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 House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz

This review was first published on Goodreads in 2013.

The House of Silk (2011) has been touted as the first ever Sherlock Holmes continuation novel -- a statement as blatantly ridiculous as the author's prose.

First off: Arthur Conan Doyle would never have written this novel. Book length, paragraph structure, and an emphasis on over-explained historical detail mark this out as pastiche, however reverent. But that in itself doesn't matter: Arthur Conan Doyle is dead. Much as we might like to read another work by him, we won't (except for John Smith and the like, but, really.... no). Sherlock Holmes means different things to us now so an attempt to mimic his creator's style, which cannot be successful, arguably shouldn't be the most important part of the 'first' new official Holmes novel.

Some things do matter, though. The prose is barely edited (Since when did Watson call Holmes 'Sherlock'? and some words are employed with truly unique interchangeability: flora/fauna and council/counsel; it is frankly messy. Anthony Horowitz's style here is inconsistent, flitting between pastiche and his own unique voice. And, unfortunately, Horowitz generally writes prose for children. He is a master plotter – hence his success with conservative television viewers – but not a master prosist. While Arthur Conan Doyle was hardly Balzac, Horowitz is worse. He doesn’t just tell, rather than show; he is preachy without quite knowing what he’s being preachy about, and seems incapable of doing any historical research without drawing our attention to it.

For example:

It sometimes occurs to me now, having witnessed so many momentous changes across the years, that I should have described at greater length the sprawling chaos of the city in which I lived, perhaps in the manner of Gissing - or Dickens, fifty years before.

Yeah, this totally hooks us in and convinces us that we're in the nineteenth century. Yeah, this is totally not written for kids...

Although the style suggests a children’s novel – and I believed that this was one for the longest time – the novel’s conclusion (rendering it a whodunit-style narrative rather than a really Holmesian adventure) is most certainly adult in content. Horowitz is very proud of this conclusion, which he reckons allows him to explore the conditions of vice and sin in Victorian London upon which ACD was 'unable' to reflect. Was he really unable to reflect? Really? Doyle was very involved in politics, social welfare, charity, and the military. He was regularly consulted by Scotland Yard and voiced opinions on Jack the Ripper, the laws against homosexuality, the First World War, homelessness, and even the disappearance of Agatha Christie. He did not bring these things into his Holmes stories because, far from being incapable of reflecting upon them, he deemed them inappropriate, once pointing out that 'a man passes a merry hour with a detective story' but should never under any circumstances have learnt anything after reading it! His fiction was escapist, not provocative-for-the-sake of it, and Horowitz's reflection on child prostitution (I won't say more on this, but I found it unspeakably offensive) doesn't quite know what it's doing in this kind of novel.

Well-plotted, clichéd, intellectually vapid, and with utterly un-Holmesian characters, Horowitz's novel resembles a children's book that has been revised by PD James and proofread by an intern from The Guardian. On two occasions, Horowitz unconsciously paraphrases Agatha Christie, who is much more in evidence (though not well-served) here than is Doyle.

And yet! What did I find in the back of my paperback edition? Only an excellent essay by the author, explaining all the challenges he faced in writing 'The New Sherlock Holmes Novel'. His experience writing formulaic whodunits, he avers, is 'absolutely completely irrelevant' since 'Doyle's approach was completely different'. For one thing, he notes, Doyle did not really write about murder and rarely reflected on the historical and social conditions of Victorian London. He sets out ten rules for writing a Holmesian pastiche that is faithful both to its predecessors and to a modern audience. These include, 'no women', 'no drugs', appropriate research, no homoeroticism, and a modest body count.

If only he had stuck to any of these rules or practised anything of what he'd preached! (Although 'no women', 'no drugs', and 'no homoeroticism' say more about Horowitz than they do about Doyle.) It would have been a very different novel. While we're on homoeroticism, I should point out one thing that struck me as authentic and appropriate for a neo-Victorian novel. Three times, Dr Watson's friendship with Holmes is compared to his marriage. Watson, Mrs Watson, and the sinister (and pointlessly-inserted) Professor Moriarty all note that the doctor seemingly loves and values his friend more than he does his wife. At one point he rushes off to help Holmes escape from prison while his wife dies of cholera. I thought this was one of the most interesting aspects of a dreadfully dull novel, and surprisingly on-the-ball for its author.

Without being commissioned by Doyle’s estate, The House of Silk would never have been written. And without that estate’s endorsement, it would not be garnering any attention whatsoever.