I've been an on-again, off-again fan of the Sherlock Holmes stories for as long as I can remember, periodically going on epic reads of the tales before dismissing them again for a decade or so. Sometimes it's a new movie version that reignites my interest in Holmes, other times a new modern approach to the Holmes myth from a current author. This time it looks like Graham Moore has done the trick with his cleverly written The Sherlockian.
Reading The Sherlockian is a bit like reading two related novels at the same time by alternating chapters from each in succession. That's exactly how Moore structured his novel about a a young Sherlock Holmes fanatic who is trying to solve the murder of a fellow member of the Baker Street Irregulars, a prestigious club of fellow fanatics that once claimed the likes of Isaac Asimov, Harry Truman, and Franklin Roosevelt as members.
In the real-time set of chapters, Harold is being inducted into the ranks of the Irregulars during its biggest event of the year when the keynote speaker is found murdered in his hotel room just moments before he was to reveal to everyone where he finally found the long-missing final volume of Arthur Conan Doyle's personal diaries. In the every-other-chapter flashback, Doyle is still trying to live with the public's scorn for his having killed off the Sherlock Holmes character so that he would not be forced to endure another moment in the fictional detective's company. Doyle hates everything about Holmes, and he fully intends to keep the man in his grave forever - as he does until suddenly deciding to resurrect the famous detective for another round of solving unsolvable mysteries for the police.
But Sherlock Holmes fans all over the world have always wondered why Doyle threw Holmes off the mountain in the first place...and why after several years the author decided to bring him back to life as he did. Supposedly, the long sought answers are in the missing diary pages - and now they been found. So is the secret such a dark one that someone would actually kill to keep it hidden forever?
That's exactly what Harold intends to find out.
The Sherlockian makes for fun some reading. Despite the very real murder that takes place early on, and the presence of a serious villain or two, it's easy to brush past all of that and focus mostly on all the references to the Sherlock Holmes canon that are used both as red herrings and as real clues to solving the diary's old mystery.
Which gets me back to where I began this review. Reading it that way brings back such pleasant memories of the Arthur Conan Doyle books, that I know already that I'm going to be revisiting some of those classics soon.
It's happened again.
This does sound like a very fun read! I'm in the middle of Steve Hockensmith's second book about Otto and Gustav...those Holmesian cowboys...this time they're trying to solve a murder that took place on a train. Doyle sure created an unforgettable and iconic character when he wrote Sherlock Holmes.
ReplyDeleteI need to read another of those Hockensmith some time because I really enjoyed the two brothers who are the main characters of that series. Sherlock is such a great character that he fits into just about any time period or setting - as all these great spinoffs prove every year over and over again.
DeleteYes, I'm the same re revisiting Holmes over various stages of my life. Jeremy Brett playing him was one of those stages, the perfect interpretation in my eyes. But every now and then a reprinted short story in an anthology will set me off again. This book sounds wonderful. I shall go and look it up and keep my fingers crossed that they don't want some enormous sun for an ebook... answer, there is no ebook! LOL
ReplyDeleteI wonder why there is no e-book version in the U.K., Cath. I actually read it here in e-book version after catching an Amazon sale a few months ago that priced it at about $3. You know, I think my favorite Sherlock TV version is the BBC one starring Benedict Cumberbatch (love that surname) and Martin Freeman, another favorite of mine.
DeleteI too need to get back to reading Sherlock Holmes and Sherlockian sounds like a good read. Arthur Conan Doyle got tired of writing the Holmes stories and killed off Sherlock and the worldwide outcry among readers was immense. So It's an interesting idea for a plot. Who was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and why did he tire of the Sherlock stories?
ReplyDeleteThe theory in the Sherlockian is that Doyle grew jealous of the character he created because too many people around the world believed that Sherlock was real and that Doyle was more or less just the "real" Dr. Watson...or Watson's Watson, I suppose you could say. He grew so frustrated with the character that he was obsessed with him and had to kill him off for his own mental health.
DeleteWould be interesting to know the real truth...it's probably far less entertaining.