The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories - Part X
Page 2
“A Revenge Served Cold” ©2017 by Maurice Barkley. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“A Man of Twice Exceptions” ©2017 by Derrick Belanger. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“A Case of Embezzlement” ©2017 by Steven Ehrman. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“Undershaw: An Ongoing Legacy for Sherlock Holmes” ©2018 by Steve Emecz. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Case of the Anonymous Client” ©2017 by Paul A. Freeman. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Coughing Man” ©2011, 2017 by Jim French. All Rights Reserved. First publication of text script in this collection. Originally broadcast on radio on February 27, 2011 as Episode No. 95 of The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Adventure of the Perfidious Partner” ©2017 by Jayantika Ganguly. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“A Brush With Death” ©2017 by Dick Gillman. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“A Message From the Head Teacher of Stepping Stones” ©2018 by Melissa Grigsby. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Adventure of Canal Reach” ©2017 by Arthur Hall. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Adventure of the Vanishing Diplomat” ©2017 by Greg Hatcher. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“A Simple Case of Abduction” ©2017 by Mike Hogan. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Horned God” ©2017 by Kelvin Jones. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“We Can Make the World a Better Place” ©2018 by Roger Johnson. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“Pastiches: The Third Leg of the Sherlockian Stool” ©2018 by David Marcum. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“Foreword” ©2017 by Nicholas Meyer. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Problem of the Bruised Tongues” ©2017 by Will Murray. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Mystery of the Change of Art” ©2017 by Robert Perret. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Case of the Dead Detective” ©2017 by Martin Rosenstock. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Case of the Dirty Hand” ©2017 by G.L. Schulze. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Mystery of the Missing Artefacts ©2018 by Tim Symonds and Lesley Abdela. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Parsimonious Peacekeeper” ©2017 by Thaddeus Tuffentsamer. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Musician Who Spoke From the Grave” ©2017 by Peter Coe Verbica. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“Capitol Murder” ©2017 by Daniel D. Victor. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
The following contributions appear in the companion volume
The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part IX - 2018 Annual (1879–1896)
“The Adventure of the Temperance Society” ©2017 by Deanna Baran. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Confession of Anna Jarrow” ©2017 by S.F. Bennett. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author
“The Adventure of the Parisian Butcher” ©2017 by Nick Cardillo. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Strange Adventure of the Doomed Sextette” ©1945, 2017 by Leslie Charteris and Denis Green. First publication of text script in this collection. Originally broadcast on radio on March 5, 1945 as part of the Sherlock Holmes radio show, starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. Printed by permission of the Leslie Charteris Estate. Introduction ©2017 by Ian Dickerson. First publication of this revised version, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Detective Who Cried Wolf” ©2016 by C.H. Dye. All Rights Reserved. Originally published in a somewhat different version online in October 2011. First publication of this revised version, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Adventure of the Disappearing Dictionary” ©2017 by Sonia Fetherston. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Adventure of the Multiple Moriartys” ©2017 by David Friend. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Lambeth Poisoner Case” ©2017 by Stephen Gaspar. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Helverton Inheritance” ©2017 by David Marcum. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Case of the Golden Trail” ©2017 by James Moffett. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Influence Machine” ©2017 by Mark Mower. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Adventure of the Faithful Servant” ©2017 by Tracy Revels. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Adventure of the Fool and His Money” ©2017 by Roger Riccard. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Fairy Hills Horror” ©2017 by Geri Schear. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Adventure of the Old Boys’ Club” ©2017 by Shane Simmons. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Missing Empress” ©2017 by Robert Stapleton. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“Violet Smith” ©2017 by Amy Thomas. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“The Resplendent Plane Tree” ©2017 by Kevin P. Thornton. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
“A Loathsome and Remarkable Adventure” ©2017 by Marcia Wilson. All Rights Reserved. First publication, original to this collection. Printed by permission of the author.
Pastiches: The Third Leg o
f the Sherlockian Stool
by David Marcum
In his introduction to The Return of Solar Pons (1958), Edgar W. Smith, a legendary member of the Baker Street Irregulars, wrote:
There is no Sherlockian worthy of his salt who has not, at least once in his life, taken Dr. Watson’s pen in hand and given himself to the production of a veritable Adventure. I wrote my own first pastiche at the age of fourteen, about a stolen gem that turned up, by some unaccountable coincidence, in the innards of a fish which Sherlock Holmes was serving to his client in the privacy of his rooms; and I wrote my second when I was fifty-odd, about the definitive and never-more-to-be-seen-in-this-world disappearance of Mr. James Phillimore in a matrix of newly-poured cement.
I would love to read these stories, composed by this man whose undisputed efforts to promote the admiration of Sherlock Holmes helped to make the world’s first consulting detective one of the most recognized figures on the planet. The essay “How I First Met Edgar W. Smith” by one of the BSI founders, William S. Hall, (Baker Street Journal, June 1961) describes an occasion in which Hall, Christopher Morley, and Smith met in 1939 for lunch. After a period of Morley asking several tough Canonical questions, “[Smith] was accordingly dubbed, with the help of an additional whiskey-and-soda, a full-fledged member on the spot. Since then I have always rated the meeting of Morley and Smith second in importance only to that of Stanley and Livingstone. The rest we all know about. Almost from that moment on, Edgar was The Baker Street Irregulars, and that includes most of the Scion Societies as well.”
Smith was a tireless advocate for the promotion of Holmes, and there are many who know much more about him than I who can provide specific examples. It’s commonly known that he was the founder and first editor of The Baker Street Journal, and is still listed to this day on the title page of every issue. He edited the first “definitive” text of The Canon - if such a thing can actually exist - and that version, which was published in three amazingly handsome volumes in the early 1950’s, is still being used today by the Easton Press for their beautiful leather-bound editions. He had an open-door policy that allowed and encouraged others to join the fun and take the spotlight, such as when he had noted Sherlockian Vincent Starrett write the foreword to the aforementioned definitive Canon, instead of doing so himself. He had the same inclusive spirit in his cornerstone volume Profiles by Gaslight (1944), an amazing collection of Holmesian essays. (An amusing side-note to those who have one of the 1944 hardcover editions: The page numbers proceed normally and sequentially, until one is in the middle of the Vincent Starrett contribution, “The Singular Adventures of Martha Hudson”. This essay runs from pages 202 through 229. As one proceeds, the pages are numbered as one would expect: 218, 219, 220. And then, where one would expect to simply see page 221, Smith adds a letter, making it 221B. Then the next page is 222. That single added letter shows just how dedicated Mr. Smith was to the World of Holmes.)
Smith’s contributions are innumerable. Yet, with all of his support of both The Canon and Sherlockian Scholarship, the first two legs of the Sherlockian stool, he didn’t forget the third: Pastiche.
As shown above, when referring to pastiche, Smith says “There is no Sherlockian worthy of his salt who has not, at least once in his life, taken Dr. Watson’s pen in hand and given himself to the production of a veritable Adventure.” Strong words from the man who shaped the Baker Street Irregulars. And words that should not be forgotten or swept aside or spoke of, save with a gibe and a sneer, in the pursuit of the scholarly side of things.
In that same paragraph from that same introduction, Smith goes on to write:
The point that does concern me - and it is a point that all of us who are tempted to emulation should bear in mind - is that the writing of a pastiche is compulsive and inevitable: it is, the psychologists would say, a wholesome manifestation of the urge that is in us all to return again to the times and places we have loved and lost; an evidence, specifically, of our happily unrepressed desire to make ourselves at one with the Master of Baker Street and all his works - and to do this not only receptively, but creatively as well.
There are several important points to be noted from these short passages. To be “worth one’s salt” is historically assumed to refer to the practice of paying Roman soldiers enough wages that they could buy salt, necessary for both survival itself, as well as for tasks such as curing meat. If a soldier wasn’t effective in his job, he wasn’t paid. The phrase has come down through the years to mean more generally that one must be competent, adept, and efficient to be “worth one’s salt”. And it was no accident that Smith began his essay in this way, for he understood, from those early days, the importance of pastiche. “No Sherlockian worth his salt...”
Additionally, he wrote that this should be done receptively. For if one is truly a Sherlockian worth his [or her] salt, then there should be no resistance against this need to create or read additional adventures of Mr. Sherlock Holmes. It must be true. Edgar W. Smith said so.
I’ve long maintained, and written extensively in a number of forums, that pastiches are of supreme importance, and should receive as much credit as possible for promoting the continued and growing popularity of Sherlock Holmes. Sherlockian scholarship and speculation is a cornerstone of some people’s interest in The Canon, but it can be somewhat esoteric. It is pastiche that fires the imagination of many people and serves to initially lure them to The Canon. Sherlock Holmes is recognized around the world, but how many people who admire and adore him read The Canon as their absolute first contact with him? Many, certainly, but not all. Instead, a sizeable number also encounter Holmes first in the form of pastiches - stories, films, radio and television episodes, comic books, fan-fiction - and then seek to know more about that actual Holmes Bible made up of the original (and pitifully few) sixty adventures, as brought to us by that first - but not the only!-Literary Agent, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
It’s always been my contention that The Canon is the wire core of a rope, but pastiches are the strands that overlay it, giving it both thickness and strength. In other places, I’ve called the entire body of work, both Canon and pastiche, The Great Holmes Tapestry. It all weaves together to present a picture of the complete lives of Holmes and Watson, immensely complex and interesting. And that tapestry, with its threads of pastiches woven in and around and through the main supporting Canonical fibers, has been forming since nearly the same time when the first Canonical stories were being published.
In those earliest of days, the tendency was to parody Holmes, rather than produce true pastiches - possibly because Holmes was still new, and many of the tropes that have since become set in stone were then still in flux. However, some of those early parodies came very close indeed to having the feel of the real thing, and only a few changed words would be enough to nudge them into acceptable adventures.
In his introduction to The Memoirs of Solar Pons (1951), Ellery Queen presents an amazing comprehensive list that enumerates the various variations on Holmes from earlier decades, up to that time. (Richard Dannay, son of Frederic Dannay, who was half of the Literary Agent-team representing Ellery Queen, recently told me that his father’s list “is truly a virtuoso, one that can’t be duplicated or imitated.”) It’s amazing, from this distance of so many years since Queen’s list was constructed, to realize just how widespread Holmes’s influence was, even in those days.
I cannot say what the earliest Holmes parody or pastiche was - there is some debate on that point. It’s clear from some that are on Queen’s list, such as Detective Stories Gone Wrong: The Adventures of Sherlaw Kombs by Luke Sharp (1892), The Adventure of the Table Foot by “Zero” (Allan Ramsay, 1894, featuring Thinlock Bones), and the eight “Picklock Holes” stories which first appeared in Punch in 1893 and 1894, that the Master’s influence appeared quite early.
There are numerous other Holmes-influenced stories from those early days, and more are bein
g mined all the time. Many collections over the years have included these very valuable “lost” tales:
The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes (1944) - edited by Ellery Queen. (A most important book for any collection, with a publication history of its own that’s as interesting as the contents of the book itself);
Sherlock Holmes in America (1981) - edited by Bill Blackbeard. (A beautiful coffee table book of all sorts of obscure items);
The Game is Afoot (1994) - edited by Marvin Kaye. (An incredible volume, with a great representation of both old and new stories);
As It Might Have Been (1998) - edited by Robert C.S. Adey. (One of the first to be specifically devoted to rare old pastiches and parodies);
I Believe in Sherlock Holmes (2015) - edited by Douglas O. Greene; (Truly a labor of love, with some great obscure ephemera.)
A Bedside Book of Early Sherlockian Parodies and Pastiches (2015) - edited by Charles Press. (Definitely worth examining to find hidden treasures); and
The Missing Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes (2016) - edited by Julie McKuras, Timothy Johnson, Ray Reithmeier, and Phillip Bergem. (This is a unique title, which takes on the task of including the stories first mentioned - but not included - in Ellery Queen’s Misadventures. I was honored to be able to bring this volume to Richard Dannay’s attention, as he was previously unaware of it.)
Also, the Herculean efforts of Bill Peschel must be lauded. He has assembled six (as of this writing) massive (and very handsome) volumes of early Holmes parodies and pastiches - and I hope that he keeps going:
The Early Punch Parodies of Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes Victorian Parodies and Pastiches: 1888–1899
Sherlock Holmes Edwardian Parodies and Pastiches: 1900–1904