript reveals Holmes' investigation of claims by Doyle that he was visited  during a seance by the spirit of the still-living Prime Minister. Cracking the case also involves solving the murder of Edgar Allen Poe. The solution lies in poststructuralism and quantum physics. Oh, and Holmes comes up with Schroedinger's cat all by himself.

Mini reviews #17

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1893) by Arthur Conan Doyle. This collection of short stories was supposed to provide the final word on the great detective – and, of course, it didn’t. For reasons we may never deduce, Arthur Conan Doyle brought back the character who got him paid-by-the-word less than a decade after killing him off. But Holmes dies here, in ‘The Final Problem’, which has an excellent concluding line. There are twelve stories in all, including ‘The Gloria Scott’, in which Holmes recounts his first case in his university days, and ‘The Greek Interpreter’, in which we meet his brother. Rereading in order, I was surprised to remember how socially functional the original Sherlock Holmes was. That charm that Basil Rathbone captured on-screen, so pointedly sublimated in later adaptations, is certainly there in the stories.

4.50 From Paddington (1957) by Agatha Christie.  The buoyant Elspeth McGillicuddy boards a train after a hard day shopping. As the 4.50 rushes past another train, she glances through the woman and sees, in the other train, a woman being strangled! When the police dismiss her as a lonely biddy, she calls on Miss Marple… This is Christie in her element, writing about a fantasy England and a changing world. Characters – from the grandiose patriarch who made his fortune in biscuits to the domestic helper with a triple first from Oxford – are quirkily realised and the plot is silly enough to class as genius.

Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction (1966) by Patricia Highsmith. Don’t read this as a ‘how-to’ guide, but do read this for the fascinating insights into Highsmith’s own creative routines. Very accessible and very humane.

Dark Corners (2014) by Ruth Rendell. Rendell’s final novel showcases her ambitions and her weaknesses, especially when she tries to be edgy. I wish she had set this novel in the 1960s, as that’s clearly where her imagination has strayed to and the use of ‘the Internet’ (with a very capital ‘I’) at the heart of the plot is slightly awkward. Had all the action taken place in the 1960s, I think this could have been as taut and compelling as vintage Rendell.

Bring Me Back (2018) by B.A. Paris. Paris has a knack of writing compulsively readable prose. You can sit down with her debut, Behind Closed Doors, and not look up until far into the night. She established a formula with that book and largely stuck to it in her second. This is her third and it’s different. For one thing, Paris is trying a male narrator for the first time (there are two narrators here, and a bit of a Gone Girl vibe), and for another the twist is supposed to be unexpected. One thing that made Behind Closed Doors so great is that you know the entire plot, everything that’s going to unfold, more or less from the off – and you know that the author knows that you know. The only person who doesn’t know is the narrator. And that’s compelling. Here, the twist comes right at the end. The problem is that twists are hard to pull off. I saw it coming as soon as the plot had been established, and found myself increasingly frustrated. I turned the pages quickly, but that was to escape some unfortunate writing. The kind of rookie errors I missed – despite their being there – in the first book, and noticed but forgave in the second. B.A. Paris has a genuinely talent but I really, really want her to take more than a year to produce each book, in order to do that talent justice.

Fan Phenomena: Sherlock Holmes edited by Tom Ue and Jonathan Cranfield

This review also appears on the International Crime Fiction Association blog.

Intellect describes its series Fan Phenomena as being ‘prompted by a growing appetite for books that tap into the fascination we have with what constitutes an iconic or cultish phenomenon’. The series started in 2013 and has continued steadily, with topics including Star Trek (2013), The Lord of the Rings (2015), and Game of Thrones (2017), among others. Sherlock Holmes, who needs no introduction, is such an iconic figure in fandom and popular culture that it is no wonder the character himself has inspired a volume under the Fan Phenomena banner.

In Fan Phenomena: Sherlock Holmes, editors Tom Ue and Jonathan Cranfield bring together thirteen chapters, consisting of eight chapters and five ‘Fan Appreciation’ interviews. Since ‘the figure of Holmes has been constantly refreshed and renewed, adapted […] to new cultural moments’ (6), the editors’ stated aim is to ‘attest […] to the popularity of the characters and fictional world that [Arthur] Conan Doyle created’ (5). It is such a vast aim that no 153-page book could fully do it justice, but Ue and Cranfield have succeeded in providing a comprehensive and attractive introduction to some of the key themes in Holmes fandom.

The volume is beautifully laid out and illustrated. Intellect Books are designed to appeal to students and well-informed enthusiasts as well as scholars and researchers, so it is not surprising that Fan Phenomena: Sherlock Holmes is visually appealing. The front and back inside covers are filled with Sidney Paget’s illustration of Holmes and his arch-nemesis, Professor Moriarty, tumbling down the Reichenbach Falls. The pages are well-spaced and easy to read, with a variety of images, and each contribution is prefaced with what some would call a Conanical quotation: a remark from Conan Doyle’s original texts concerning Holmes.

Particularly strong are the opening and closing essays. Tom Ue’s ‘Sherlock Holmes and Shakespeare’ (8-27) looks at ‘the numerous ways in which Shakespeare’s writing affected Conan Doyle in his creation and writing of Sherlock Holmes and his stories’, and Ue insists that ‘Conan Doyle’s reading of Shakespeare [lies] at the heart of his own writing’ (10). Both authors are authoritative voices in their respective historical contexts, but Ue points out a tradition of adaptation and allusion that positions the Holmes canon itself as a kind of fan fiction. Benjamin Poore, in closing the collection, offers a perspective on presentations of Moriarty on-screen in the twenty-first century (134-147).  From Moriarty’s creation in 1893, ‘as a narrative tool with which to kill of Holmes’, which Poore says ‘backfired spectacularly’ (135), the character and his relationship to Holmes have gripped the public imagination, with a significance both on and off the page that cannot be easily separated. As such, Poore argues, ‘Holmes and Moriarty’s activities suit the porous boundary-crossing tenor of the times, where the Internet has increased the ways in which we commingle reality and fiction’ (142).

While some of the interviews with authors veer into promotional, rather than informative, territory, it is fascinating to see the variety of approaches to often similar concepts: for example, two of the interviews are with co-authors of distinct ‘Young Sherlock Holmes’ graphic novels (80-89; 100-108). The final interview is with Robert Ryan, author of Dead Man’s Land, a 2013 novel set during the First World War and featuring Dr Watson (124-133). The novel is not a conventional Holmesian pastiche, and Ryan is open about not being ‘a Holmesian’, although he admits that ‘nobody who writes crime thrillers […] can escape the long arm of Baker Street’ (128). Ryan’s perspective offers points of contrast to the others, and nicely rounds the overall tone of the volume. The interviews intersperse the essays, two of which are written by authors – Jonathan Barnes (110-117) and Shane Peacock (118-123) – outlining the process of writing new Holmes adventures. This creates something of a slant towards authors-talking-about-their work. Some other essays are written by fans, and some by academics, which creates a welcome sense of variety. The different contributors’ styles may not rest in easy harmony, but the result is a volume with something to suit most tastes.

Jonathan Cranfield’s ‘Sherlock Holmes: Fan Culture and Fan Letters’ (66-79) is a fascinating study of ‘the writing of [real] fan letters to [the fictional] Sherlock Holmes – which has occurred continuously from the 1890s until the present day’, exploring how early letters ‘herald the coming multiverse of Sherlockian fan phenomena’ (67). Cranfield attests that ‘early Sherlock Holmes fan culture […] established a basic pattern for the ways in which later phenomena [such as online fan fiction] would function’ (75), which, as with Ue’s contribution, establishes Conanical links and presages to twenty-first century Sherlockiana. However, the delights of this chapter bring to mind the book’s one notable omission. While several contributors mention fan fiction, which is hugely important in the world of Sherlockiana, and a burgeoning field of study in its own right, no contributor has chosen to focus on it. A chapter on fan fiction would have made this already exciting volume stronger still.

Sherlock Holmes is as important a populist figure today as he was in the late nineteenth century. Fan Phenomena: Sherlock Holmes testifies to this significance, with real-life implications playing out in its contributors’ varied backgrounds. It is undoubtedly a useful resource as studies of fan fiction and of fan phenomena continue to gather momentum. Conan Doyle’s creation continues to provide fertile ground for individuals within and far beyond scholarship. As Holmes himself declares, in ‘The Adventure of the Dancing Men’, ‘What one man can create, another can discover.’ 

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle

I must know the opening scene to The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901-2) by heart. Of course, I’ve read the book at least half a dozen times, and the opening is the kind of scene that sticks in the mind. It’s also the opening after which so many Sherlock Holmes pastiche openings are modelled. The number of stage and screen adaptations of  Baskervilles I’ve seen must be well into double figures, and from what I remember not one has deviated from this scene, with Holmes and Watson discussing a yet-to-appear guest, deducing his character from a walking stick he left in their flat.

It’s the most famous Sherlock Holmes novel, and one of the best-known detective stories – at least by title – of all time. I recently reread Baskervilles as part of a research project and found myself, as always, amazed by how funny the writing style can be.  The humour kicks off in that opening scene, when Watson tries to apply Holmes’s methods of deduction and thinks he’s done well, only to be put in his place by a beautifully condescending Holmes. It’s sometimes hard to remember – and Arthur Conan Doyle himself didn’t believe it to be true – that Holmes is a very funny character. He’s acerbic and dismissive and it’s fun to see him put down everyone around him. I always want his deductions to be wrong but, of course, they never are.

The other thing that surprised me on this reading was how much like a golden age murder mystery Baskervilles is. It’s certainly a gothic story, replete with fog, moors on a which a man can lose his life, a house without electricity, creepy siblings, even creepier servants, and a family heritage of degeneracy. And, true, the murderer’s identity is revealed just over half-way through. But there are clues and deductions and the narrative is not finally resolved until all the loose ends have been tied up.

Doyle got the idea for The Hound of the Baskervilles on a golfing holiday in Norfolk (my home county). In the first printing of the story as a serial in the strand, he thanked ‘my friend Mr Fletcher Robinson’ for telling him about a legend in Dartmoor concerning a ghostly hound. After a few field trips with Robinson, Doyle planned and wrote his most famous work.

I probably don’t need to tell you the story, but it involves a legend surrounding Baskerville Hall in Dartmoor and the ancient Baskerville family. The legend concerns a giant, spectral dog, and the latest baronet, Sir Charles Baskerville, is said to have been scared to death by the legend. Holmes is called in when Baskerville’s doctor feels uneasy about footprints found near the body.

‘Footprints?’ 

‘Footprints.’ 

‘A man’s or a woman’s?’ 

[…] ‘Mr Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!’

Holmes sends Watson to Baskerville Hall with the new baronet, Sir Henry, and a plot soon emerges – a plot concerning ‘refined, cold-blooded deliberate murder.’ There are deep-rooted family secrets to be uncovered, and it turns out that this part of the world is a hotbed of sexual impropriety. Doyle offers his readers a cynical look at heritage and a surprisingly honest take on marriage.

Formally, The Hound of the Baskervilles is like a long short story with elements of the mid-nineteenth century epistolary novel. If I was teaching a course on the development of the crime novel, I’d place this one between The Moonstone and Trent’s Last Case on the syllabus.

This hasn’t been an immensely detailed review because I am assuming that most people at least know the story. What I’ve tried to highlight are the things that excited me on the umpteenth reading. I’m sure I’ll get something else out of it on the umpteen-and-first. If you haven’t read The Hound of the Baskervilles, I would strongly recommend it – as if it needed my recommendation.

Mini reviews #11

A festive-themed look at five short stories!

‘The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle’ (1892) by Arthur Conan Doyle. Sherlock Holmes is at his best and his worst in this story, which involves a mysterious stone being smuggled in a Christmas goose. There is an element of Dickensian goodwill in the resolution, which is more satisfying than usual.

‘A Christmas Tragedy’ (1930) by Agatha Christie. On holiday, Miss Marple suspects that a man is planning to murder his wife — because that’s the natural conclusion to draw from other people’s marital disputes. Part of The Thirteen Problems, ‘A Christmas Tragedy’ isn’t very Christmassy but it’s a decent, substantial story with a surprising emotional punch.

‘The Murder of Santa Claus’ (1984) by P.D. James. A gloriously self-referential, if annoyingly conservative, country house mystery featuring Adam Dalgliesh, with a bit of reflection on the death penalty thrown in.

‘Saint Nicked’ (2002) by Ian Rankin. A fun, festive, and insubstantial Rebus story, written for the Radio Times. The reader should not exert too much energy on this one, and I strongly doubt the author did.

‘The Tennis Church’ (2015) by Sophie Hannah. Charlie Zailer and her past are at the centre of this psychological mystery story. It bears all of Hannah’s signature wit and pith. You can read it, nicely illustrated, here.

Mini reviews #10

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) by Robert Louis Stevenson. Ian Rankin considers this a detective novel -- and the best one ever written -- so it belongs here. I would call it a gothic novel, and rather old-fashioned for its time, although incredibly accessible. It's a beautifully crafted and blatantly important novel. We all know the story but, I think, 99% of readers will stay engaged from beginning to end.

The Bar on the Seine (1931) by Georges Simenon. An extremely enjoyable and astute novel which begins with a conversation between Maigret and a man he has captured, who is facing the death penalty. It's the kind of book you read quickly, forget quickly, and remember bit by bit.

Rogue Male (1939) by Geoffrey Household. My goodness, some men need to get over themselves.

And Then There Was No One (2009) by Gilbert Adair. Without a doubt, objectively and unquestionably, the best postmodern detective novel of all time. But don't just read this one -- read the whole Evadne Mount trilogy.

A Study in Lavender: Queering Sherlock Holmes (2011) edited by Joseph R.G. DeMarco. This is a collection of short stories, focussing on the central Sherlock Holmes characters from a variety of LGBTQIA perspectives. The stories range in quality quite dramatically, and I think the best is Katie Raynes' 'The Kidnapping of Alice Braddon'.

Mini reviews #8

The Moonstone (1868) by Wilkie Collins. T.S. Eliot called The Moonstone ‘the first, the longest and the best of modern English detective novels.’ Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers made similar remarks. And — while each of those points is demonstrably not true — the remark holds, idiomatically. The Moonstone is a fascinating novel that blends sensationalism and realism. Most major crime fiction has its origins in this book (I’m looking at you, A Study in Scarlet), and the whole thing is compulsively readable. I’ve never met anyone who dislikes The Moonstone, and I think that every crime fiction fan should read it.

No More Murders! (1967) by Maria Lang. Enjoyable escapism from ‘Sweden’s answer to Agatha Christie’ — and, for once, the accolade seems well-earned. Reading this book in translation made me feel the closest I’ve ever felt to reading a new Christie book. It’s not quite the same, and Lang has her own voice, but the complicated plot, the sense of fun, and the poetic beauty of the setting all work brilliantly. I derived considerably more pleasure from No More Murders! than from the TV adaptation, which I also enjoyed.

Country House Murders (1989) edited by Godfrey Thomas. This is one of the best of those massive Michael O’Mara anthologies from the 1980s and 1990s. It features an impressive roll of authors: Christie, Rendell, Marsh, James, Allingham, Innes, Sayers, Wodehouse(!), Chesterton, Blake, Collins, Brand, Orczy, MacDonald, Doyle, Hare, Freeman, Barr, Wills Crofts, Carr, Ethel Lina White, and James Miles — only the last of which was new to me, and all stories are on the classic country house theme.  Besides featuring the titles you’d expect (James’ ‘A Very Desirable Residence’; Doyle’s ‘The Adventure of Abbey Grange’), it includes some unexpected delights, such as ‘The Man on the Roof’ by Christianna Brand, and ‘The Worcester Enigma’ by James Miles, in which Sherlock Holmes inspires Elgar’s Enigma Variations. So, now we know!

An Expert in Murder (2008) by Nicola Upson. Upson’s first book to feature Josephine Tey as a detective is set in the West End in the 1930s. It’s a nice nostalgic whodunit, with a really interesting plot. I did find, however, that the narrative didn’t really suit Tey — either as a writer or a character. Upson’s Tey bears no resemblance to Elizabeth Mackintosh herself, but is a kind of everywoman-Scottish-crime-writer, and the story architecture bears little resemblance to her own. I’d have enjoyed this more if the sleuth had been an original character… but, then, in all honesty, I probably wouldn’t have heard of it, let alone read it. So props to Upson.

Magpie Murders (2016) by Anthony Horowitz. The only thing worse than ripping off Dame Agatha is ripping off Dame Agatha without understanding what she was doing.

The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie R. King

There’s a terrible vice I need to confess. It’s not quite as bad as judging a book by its cover, but in many ways, for me, at least, it’s worse. I’m a sucker for a pretty book and have the collecting bug. In addition, I’m a slow reader. Combined, these facts mean I tend to amass sometimes complete series of books before I get around to reading them. In short, if there is a set of books with covers that catch my eye, I’ll collect them incrementally from charity shops and, in the case of Alison and Busby books, The Works.

That’s how I amassed six or seven of Laurie R. King’s Sherlock Holmes and Mary Russell books. To be honest, I avoided reading them for years because, while the books themselves are indisputably gorgeous, the idea of Holmes in retirement meeting, then marrying, a fifteen year-old American didn’t really appeal. That was virtually all I knew about this series, beyond the fact that it has a good following. I also knew, of course, that King is a well-regarded American novelist and the creator of Kate Martinelli.

Then two things happened at once. One: I had a huge clear-out, getting rid of nearly 900 books that I won’t need again (this is hard, and being an academic I can always tell myself that I might want to write about Insubstantial Thriller XYZ or might need to teach Dull Classic ABC). Still, several beautiful sets of books got the boot: the highest profile casualty was Ellis Peters. I finally got around to reading from my near-complete set of attractively presented Cadfaels. If I need to make a snap judgement, I turn to page 85 and if I don’t end up on page 86 it hasn’t worked for me. I tried three Cadfaels and didn’t get on with them, so out went most of those. Laurie R. King survived this cull automatically, though. Anything Sherlock Holmes related stays, however bad – because I probably will write about it one day. But the series was on my radar again.

The second thing that happened was this: I read an essay on King’s novels in Crime Fiction as World Literature, a great new Bloomsbury book. The essay, by Theo D’haen, described the first novel, The Beekeeper's Apprentice (1994) and its interesting set up. King introduces the novel as herself, saying – in the traditional way – that she received a box full of (conveniently uncounted, as there was no telling how long the series would run) manuscripts from a woman who claimed to know Sherlock Holmes.

Then there is a ‘prelude’ from this Mary Russell in which she states:

 I do not remember when I first realised that the flesh-and-blood Sherlock Holmes I knew so well was to the rest of the world merely a figment of an out-of-work medical doctor’s powerful imagination. What I do remember is how the realisation took my breath away […]

Watson’s stories, those feeble evocations of the compelling personality we both knew, have taken on a life of their own, and the living creature of Sherlock Holmes has become ethereal, dreamy. Fictional. […] And now, men and women are writing actual novels about Holmes, plucking him up and setting him down in bizarre situations, putting impossible words into his mouth, and obscuring the legend still further.

The very act of irreverence to Drs Doyle and Watson ironically reveals attention to the canon, its devices, and its characters, but also enough competence to avoid trying to emulate them.  All of this piqued my interest because it was very clear that King had done her research, and I thought I might as well give the first book a chance. So I did, and, while it hasn’t made a die-hard fan of me, I’m looking forward to reading more, and collecting the full set.

The story is this: in 1915, a young American woman, Mary Russell, is reading on the Sussex downs when she runs into an elderly – well, middle-aged – Sherlock Holmes. They immediately start banting like Benedick and Beatrice with very good A-levels and become friends.

It’s clear from the very beginning that Russell and Holmes are equals and I particularly like the way King doesn’t overstate Russell’s cleverness; she doesn’t chuck in obscure Latin references (well, hardly ever) or little demonstrations of superiority in the way that so many crime writers do when their hero is cleverer than they are. The characterisation is, like the character, assured and effortless, and we can’t help admiring and respecting Mary Russell. When she comes, three-quarters of the way through, to confess her dark and sordid secret, we are totally on her side.

I was also impressed with the handling of Holmes’s famous misogyny: King doesn’t milk it or paste over it as so many do. Instead, she shows him as a brilliant but flawed man who is mellowing with age.

Russell writes:

Looking back, I think that the largest barrier to our association was Holmes himself, that inborn part of him that spoke the language of social customs, and particularly that portion of his make-up that saw women as some tribe of foreign and not-entirely-trustworthy exotics.

He works with her, she decides, because he sees her as ‘a lad’ (note: not ‘a boy’); that is, as an apprentice rather than as a woman. The fear of women that he has expressed has been a product of his social upbringing – unlike Doyle’s Holmes, King’s is a gentleman amateur – and part of his absolute focus on his work. It hasn’t been, as it is in Sherlock, a disengagement with sexuality, but rather a total ignorance of half the human race.

Russell goes off to university, but comes back to visit Holmes, and they end up getting involved in a transatlantic criminal case in… Wales. Naturally. From this, they end up in London, donning disguises and nearly getting blown up. Then they travel to Jerusalem – I’m not entirely sure why – and back to London, and Sussex (to actually get blown up) and Oxford, and a random ladies’ toilet where Holmes makes a personal discovery. Mycroft is involved, Watson is involved, Mrs Hudson is involved, even the long-dead Moriarty is involved. There’s a war on but we don’t hear much about it.

As a plot summary, this sounds ridiculous and nonsensical, but King’s eminently readable style just about makes it work. At any rate, I found myself turning the pages at a steady rate and not really questioning anything, except the sojourn in Jerusalem. Most of it makes sense at the time. I did spot the villain, purely because there aren’t many characters, but that really isn’t the point.

This is one of those novels where plot and social commentary are hard to separate. The solution is just part of the great narrative message which is about the pursuit of gender equity. It has a 1990s Spice Girls-level feminism vibe about it, which is obviously philosophically limited but great fun to read. By the end, I was relieved that Holmes and Russell hadn’t yet tied the knot. I am at least now convinced that when they do marry (in Book 2, I think), it won’t be for conventional reasons, and while my Holmes would never behave in this manner, I don’t deny King hers.

All in all, I enjoyed The Beekeeper’s Apprentice. I think it could have been a bit shorter and a bit more streamlined, but in this book King achieves something rare. She does something original with an overused canon.