Holmes Literary Pastiches

HOLMES, IN VARIOUS INCARNATIONS 

Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes

 

By TOM SOTER

from The Columbia Spectator
February 18, 1977

The Adventure of the Peerless Peer, by Philip Jose Farner (Dell, 127 pp, $1.25). Sherlock Holmes in New York, from the TV film by Alvin Sapinsley. adapted by D. R. Bensen (Ballantine, 153 pp, $1.50). The Giant Rat of Sumatra, by Richard L. Boyer (Warner, 223 pp, $1,50).

What is one to make of a Sherlock Holmes who calls his faithful Watson a "blockhead" and a "dunce" and who seems more concerned with a paycheck than with the solution of a crime? Not much, and if Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had written about such a character in the late 1880's when the first Holmes story· appeared it is doubtful whether the detective would have had the popularity he does today. That popularity was Doyle's greatest and most restricting success. Considering himself a serious author, Sir.Arthur was peeved that his readers ignored his other works (mostly historical romances) in favor of the Holmes stories. Understandably therefore, he tired of his creation much sooner than did his audience. ("May I marry him?" asked a would-be-Holmes playwright. Doyle's reply: "Marry him or murder him or do anything else you like with him.") He tried killing him off, but the public outcry was so great even after ten years that a rather implausible resurrection had to be staged. After that, there was no stopping him, and Holmes has been around ever since, outliving his creator, his period, but not his profitability.

This latter point can be seen in the series of pastiches that have appeared over the years. The most notable (but hardly the best) recent one is Nicolas Meyer's Seven Per-Cent Solution, a novel done in the style, if not the spirit, of the original tales. Prodded, no doubt, by its success, three more authors have taken Dr. Watson's pen in hand and have attempted, in Edgar Smith's phrase, "the production of a veritable adventure ... "

The first of these is Philip Jose Farmer's The Adventure of the Peerless Peer. Here, the detective meets Tarzan, The Shadow, Doc Savage, and Bulldog Drummond. And that, plus the exposition of a number of theories concerning literary character lineage (the author's hobby; did you know that David Copperfield is related to Dr. Fu Manchu? Did you care?), seems to be about the only point in this boring and tastelessly written book. What is more disturbing, however, is Farmer's apparent ignorance of why the detective and his friend are so popular. Hearing his Watson say things such as “the older the buck stiffer the horn," when referring to a girl and himself, or his Holmes addressing the doctor as an "idiot" is upsetting is upsetting because it, is so unlike both men and does them, and ther reader, a great injustice.

The original tales have a kind of naive charm' about them, rooted as' they are in a simpler period of hansom cabs, dastardly villains, and "Great Scott! That was meant for us!" melodrama. Farmer attempts to satirize this by injecting jarring notes of real world vulgarity and carnp humor into what should really be an agreeable fantasy world; a pleasant pastthat probably never existed but also probably should have. In this light, a horny Watson and a greedy Holmes searching for a stolen formula that could destroy all the sauerkraut in Germany is not funny or even interesting; it. is merely tasteless and selfindulgent, attesting more to the drawing power of Holmes' name than to any talent on the part of the author.  

John Huston, Charlotte Rampling, Patrick Macnee, and Roger Moore in Sherlock Holmes in New York (1976).

In addition, Farmer's detective is overly-emotional and illogical; a flaw that is repeated in D. R. Bensen's Sherlock Holmes in New York. The original character is fascinating because of his contradictions: he wants to be a cold thinking machine, but can't escape his pride and love for the melodramatic. Farmer, however, concentrates on the caustic and downplays the deductive side to the point where the man who once said "I never guess" is reduced to phrases like "I have a hunch."

Benson, on the other hand, ,tries for rather tnore of a Doyle-like Holmes and the flaws can be blamed more on Alvin Sapinsley's TV plot, on which New York is based, than on any real lack of effort. The mystery involves old foe Moriarty and old flame Irene Adler (from Doyle's "A Scandal in Bohemia") in a robbery and kidnapping plot that calls for Holmes to make prescient and long-winded comments on everything but his profession, the science of deduction. Besides that, the problem's solution, usually so ingeniously simple in Conan Doyle, is here unnecessarily complex and implausible, more suited to a James Bond film than anything else. One gets the feeling that Benson is trying too hard to deliver a "spectacular" adventure, and, as a result, the book has the taste of hackwork. It is not as dreadful' as Farmer's piece, but it is not as compellingly bad, either. It is merely indifferent and the great detective has here sadly become a fragment of himself – nothing more than a Grade C hero with a Grade A name.

The news is, not all bleak, however, In Richard L. Boyer's The Giant Rat of Sumatra, one surprisingly finds a well-crafted mystery-adventure which hits all the'right bases. There is- Victorian melodrama, subtle humor, real deduction for a change, and nice character delineation. Opening at Baker Street with the horrible' death of a hardy seaman, the story twists and turns qwtecleverly until the rather grim confrontation between Holmes and the prime meanie. One should also note that there is more than a casual similarity to The Hound of the Baskervilles, too.) Although there are a few stylistic lapses (the "Dear Reader" technique is overused) and some cliches ("Horror of horrors"), Boyer is to be commended for succeeding where so many others have failed. He has created an entertaining, semi-serious adventure in the spirit, of the originals.

That this seemingly simple task is really so difficult can be seen by the string of pastiches (of which these three are only a small sample) which have fallen flat. Holmes is a more complex man than many realize and to' make him come to life involves more effort than most are willing to take. Or as one reader put it in describing the detective after his return from the dead, "Mr. Holmes may not have been killed, but he was certainly injured, for he was never the same man afterwards." This has been too true; but with The Giant Rat of Sumatra, at least, our hero seems on the road to recovery.