Book Review: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Holmes

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Holmes
Loren Estleman
Mystery

While this is written in an acceptably Watsonian style, it adds absolutely nothing to Stevenson's story. It's nothing more than a rewrite of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with Holmes and Watson stuck into it. Every single development in the original is here. "Watson's" introduction promises that this book reveals hidden and shocking depths behind the published version . . . which is exactly what it fails to do! There's one trivial addendum near the end. Unless you've somehow managed to avoid knowing the Big Reveal in Dr. J. and Mr. H.--in which case, I want to know how--you've already read this book. 

Loren Estleman was a noted Sherlockian. He should have known better.

Book Review: Jeeves and the King of Clubs

Jeeves and the King of Clubs
Ben Schott
Humor

MIKE PHIPPS DO NOT READ THIS POST IT WILL CAUSE YOUR EYES TO BLEED PLEASE FOR YOUR OWN SAFETY PRETEND THAT YOU DID NOT SEE IT THANK YOU

Now that we've got the Surgeon General's Warning out of the way, I can say that I was pleasantly surprised by Jeeves and the King of Clubs. The author seems to have approached it in a suitably chastened spirit: "nothing can cap perfection," he notes in an afterword. Certainly it's a big improvement on Sebastian Faulks's Jeeves and the Wedding Bells, in which Wooster, B. actually ends up (God help us) engaged.

Not that Jeeves and the King of Clubs is entirely free from innovation. This is the curse of the pasticheur (as I have occasion to know). Imitate slavishly, and you end up with something that's at best dull and uninspired. Stray too far from the template, and the justified wrath of the true believers pours down upon you. In this case, Schott inserts Bertram Wooster into an actual, not-entirely-silly spy plot--one that's occasioned, not by the blundering of his chums, nor by the machinations of his family, but by what might loosely be called the real world.

It's not all that much of a plot, mind you. Nonetheless, it's a departure. Classically, Bertie is motivated by nothing more than his own desire to be a decent chap, aid his undeserving compatriots, stay out of trouble, and not get married. The plot obstacles that occur are of a social nature, no more. Placing him--however gingerly!--into a situation with politics and secret messages and consequences is . . . a little different. It not only features Bertie being almost competent at something; at one point he is right when Jeeves is wrong. Great Scott!

In matters such as this, I'm generally a purist. I liked Jeeves and the King of Clubs pretty well, all the same. There's a little tip of the hat to Lord Peter Wimsey--nicely meta, that man--and an informative section of notes, which will however confuse you if you don't know that Wodehouse's nickname was "Plum". The language is quite good (a sine qua non), and the secondary characters entirely consistent with the Wodehouseian oeuvre. It helps, too, to remember that Wodehouse himself adored detective stories. 

Put another way, Jeeves and the King of Clubs was good enough that I'd read a sequel. As pastiches go, that's high praise.

Book Review: The Mystery of Three Quarters

The Mystery of Three Quarters
Sophie Hannah
Mystery

[WARNING: Unlike some people, I generally try not to put spoilers in my reviews. This will be an exception. Then again, if you still want to read the book after reading this post, you deserve what's coming to you. Also: long and screed-y.]

I read Hannah's first Hercule Poirot pastiche when it came out and thought it was pretty bad. The plot was all over the place, she had a tin ear for dialogue and names, one character showed strong signs of being a Mary Sue, and the narrator character was afflicted with pointless and ultimately trivial psychological hand-wringing.

I skipped the second book. But then I spotted the third in the library, and it opened surprisingly well, and I thought, what the hell. (What can I say? I'm not bad, just weak and easily led.) The good news is that the aforementioned problems have been minimized. The bad news is that they've been replaced by new, much worse problems.

Look: if you're going to pastiche Agatha freakin' Christie, the third-best-selling author of all time (behind the Bible and Shakespeare), there's one thing you've got to have. You've got to have a puzzle. This is the one fundamental overpowering thing that Dame Agatha did better than anyone else before, during, or since. She'd set up a puzzle, give you all the clues, and then pull out a solution that (a) you didn't see coming, and (b) seemed totally, logically, inevitable. That "aha!" moment--or, more specifically, that "I can't believe I didn't see that!" moment--is why people read Christie in the first place.

Sophie Hannah's moment is not an "aha!" moment. It's a "chuwhuuuuh?" moment. Actually, it's a series of "chuwhuuuuh?" moments--an elaborate, rickety structure of improbable psychological hand-waving combined with utterly nonsensical internal logic. There are too many ridiculous bits for me to describe them all. A few particularly egregious examples should give the flavor.

The central clue that makes no sense whatsoever.  Throughout the book, an enormous fuss is made about identifying the typewriter that produced several letters. Let us suppose that you are the villain, and do not wish this typewriter found. Do you: Hide the typewriter under a bed. Buy two brand-new typewriters. Beat up one so that it looks like an old machine. Tell the detective "We have two typewriters, a new one and an old one. You can test them both." Throw the typewriter into the lake. Buy one brand-new typewriter. Beat it up so that it looks like an old machine. Tell the detective "That's our typewriter." If the answer is #1, for God's sake, WHY? The absolutely ridiculous fundamental premise. Your cunning plan is to accuse your sister of murder, so that she will be hanged and you will get the money. The death in question was, and was assumed to be, natural. You write letters vaguely asserting that there has been Foul Play. Which of these things do you do? Sign these letters with the name of the most famous detective in the world, thus assuring that he will take an interest. Give your sister an unassailable alibi. Fail to provide any further evidence whatsoever, other than an dubious and not-very-incriminating clue in a place where anybody in the world could have put it. None of the above. The butler did knows it. The point of having a detective is to have him, you know, detect stuff. Having the butler listen at doors and basically spill the whole plot does not count.

I could go on . . . and on . . . but why bother? Sophie Hannah might well be a good writer for a different sort of book--there are flashes of that--but as constructor of puzzles she's absolutely hopeless.

Book Review: Spade and Archer

Spade and Archer
Joe Gores
Mystery

A very good prequel to The Maltese Falcon, giving Sam Spade a backstory that makes him a little more likable than in the original. The Hammett-esque language is a pleasure to read, and the mystery (or mysteries, to be pedantic) are more involved than most of the imitators can manage. Recommended for noir fans of all stripes.

It's MORE Official!

Anyone remember this?

Here's the proof, hot out of the mailbox.

This is the January/February issue. It will probably be on sale on or around December 21st.

The printed version that's isn't quite my original submission, but it's extremely close. I spotted a couple of small editorial substitutions and one minor infelicity. Needless to say, I am heartbroken and outraged and convinced that my dignity has been stolen and . . . oh, wait, none of that's true.

The Ellery Queen website shows the links to order the digital version of the magazine from Amazon, B&N, etc.--or to subscribe to the physical edition, which no doubt would thrill the editor. There are still a few old-school vendors that carry physical copies, including the iconic (but endangered) Out of Town News in Harvard Square and (hooray!) the much-loved A. J. Hastings in Amherst.  It looks like you could also order single issues online from Magzter. 

By the way, two people deserve special thanks.

One is, of course, my wife. I know that sounds conventional, but it is literally true that there is no significant part or plot point or development in "The Adventure of the Disguised Passenger" that I didn't talk over with Robin.

The other is the lovely and talented Mr. Steve Hockensmith, who:

• Gave me the inspiration in the first place;
• Permitted me to shamelessly steal appropriate characters he'd created;
• Read the manuscript and gave it his seal of approval; and
• Suggested a suitable publication/editor.

Important shameless co-promotion! Steve is going to be bringing back his "Holmes on the Range" series. And he's going commando—i.e., self-publishing. Please support him when he does.

It's Official!

I've just mailed off a contract for my first published short story. "The Adventure of the Disguised Passenger"--a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, as one might deduce from the title--has been accepted by Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. (For those of you from the SF side of the cultural divide, this is a sister publication of Asimov's Science Fiction.)

Extra-special thanks go to the dazzling Mr. Steve Hockensmith, whose soon-to-be-relaunched Holmes on the Range sequence got me thinking about this tale in the first place.

I don't yet know in which issue the story will appear. Needless to say, there will be further posts when I do.

Book Review: Ten Little Wizards

Ten Little Wizards

Michael Kurland

Fantasy, mystery

Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy series is one of the minor classics of Silver Age science fiction/fantasy. Darcy solves crimes in an alternative universe where magic not only works, but has been put on a scientific basis. Darcy's sidekick Sean O Lochlainn is a forensic sorcerer, but the stories themselves are all fair-play whodunits. (If you see a parallel to these guys, you're not alone.)

After Garrett's death, Michael Kurland wrote two pastiche follow-up novels: A Study in Sorcery and Ten Little Wizards. I'd bought and read the first many years ago, but I'd never run across the second. Speaking of magic, though--e-books to the rescue!

I wish I could say, after all that, that Ten Little Wizards is brilliant. It's ... serviceable. Garrett didn't have a terribly distinctive writing style, so there's nothing to complain about on that score. Kurland's description of the setting is reasonably close to Garrett's, but in this one--more than in A Study in Sorcery--it's a trifle unfocused, as if Kurland had a bunch of bits he wanted to throw in but didn't know quite how they all went together. The puzzle is somewhat weak; the murderer is unmasked kind of by accident, and the unmasking isn't very satisfactory.

Also, the magic is not credible. Garrett was always careful to give a scientific-sounding explanation whenever Master Sean did his tricks, using (for example) the "Law of Sympathy" and the "Law of Contagion" noted in our world by James Frazer in his book The Golden Bough. There are a couple of bits in Ten Little Wizards that just don't fit the classic mold. It may sound odd to the uninitiated to start complaining "Hey, magic can't do that!", but if nothing else it's a tribute to Garrett's original conception.

I enjoyed reading the book. I'm glad to have finally completed the series. Still, this is more a book for dedicated fans of the original than for general readers.

Book Review: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain
Fiction (reread)

I done read this book afore but I ain't cracked it open in donkey's years. I mind it was in high school, and I remember allowing as how it weren't half-bad, not for mandiblatory reading anyhow, but dad blame me if I could see what all the fuss and feathers was about.

The book's got considerable better since then, I reckon. There's been enough ink spilled on ol' Huck and Jim to float that raft of their'n a tolerable distance, so I ain't fixing to add much more. Only I wanted to give a shout out to Samuel Mark Twain Clemens for doing a bang-up job on Huck and his nat'ral morality.  Huck ain't above telling a few taradiddles to smooth out the bumps, and he might liberate a chicken if it was needful; but inside hisself he knows right and wrong, even if he's a mite mixed up on which is which. It's the regular folk, with their feuding and killing and cheating and slave-hunting and what-not, who's rotten; they being able to rationalizate any dern thing they want to do, and convince themselves it's all aces; but Huck das'n't, on account of his conscience.

There ain't but just one thing more, the which has been eating at me.

Back when I first read this book I purposed a paper topic, that being "The River as Homer Sexual Meta Four in Huck Finn", but I was just funnin'. Well, consarn it, I think now I should 'a' writ that paper, cause it'd be dead easy. Excepting I should 'a' writ it all serious-like, talking about how Huck Finn is plumb overflowing with Homer-erratic tension and suchlike. If I warn't such a blame fool I'd 'a' proved that Mr. Mark Twain was a Homer sexual like Honest Abe and King Richard the First and purt-near everybody else and then got famous and be a ten yeared perfessor--only I bet I could 'a' done it in eight years, tops.

Book Review: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

This is one of those above-mentioned old vintage forgotten classic retro book reviews that's been sitting on my hard drive. I'll post these periodically, in no particular order. This one, from 2012, I'm rather fond of.

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Edward Gibbon

History

It was lately brought to my attention that I had neglected the works of Mr. Edward Gibbon: an author no less celebrated for the felicity of his language, than for the depth of his scholarship. In that happy marriage may be seen the fons et origo of the twinned streams of the historian’s art. Mr. Gibbon’s sedulous reliance on ancient sources, combined with his earnestness to profess a thesis of cause and effect, have distinguished him as the Father of academic history; but it is no less true, that in making of his inchoate materials a finished body, he may with equal justice be nominated as the Father of narrative, or popular, history: which glories less in the dry and stable skeleton of Theory, than in the lively sinew of Story. I consider that it adds some lustre to these laurels to note that the work is the model for one of the grandest of the science-fiction epics, viz. the Foundation series of the noted Dr. Asimov.

It is not necessary to accept uncritically Gibbon’s inferences, to admire his methods. Modern scholars may deny that a spirit universally tolerant existed among the Pagans; they may decline to fix the entire weight of the decay of Empire upon one or two causes; they may deprecate the lack of weight given to oeconomical arguments. It is nonetheless worthy of remark, that in debating the specific conclusions, modern historians make use of the identical tools, that Gibbon has espoused: a disinterested spirit of enquiry; a reliance upon primary sources; a sceptical eye towards partiality; and a fixed devotion to the veridical, over the fabulous. I must particularly admire his technique in selecting, from sources stained with prejudice and bigotry, those facts least creditable to their authors.

The present author, it is true, enjoyed the advantages of a limited audience. Any person disposed to read his opus might be presumed to possess a respectable acquaintance with Classical antiquity, and to therefore regard with easy familiarity a passing reference to Tarquinius Superbus, and nod sagely at the mention of Domitian’s crimes. The evolutions of above two centuries have broadened the reach, even as they have perhaps lessened the depth, of the curriculum. The occasional and modest student of Roman history, into which category I should place myself, will have no difficulty with Mr. Gibbon’s general thesis, though he may be mildly perplexed by a name or an event half-remembered. A reader whose familiarity with the aera is more doubtful will be correspondingly more gratified if he has at his elbow some general scheme of the Republic and early Empire. This will at the least mitigate, if it does not entirely excuse, Gibbon’s inexplicable disinclination to include dates in his otherwise admirable design.

It is true as well that the narrative impetus of Gibbon’s opus flags somewhat in its latter chapters. The evolutions of the Roman polity give way to the monotonous convulsions of Byzantium, which insensibly degenerate into an endless round of riot, rebellion, and the putting out of eyes. The opposite of a slave is a free citizen, and an edifying contrast can be drawn between those states; but the opposite of a fanatick is too often merely another fanatick. Only in his closing chapters, as the final doom of Constantinople approaches, does Gibbon escape from the stagnant pool of the Grecian Empire, which in synopsis appears as a long-drawn shambles, interrupted by brief bursts of competence.

It remains for me only to remark, that Rome and Byzantium alike must blush with respect to the philosophical clime (known latterly as the Enlightenment) which in its nativity both informed, and was informed by, Gibbon’s masterpiece. The fathers of the present Republic have profited by the example of its antique predecessor.  In their deliberations they were deeply anxious to avoid the perils of faction; but it is rather the law of succession, wherein the pupils have most clearly surpassed their teacher. A state in which absolute power is held by a permanent tenancy must inevitably excite the flagitious ambition of those able or avaricious men who stand near, yet below, the purple.  In the present constitution the fever permits of an easy remedy. The mere passage of four, or five, or ten years, occasions the regular and predictable alteration of the regime; the would-be usurper chooses rather to bide his time; the injuries of the base or foolish leader are perforce limited; and the dreary and profitless cycle of rebellion and repression, of virtuous and vicious monarchs, is thereby broken. It is surely no coincidence that Rome’s meridian came under those emperors who preferred the surety of adopted merit, over the hazard of paternity, in fixing their successors. The terminus of this salutary practice forms the first, and not the least, of the misfortunes attendant upon the accession of Commodus. Had it become universal and customary, Rome might yet survive.

Teaser: "The Adventure of the Rafferty Letters"

I occasionally commit flagrant acts of writing. Here's the opening of a Sherlock Holmes pastiche I did a couple of years ago. I don't care to post the whole thing, but I'll send copies by e-mail if solicited.

The Adventure of the Rafferty Letters

"Well, Watson," asked Sherlock Holmes, "what do you deduce?"

I picked up the visiting-card from its silver tray and studied it closely, trying as always to anticipate my friend's methods.  "Very little, I'm afraid," I admitted.

It was a fine April day, the first after a dreary grey March.  Holmes and I had been for one of our extended rambles through the city.  For Holmes these seemingly aimless excursions served to sharpen and refresh his knowledge of the byways of the teeming, bustling metropolis.  Never was he happier than when he was able take a street he had never before trod, or navigate in a direct line to some distant landmark.  For my part, I was glad of the exercise.  Though my shoulder had long since healed, the Afghani bullet that I still carried in my leg had made walking a painful chore for many damp weeks.  Then, too, I never tired of listening to Holmes practicing his craft, observing and docketing the callings and characters of the folk who passed us by.  The keenness of his eye, and the breadth of his inferences, were as good as an open-air lecture.

A balmy breeze accompanied us as we ambled through Marylebone and Bloomsbury, up into Clerkenwell and down towards the City.  The first haze of green was on the trees, and even the grimy liver-coloured bricks of Britain's great industrial heart seemed fresh and new.  In consequence it was well into the late afternoon before we returned to Baker Street, to be met at the door by Mrs. Hudson.

"There's been a gentleman to see you, Mr. Holmes," she said.  "An American, he sounded like, and an impatient one at that.  I said I couldn't guess when you'd be back, and off he stumped.  But he left a card."

Now, having followed Holmes upstairs, I turned that card over in my fingers.  It was off-white and in no way remarkable.  On one side was the name "Mr. Daniel J. Rafferty," with no other information.  On the other was written, in a firm legible hand: "I will call on you at 5:30--DJR".

I shook my head.  "I can only offer the trivial suggestion," I said, "that Mr. Rafferty is an Irish-American."

"Come, Watson, I think we may do better than that."  Holmes took the card from me and subjected it to a concentrated scrutiny at a distance of a few inches, running his long thin fingers over its surface.  "It is true that a visiting-card is not the most fruitful field for our endeavours," he continued thoughtfully.  "It is designed to be anonymous, or at least to reveal only what its owner wishes.  A pair of eyeglasses, or a cigarette-case, would be infinitely richer ground.  Still, there are indications.  I should say that Mr. Rafferty is well-to-do, a heavy smoker, unsociable, left-handed, and a man of distinctly obstinate nature.  Beyond that, I fear, we must remain ignorant."