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I hope that the contents of this initial issue constitute a modest attempt to exemplify our hopes for the shape, direction and future of Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine. In addition to insights into issues both Holmesian and ratiocinative from our estimable columnists Kim Newman and Lenny Picker, the nonfiction portion of Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine Vol. 1, No. 1 includes an interview of the awesomely prolific Ron Goulart and a letters column by no less a personage than Sherlock Holmes’s landlady Mrs Hudson, who fervently hopes that readers of this first issue will write to her promptly about any care and concern of the heart, head, stomach or wherever, for as she puts it, “One grows with the times, and what a relief to escape the strictured mores of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. I doubt, though, that dear Dr Watson shares my views.” (Yes, she and Watson … and of course, Holmes … still live. But didn’t you know that?)
For those readers (if such exist) who are not familiar with the original sixty Sherlock Holmes adventures, cases and memoirs, Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine intends to reprint one each issue, beginning with The “Gloria Scott,” which was published in 1894 in the fourth Holmes book, and second of the short story collections, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. The fourth of the tales in that volume, it is offered first in this magazine because it is, in effect, Sherlock Holmes’s very first case.
The nautical theme of The “Gloria Scott” is echoed in the other Holmes tale in these pages. “The Strange Case of the Haunted Freighter,” a brand new Holmes adventure with occult overtones that was written especially for Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine by Carole Buggé, author of numerous Sherlock Holmes tales, including two critically acclaimed novels, The Star of India and The Haunting of Torre Abbey, from St. Martin’s Press; she is, in my estimation, the hands-down best Holmes pastiche writer since Ellery Queen’s A Study in Terror.
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This issue’s non-Holmesian stories begins with The Mystery of the Missing Automaton, a new Harry Challenge mystery by Ron Goulart, and — odd coincidence! — a new Simon Ark case, The Automaton Museum, by Edward D. Hoch. Another bond of sorts between these stories is that though their detectives are to some extent associated with the fantasy genre, neither of these adventures cross over; they are genuine mysteries.
Hal Blythe’s amusing puzzle with Holmesian undertones, On the Heir, is the first of a new series. Marc Bilgrey’s The Bet is both a club story and a tale of murder, as is Lost and Found, one of the posthumous short stories of Jean Paiva, author of the highly regarded horror novels, The Lilith Factor and The Last Gamble.
The second issue of Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine is in its early stages of preparation, and is expected to feature a wicked riff by Kim Newman on A Study in Scarlet — from Col. Moran’s point of view!
Till then, please send your thoughts and problems to Mrs Hudson … and if you wish to contribute new mystery fiction to Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, by all means query me at this email address: <[email protected]>.
Canonically Yours,
Marvin Kaye
BAKER STREET BROWSINGS: BOOK REVIEWS, by Kim Newman
The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, ed. by Leslie S. Klinger, Norton, $75.00/£35.00
Sherlock Holmes: The Hidden Years, ed. by Michael Kurland, St. Martin’s Minotaur, $24.95
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As the title The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes indicates, this Norton edition is not the first time that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Holmes stories have been published in annotated form. Editor and annotater Leslie S. Klinger admits that the hundred-pound gorilla of the field is the late William S. Baring-Gould, whose The Annotated Sherlock Holmes (1967) remains one of the most battered and consulted volumes in my library (any writer considering a Victorian British setting should have this — it’s full of good stuff like hansom cab fares and ladies’ fashions). Norton’s handsome set, two thick volumes in a sturdy case, even looks like my John Murray edition of the Baring-Gould, down almost to the weight of the paper and the smell of the ink. There are, however, significant differences between Klinger and Baring-Gould; devotees will have no cause to retire their old Annotated and replace them with the New one, though they will need both sets.
Baring-Gould gets all four novels and the 56 short stories into his two (sometimes one) thick volumes, while Klinger saves the four book-length adventures (need I specify? — A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of the Four, The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Valley of Fear) for an as-yet-undelivered third. Baring-Gould was far more interested in providing the real-world dates for the fictional events of the stories and arranged the stories in (debatable) order of internal chronology (he places The Sign of the Four after ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’, which Doyle plainly did not intend). Klinger arranges them as Doyle did when collecting the stories into his five collections, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, The Return of Sherlock Holmes, His Last Bow and The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes. As usual, even simple decisions aren’t definitive: ‘The Cardboard Box’ appeared in the Strand magazine run of the Memoirs and the first impression of the British edition of the collection, but was dropped from the American and most subsequent British editions (perhaps because of its relative gruesomeness), but the story opens with an especially neat if irrelevant bit of deduction (‘You are right, Watson, it does seem a most preposterous way of settling a dispute’) which was lifted probably by Doyle and pasted into the book publication of ‘The Resident Patient’.
Baring-Gould reproduces the type from the Strand, and notes differences between original and subsequent editions; Klinger usually relies on copy from the Strand but set in an easier-to-read font, also pointing up occasions where misprints or errors have been corrected. Norton present the notes in purplish-crimson, which makes it easier to distinguish between Doyle and Klinger, though this doesn’t extend to introductory and supplementary essays (on things like guns, gambling and deadly snakes, all attached to stories which highlight these topics). It’s easy to understand why Norton and Klinger have led with the short stories rather than the novels — of the four, only Baskervilles isn’t strangled by its lengthy backstory — but Holmes and Watson, and their world, were introduced in the first two novels, which were written and published before the first set of stories and might well have been the beginning and the end of Holmes. The stories may show a certain decline in quality as the series progresses, with one or two ‘remakes’ of successful earlier tales (long-running TV series tend to do the same thing), but there are unmemorable efforts early on (‘A Case of Identity’, the third story, is much less impressive than the rest of the Adventures) and gems late in the day (‘The Problem of Thor Bridge’ has most of the old snap). Re-reading the entire oeuvre in one go isn’t advisable, but pulling the book down and savouring the tales one a week or a month is a hugely reliable pleasure — they ‘play’ very well read aloud, and parents of children slightly too old for babyish books find them a wonderful excuse for melodrama (it’s rarely remarked, but Doyle is a fond, funny prose-writer and gets a lot of laughs in performance).
The shared approach of Baring-Gould and Klinger is that both proceed from the premise that Holmes and Watson were real people, and that Watson’s manuscripts were prepared for publication by Doyle. Doyle started this when he wrote in self-reflective moments as Holmes comments on Watson’s published versions of his cases or Mycroft mentions that Sherlock has become more famous thanks to the publicity accorded by his ‘Boswell’, though he couldn’t have foreseen how out of hand it would get. This means that there are two types of annotation: firstly, footnotes that explain or elucidate references that might have been obvious to the original readers but with time have become obscure, or sometimes references of matters of British geography, politics, culture or language Americans have never quite fathomed (eg: explaining what the Serpentine is, something as familiar to British readers as, say, a reference to Golden Gate or Central Park would be to Americans); and, secondly, attempts to rationalise ‘errors’ made by Watson (or Doyle) or to uncover the true identities of characters Watson is supposed to have disguised