Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine #2. Darrell Schweitzer

      FROM WATSON’S SCRAPBOOK, by John H Watson, M.D.

      My dear friend Sherlock Holmes, albeit semi-retired, still keeps himself well informed about the huge amount of liter­ary and cinematic adaptations, continuations, dramatizations, and alas, all too often, transgressions upon his name, character, ratiocinative career, and my reportage of those same items. Generally, I ignore them, except to the extent that my attorney still exacts royalties from sundry producers and writers who thus indulge themselves creatively. Holmes, however, eschews referencing them as artists. “More accurately, Watson, one must label most of them perpetrators.”

      I am pleased to report that his reaction to the premiere ­issue of Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine was quite favourable, though it must be recollected that it only contained two Holmesian adventures, my own recounting of his first investigation, that of “The Gloria Scott,” and Carole Buggé’s recounting of “The Strange Case of the Haunted Freighter,” a tale that, though I never got around to writing myself, is thoroughly adventure; indeed, I allowed Ms Buggé access to my own notes of the case.

      But I am both curious and a bit trepidatious to learn what his reaction might be to this second number of Sherlock Holmes My­stery Magazine. He will, of course, approve of the reappearance of my own report of his early inquiries into “The Musgrave Ritual.” As for Dr. Kilstein’s edited account of Holmes’s own narrative of “The Dead House,” I confess to being both pleased and embarrassed that my great good friend attributes his success in that investigation to medical knowledge that I was able to provide. To paraphrase him, “My blushes, Holmes!”

      Mr. Holmes might perhaps object to another appearance by our colleague and occasional rival, that Yank, Harry Challenge, though the sort of cases his chronicler, M. Ron Goulart, chooses to set in print are not the sort of thing that Holmes involved himself him with, always excepting that nasty business at Baskerville Hall.

      He probably will tolerate Matthew Elliott’s rendition of the mystery, “A Reputation for Murder,” despite the fact that he and I have encountered Ms Hilary Caine on one or two occasions and, while I have found her to be rather attractive, Holmes, I suspect, was a bit put off by her distinctly discernible egomania.

      Now Mr. Schweitzer’s “Adventure of the Hanoverian Vampires ”—ah, that is quite another matter! I, personally, found it rather amusing, but I suspect it will thoroughly irritate Holmes. Indeed, I have noticed that most individuals, no matter how highly developed their apperception of the risible may be, possess a “blind spot,” shall we say, when it comes to humour directed at their mode of professional employment.

      I expect that at least Holmes will have no objection to the contributions of Messrs Newman and Picker, and in that I do concur. We were both rather startled, though, to find in the first issue an advice column our own erstwhile landlady, Mrs Martha Hudson. I suppose today’s economy dictated that she seek an additional mode of remuneration, though why, of all possible professional sectors, she would seek that commodity in publishing even baffles Holmes.

      In that wise, she has asked me to remind readers to send her letters for her to write replies in her next column. Send such queries by e-mail to: [email protected].

      Well, now, I’ve had my say for this issue, so I shall turn over the residuum of this column to the Parker College scholar Professor J. Adrian Phillmore (Gad, what a name!)

      —John H. Watson, M. D.

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      Mr Kaye, the editor of Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, has asked me to comment on the balance on its second issue. Though I suspect this honour y clept chiefly derives from the fact that with age he has become something of a slacker, I admit he has on two occasions done a tolerable job of setting down my own Holmesian, and other adventures; we’ve also done a few anthologies together, with the cooperation of Dr Watson and the brittle acquiescence of Mr Holmes. Thus I take up the task that Mr Kaye ought to have done himself.

      Dr Watson has provided his views upon the inclusions in which he and Holmes are involved, directly or otherwise. In addition, this second edition of Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine ­offers “Tough as Diamonds,” an interesting mystery story by ­newcomer David Waxman, a revenge tale, “You See, But You ­Forget,” by cartoonist-writer and ex-standup comic Marc Bil­grey.

      “Max’s Cap,” a gangster story with a soupçon of the supernatural, is one of the posthumous tales by Jean Paiva, author of the two Tor Books novels The Last Gamble and The Lilith Factor, which was a nominee for Best First Novel by the Horror Writers of America.

      Doing my best to decipher Mr. Kaye’s crabbèd cuneiform, I see that the Holmesian parody by Kim Newman, which was promised for this issue, will appear in an upcoming issue of Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, as will new fiction by Peter King, Gary Lovisi, Roberta Rogow, Stan Trybulski, Paula Volsky, and Mark Wardecker, in addition to return appearances by Marc Bilgrey, Hal Blythe, Bruce Kilstein, and Darrell Schweitzer.

      Well, excuse me, I have an appointment elsewhere and I must open my umbrella, so I shall say au revoir. . . .

      —J. Adrian Fillmore

      Gadshill Adjunct for English Literature

      Parker College (PA)

      BAKER STREET BROWSINGS: BOOK REVIEWS, by Kim Newman

      The Oriental Casebook of Sherlock Holmes (Random House, $23.95) by Ted Riccardi is a linked collection of tales (‘nine adventures from the lost years’) filling in the same gap as the stories in the Michael Kurland-edited Sherlock Homes: The Hidden Years (reviewed last issue) and Jamyang Norbu’s novel The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes. We’re concerned with the so-called ‘Great Hiatus,’ the period when the world thought Holmes dead after his struggle with Moriarty in Switzerland. Doyle has him claim to have poked around Tibet ­during this time; and Riccardi, an academic whose “special in­ter­ests are the history of India and the cultures of the Himalayas,” extends this to include wanderings throughout the sub-continent, sometimes carrying out official missions for brother Mycroft, sometimes chancing across crimes (as detectives on holiday always do) and too often just poking his long nose in. Whereas Kurland presented pastiches and Norbu delivered a genuine novel, this feels more like fan fiction—it’s Riccardi’s first attempt at writing fiction of any kind and is hampered by a kind of crankiness that makes it often hard-going. Awkwardly, Riccardi insists on staying close to Doyle by having Watson as narrator, though he is present at none of the adventures—which have to be relayed to him by Holmes some years after the events. This multiple distancing from any dramatic meat is emphasised by the typical mystery structure whereby the detective has to listen to various accounts of the puzzle in question or theorise as to what has actually happened, so that the actual nut of story is too often wrapped in layer after layer of ‘he said to me.’ We do get stabs at often-evoked ‘missing adventures’ in “The Giant Rat of Sumatra” and “A Singular Affair at Trincomalee,” but the most memorable effort is “The Case of the French Savant” in which Holmes doesn’t catch a contemporary crook but delves into a historical Nepalese mystery. Apart from plugging continuity, there’s no very pressing need for these stories; and the results are rather dry, only occasionally coming to life as Riccardi works one of his enthusiasms into standard mystery business.

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