strange and random happenstance

Given how many times the Sherlock Holmes canon has been adapted there is surprisingly little out there with regard to the Baker Street Irregulars. There was the series written by Robert Newman which I didn't know was a series until a few years ago and another series written by Doctor Who writer Terrance Dicks, and they were used abysmally by Anthony Horowitz in The House of Silk... but other than that, they haven't really been explored. Which is why The Irregulars is such an interesting take on Conan Doyle's work, because I really do mean his whole body of work, not just his casebooks on Holmes. Here we see Sherlock and Watson through the jaded eyes of a gaggle of kids on the street, and to put it mildly, they don't hold the two famous detectives in high esteem, in fact they rather think that Watson is a villain. Supernatural phenomena has been occurring in London and Bea and her gang, Jessie, Bea's gifted younger sister, Billy, a fellow orphan from the workhouse, Spike, and Leo, Prince Victoria's son hiding out from Royal duties, take it upon themselves to figure out what is going on. At first it's more a job, but then it becomes personal. The supernatural aspects are a nice backdrop, because they separate this show from the rest of the Conan Doyle canon, but at the same time tap into that which he firmly believed in, mediums and the ability to talk to the dead. So this is literally Conan Doyle to the max! The series does have a rocky start, the first few episodes seem determined to show that it's "hip" with out of place dubstep music, but thankfully once you get to "Chapter Three: Ipsissimus" the show finally comes together in a country house bottle episode that features Mycroft and a cult that he just happens to be in. This is the show at it's strongest, showing the relationships between the young cast and how much they need each other. In fact, I'd say this is the closest you'll ever get to Sherlock Holmes with heart. I look forward to more of their adventures now that they are somewhat out of the shadow of Sherlock. But they will still have to grapple with his legacy.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: And the Emmy Goes To, Anthony Horowitz, Baker Street Irregulars, Mediums, Queen Victoria, Robert Newman, Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Supernatural, Terrance Dicks, The House of Silk, The Irregulars

The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz
Published by: Forge
Publication Date: November 1st, 2011
Format: Hardcover, 294 Pages
Rating: ★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Watson has always hesitated sharing this story. He felt it was too shocking and would destroy the fabric of society. But as a world war rages he once again puts pen to paper. Holmes is gone and he feels this story needs to be told, though he will request that it is withheld for one hundred years so that hopefully society will not be as scandalized. The adventure started as many did, as Holmes and Watson sat in front of the fire of 221B Baker Street. A Mr. Carstairs arrived wishing for their assistance. He was an art dealer who inadvertently got on the wrong side of a thuggish Irish gang in Boston called "The Flat Cap Gang." He has reason to believe one of the two ringleaders has followed him to London to exact revenge. Holmes and Watson quickly resolve his problem as the man, the supposed Keelan O'Donaghue, ends up dead and the case is closed. But in actuality it is just the beginning. In finding "Keelan O'Donaghue" one of the Baker Street Irregulars has gone missing. Usually this wouldn't be a cause for concern, but there's something about the way young Ross reacted to seeing Mr. Castairs at the crime scene that has Holmes wondering. As Holmes digs further into the case of Ross he starts to hear mention of "The House of Silk." Holmes is certain that if he could only find out who or what this organization is that everything would fall into place. But even Mycroft warns him to back away, and soon Holmes is in grave danger. Whomever they may be, The House of Silk doesn't want Holmes exposing them and eliminating one detective, no matter how famous, is a small price to pay in their eyes.

There is no doubt that Anthony Horowitz is talented. If his only legacy was Foyle's War he'd be good as gold. But he also helped adapt Midsomer Murders for television as well as Poirot, not to mention the wonderful mini-series Injustice he created, they are all wonderful fare. But for me he's polarizing. For every right move he makes, he makes a wrong one, like marrying Sam to that numskull Adam. That sin alone deserves some sort of punishment, like being slapped silly with a large fish. Sam was meant to end up with Andrew! But then again, Julian Ovenden doesn't seem to be able to catch a break, he loses Sam and then Lady Mary on Downton Abbey chucks him for Matthew Goode. So for all my love of Anthony Horowitz, there's some hate in there as well, and a lot of that hate is now centered on The House of Silk. This predictable mess of a mystery doesn't deserve to be endorsed by the Conan Doyle Estate, it needs to be burned in effigy as a crime against the legacy of Sherlock Holmes. There are so many good books out there that are reimaginings and continuations of Holmes it baffles me that this is the one given the seal of approval, that little mark of Sherlock in his deerstalker hat with the shadow of Conan Doyle and his walrusy mustache. The most mind-boggling thing about The House of Silk is how Horowitz seems to purposefully set out to undermine all other non-canonical books. It's not enough that he's "official" but that everyone else has to be wrong. He is forcibly trying to change every preconception other writers have given Holmes over the years. Holmes doesn't outlive Watson, Mycroft is also equally indestructible, living to an old age despite his corpulence, which Horowitz takes glee in elucidating. Horowitz is the new voice of Holmes and he won't let there be any ifs, ands, or buts about it.

Horowitz spends too much time randomly answering questions that have popped up over the years without regard to anything but his whim. Holmes wasn't at Watson's wedding, Watson had three children in his second marriage, Mary died of typhoid fever, and on and on, just throwing out little tidbits that will appeal to those with an obsessive desire to know everything about these characters. Yet these little glimpses would have worked had Horowitz proved he actually knew Holmes and his canon. It becomes quickly apparent that Horowitz is a dilettante when it comes to Holmes so therefore all these little insights come across as self-indulgent crap as he tries to leave his mark on a greater writer's legacy. The canonical issues would drive any true fan to distraction. While I wouldn't say I'm an obsessive, I would say that the least he could have done was got it right in order to earn that badge of honor from the Conan Doyle Estate. The scenario that drove me most round the bend was when Horowitz repeated almost verbatim the scene of Holmes baffling Watson with his "mind-reading" abilities that was originally in "The Adventure of the Cardboard Box" but was reused in "The Adventure of the Resident Patient." It wasn't reusing this scene for a third time that annoyed me most, it was what came after. One of the key parts of this original scenario was Watson and his newly framed picture of General Gordon and his contemplation of framing his portrait of Henry Ward Beecher to make a matching set. Yet in the bizzaro world of Horowitz where things like canon don't matter, the portrait of General Gordon came with the flat! Excuse me? Antony Horowitz broke canon, one that was doubly stated, just so that Holmes could have a throw-away line about how the walls of 221B Baker Street don't actually reflect him because he didn't chose any of the hangings. Where did I put that giant fish...

But canonical issues aside (yeah I agree that sounds unlikely), but seriously, even if we are able to do this, it can't change the fact that Horowitz isn't able to capture the voice of Conan Doyle through Watson. He isn't able to do what a children's author did with a story about mice. Wrap your mind around that if you will. Here Watson is a whiny little bitch. I kid you not. In the canonical books he's all stoic and I'll grab my service revolver and follow you into the gates of hell, while being a little melodramatic about the whole thing, and maybe once or twice staying by the fire to tend to his war wounds. Here it's all whining and whinging and oh his aches and pains. I actually wanted to punch him in the shoulder and be like, "how's your wound now bitch?" Yet it's not just about his overnumerous physical problems that I take umbrage, it's the fact that Watson is so overly loquacious and verbose, leading to the whole book feeling overwritten. If I ever thought that Watson was long winded before, I take it all back. Bring back the real Watson and get rid of this imposter! This upstart who thinks it's cool to mention all his old cases again and again. Guess what? Watson doesn't do that in actuality, he only mentions old cases occasionally, and if he does mention other cases, it's ones we've never read about, he's never so self-referential and meta. Gaw, make it stop. Yet it doesn't stop. The sloppiness with the canon and with Watson even carries over to all aspects of The House of Silk and it's writing. The book's internal chronology doesn't even work! How could Carstairs marry his wife six months before he even met her?

Repeatedly saying to myself "but if Horowitz had just..." isn't going to change anything. It's not going to magically make an editor who happens to be fluent in the canon of Sherlock Holmes appear and fix the book, because there is no way to fix this book. And there's a part of me that thinks a lot of the sloppiness might have been done on purpose. That maybe the muddle was there for a reason. At one point there's a meta aside wherein the characters discuss the tangle the two cases are making and how they seem to be getting more entwined versus less. Yes, this did piss me off, this signalling that Horowitz knew how he was infuriating me. But more importantly it shows that the muddle was on purpose. So, why would an author purposely muddle his book? Because he couldn't be bothered to create a half decent mystery and is throwing as many fish at you of the herring variety so that you won't notice this deficiency. Guess what "Tony." It. Did. Not. Work. Your book is 294 pages. You introduced the character of Ross on page 52, less than ten pages later, on page 61 I had the entire mystery solved. I had to read a further 233 pages of obfuscations and interferences and Watson's whining to have my deduction validated. Seriously, this isn't how you write a mystery. You don't read about a quarter of a book and go, oh, so this, this, and this happened, that's it. A book shouldn't be as easy to solve as a mystery on TV which can usually be deduced by the casting choices. I wanted something, I don't know, that actually made me invested in the book, that made me want to flip to the next page, that wasn't just the desperate need to make it end.

As for the mystery itself... we are supposed to find it shocking. That, after all, is the gimmicky reason that Watson withheld it for one hundred years, despite the fact that Holmes's arrest and various other incidents would have made the papers and would have therefore had to have been included in the original canon but are somehow overlooked. And the saddest thing is that the mystery isn't shocking. The book seems to be nothing more than a reflection of the British press of today. Because this is nothing more than the cover-up of another sexual abuse scandal wherein high ranking government officials are using orphans and street kids to satisfy their disgusting pedophiliac desires. Seriously, google "child sexual abuse UK" and there are over a dozen notable cases of these "rings" uncovered just within the past five or so years! Yes, this is horrifying. Yes this should be shocking, but the sad truth is that with it constantly being on our television screens and in our newspapers we have become desensitized to it but at the same time hyper-aware so that I could solve the mystery of The House of Silk in a matter of minutes. There have been other narratives of similar cases in books, films, and television. Heck, even the Inspector Morse spin-off Endeavour's pilot was about such a sex ring. This is sadly something that happens in the world, and if it's happening now it must have been happening than, so all in all, not much a mystery, just a sad reflection of reality, which most of us could do without when we are reading to escape. Plus, this has added a whole creepy undertone to the Baker Street Irregulars that I could have done without. Though the final thought I am left with is, would this case really have effected Holmes so? Would he have been moved? This Holmes was, the canonical Holmes, that's highly unlikely.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Anthony Horowitz, Arthur Conan Doyle, Baker Street Irregulars, Canon, Endeavour, Foyle's War, Inspector Morse, Julian Ovenden, Midsomer Murders, Mystery, Sherlock Holmes, Sherlocked, The House of Silk, Watson

The Case of the Baker Street Irregular by Robert Newman
Published by: Aladdin Paperbacks
Publication Date: 1978
Format: Paperback, 228 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Andrew arrives in London from Cornwall with his guardian Mr. Dennison. Andrew is overwhelmed by the great metropolis bustling around him. He and his guardian have a small room near Baker Street where they are staying. After they settle in they walk around the neighborhood and Andrew gets a glimpse of the great detective himself, Sherlock Holmes! The next few days Mr. Dennison is busy and Andrew doesn't see much of him. The young lad is starting to know the area and befriends a young girl who goes by the name Screamer and whose brother is one of Sherlock Holmes's Baker Street Irregulars. They spend a great day at the zoo but then everything changes for Andrew. He sees his guardian, Mr. Dennison, bundled into a carriage against his will by a cabbie with a broken nose. His landlady is very helpful and they report the incident to the police, but soon Andrew's steps are dogged by the man with the broken nose and he takes refuge in the poorer areas of London. Beaten and stripped in an alleyway, Screamer, her brother, and their mother, Mrs. Wiggins, take Andrew in. But Andrew knows he is a burden on this poor family and happily takes any jobs he can get. One comes down from the great detective himself. Andrew is to lead a blind fiddler around town for a few days. Little does Andrew know at first that the blind fiddler is Sherlock Holmes and that their work together might solve not only the theft and forgery of some paintings, the disappearance of Mr. Dennison, but also find Andrew a home. It's all in a day's work for the world's greatest consulting detective!

My younger brother's bookshelves growing up consisted of Dr. Seuss, The Berenstein Bears, and magic books. There would occasionally be a book that didn't fit into these three categories, a book for school or a video game guide, but that was a rare occurrence. Some time last year the two of us were clearing out a few random boxes that contained stuff from his old bedroom, and yes, we did find old Christmas candy, the less said about that the better... but we also found this book I had never heard of, The Case of the Baker Street Irregular. It went into the pile dubbed, "Stuff That is Now Mine." Because seeing that book I had an idea. An idea that morphed into Sherlocked. That night I sat down at my computer and started making a list of all the books I had or wanted to read that were inspired by Arthur Conan Doyle and his creation, Sherlock Holmes. From middle grade reads written by Eve Titus to continuations written by Anthony Horowitz to loving parodies written by Neil Gaiman, within a few short minutes I had a list of almost twenty books and that got me thinking about how much Sherlock Holmes has been a part of my life in one form or another. From movies with cartoon mice to watching PBS with my mom, Sherlock has always been there for me. My three-month long Sherlocked extravaganza was born then and there and I knew that one of the books I read would have to be The Case of the Baker Street Irregular.

The Case of the Baker Street Irregular is a book that is painfully middle grade. What do I mean by that without being overly critical. Yes, laugh all you want that I'm worried about being overly critical. But I did enjoy the book, it's just that the author has some issues that are common in older books written for a younger audience (cough, L. Frank Baum, cough.) Primarily he talks down to his audience. He dumbs things down to make his audience get the concepts, but to a painful degree. The book is peppered with that dreaded concept of "teaching moments." He seems more concerned with educating his readers than creating a thrilling story that just happens to educate. This lends an overall flatness to the book. There is no fluctuation with excitement or danger or even mystery. The book plods along with it's slow snail pace and it's not until you accustom yourself to this that you can enjoy the book for what it is, not what it isn't. Newman is obsessed with locations and maps and characters muddling along through the morass of London in a way that does more to confuse than aid the reader. It isn't until Holmes in disguise is working with Andrew that the book finds it's legs. Before this moment it's two stories running tangentially that you are just waiting to connect. The book is also clever in that their working together isn't spelled out for you til the end. You know what's going on, but you're not 100% sure, and this is truly the only mystery the book affords that is worth your time.

What bothered me most about the book was the Baker Street Irregulars themselves. Ignoring the fact that the title of this book annoys me because of the singular versus the plural, the Irregulars aren't handled right. It felt to me like Newman didn't want to handle the actual social status of a street urchin in Victorian England because it would create too much of a disconnect with his readers so he made characters that would resonate more with kids today, couching the book in terms a young reader would get. In other words, see the "dumbing down" of above. So instead of true street urchins we have Mrs. Wiggins and her two children that are acceptably poor but not destitute. No, no, and no again. The Irregulars don't have families! Well, they might have siblings in their gang but NOT parents to go home to at night. This is some sort of rose-tinting of the Victorian era that is unacceptable to me. It somehow lessens what the Irregulars are. They are a force to be reckoned with because they have eyes and ears everywhere, they are always watching, not going home to their mom and dad at the end of the day! This is why in the new adaptation, Sherlock, that he uses a homeless network. The homeless problem of today with it's ubiquitousness is equal to what the street urchin epidemic was in Victorian times. They are everywhere so we have learned to tune them out. I just feel that for a book that liked it's "teaching moments" that to not handle an actual problem that is still ongoing in different forms is sloppy writing. Not to mention it just pissed me off and was totally against canon!

But the truth is if you can't get Holmes and Watson right then just don't write about them. Go big or go home. The genius of Eve Titus is that she was able to capture the language of Conan Doyle so perfectly that even a book written for very young children had that spark necessary to interest readers in the world's number one consulting detective. Newman doesn't get Holmes and Watson right at all and therefore is forced to make everyone else so bloody boring that Holmes and Watson are interesting by comparison. I don't think the correct way to interest someone in books is to make your story so boring in parts that their only alternative is to read the original work to get the point you were trying to make. While I've never been 100% on board with the quality of Conan Doyle's writing, when you see someone else fumbling simple descriptions and settings, not to mention the dreadful dialogue, you realize that perhaps you've underestimated Conan Doyle all along. And it's not just the set-up that failed for me, it's that the characterizations were so wrong. Watson was lippy and took control versus being obsequious. Holmes actually bothered to explain things as they were happening instead of reveling in the great reveal at the end. With all that was wrong you are probably confused as to why I liked the book. It's because of the seismic shift half-way through when Holmes is undercover with Andrew. Holmes was quiet and terse and secretive, and FINALLY Holmes. While after this little interlude Holmes went back to being wrong, and dare I say, melodramatic, because Holmes himself couldn't think of a more condemning word, that short interlude made the book worth everything else.

And I haven't even come to the crimes perpetrated in the book. Conan Doyle has a way with creating crime. He created stories that appeared mysterious and convoluted till the end reveal when it all made sense. In a nutshell they baffled while NEVER being illogical. The ending always fit with everything that came before. It's like if you were doing a puzzle but didn't have a picture of what you were working on. Once you finish it the picture is clear and everything fits together. Newman apparently didn't get this memo on how to craft a mystery. The crimes perpetrated in these pages are too convoluted and illogical. They are full of unnecessary red herrings and twists just to cover up their failings. But I seriously can not even when it comes to the illogical. I am quite literally baffled by the stupidity and lack of sense. Let's just look at the theft of the paintings. So their owner Lytell is short on money. Keep in mind short on money means he NEEDS money. Therefore to get money he is auctioning off several famous paintings. These paintings are stolen from the auction house and replaced with forgeries. Now if the thieves then went on to sell these paintings on the black market it would make total sense. Instead they ransom the paintings back to Lytell. So let me get this straight. Lytell doesn't have money, so you steal his paintings he was using to get money and then demand money of him? WHAT THE HECK! If he didn't have the money in the first place how would he have money now? Not to mention that this involves so much more work than necessary with trying to deceive Holmes and finding a decent forger. OK, now I'm starting to wonder why I liked this book... I think it might be the reverse effect of "Last Good Book I Read." Meaning I was reading a lot of shitty comics so this looked good in comparison. So maybe skip this one after all? But read the part where Holmes is undercover, that's fun.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 1 comments  

Labels: Arthur Conan Doyle, Baker Street Irregulars, Berenstein Bears, Dr. Suess, Eve Titus, L. Frank Baum, Robert Newman, Sherlock Holmes, Sherlocked, Street Urchin, The Case of the Baker Street Irregular, Victorian