Pirie’s adaptation of his own work is excellent; it manages to capture the creepy essence of the book in a fast-paced 90 minutes that never lags. The translation of prose into visuals helps accentuate the subtle variations the writer has wrought upon Doyle’s original. For example, where Violet Smith’s scary journey is on a path bordered by woods on one side and an open field on the other, Pirie has substituted more woods for the field, creating, from the outset, a more oppressive atmosphere that parallels the tormented inner life of Heather Grace, whose parents were brutally murdered years earlier.
And in the opening scene, Grace’s cycling is initially unaccompanied by background music, creating a feeling of isolation and loneliness just from the sounds of nature, added to by a momentary glimpse of an abandoned gibbet on the side of her path. Her pursuer appears suddenly close on her heels, before the series’s haunting theme music is introduced. And rather than merely a man “clad in a dark suit,” with “a black beard,” the second cyclist is a dark, cloaked figure, with no visible human features. From the opening, with its successful creation of terror in broad daylight, the viewer is hooked. (For contrast, watch the opening of the Jeremy Brett version of “The Solitary Cyclist,” which may leave you intrigued, but not spooked.)
By the way, while it is sometimes easier to build upon or improve another’s storyline (for example, the film adaptation of Death On The Nile, with Peter Ustinov as Poirot, is an improvement on the book, conflating certain minor characters and streamlining the plot while maintaining the central gimmick of misdirection), that is not always the case; and Pirie deserves credit for his picking and choosing elements from the Canon that serve the story he wants to tell.
The idea of an attractive woman stalked by a disguised man is used as a starting point by Pirie, but the various suitors of Heather Grace are not cartoonish buffoons like Woodley, who practically wears a sign announcing that he is connected to whatever plot is aimed against Violet Smith; and Grace herself is not as straightforward as the simple Violet Smith character, or, indeed, most Doyle heroines or women not named Irene Adler; she has, like Doyle, a trauma in her past and still bears the scars from it. And the simple addition of a scene in which Doyle unsuccessfully stakes out the path, seeing no one but Grace riding past, elevates the tension, and allows the viewer to entertain the possibility, despite the opening scene, that her follower is a figment of her imagination.
But while “The Solitary Cyclist” is the most obvious Canonical inspiration for major plot elements, it was not the crucial one for Pirie. Although that story contained the “arresting images in Doyle’s canon,” he sought to provide a framework; and “The Speckled Band” was the emotional starting point. “The Patient’s Eyes” borrows some superficial aspects from “The Speckled Band,” by modeling Grace’s guardian Blythe, with his curious menagerie, on Dr. Grimesby Roylott, (the novel even includes a poker-bending scene omitted from the screenplay); the parallels run deeper. Both feature a woman in danger, a cruel guardian, and a perplexing mystery. In keeping with Pirie’s aim to do more than create a faithful pastiche, those plot points are only the springboard for a much more complex look into the human capacity for cruelty, violence, and evil.
The writing is bolstered by the acting. Richardson does his best work as Bell in “The Patient’s Eyes,” aided by a script that gives him a wide range of emotions to utilize. While many Holmesians (although not I, as will be argued in a future column) did not find the emotional reaction of Christopher Plummer’s Holmes in Murder By Decree to be in character, few, if any, would take issue with a similar outburst from Bell when he confronts one of the many characters in the story whose actions have harmed others. The other episodes in the series—“The Photographer’s Chair,” “The Kingdom of Bones,” and “The White Knight Stratagem”—were not written by Pirie; although they are not at the level of “The Patient’s Eyes”, they are still superior efforts, well worth watching and its a shame that more episodes were not made.
The film also benefits from Charles Edwards as Doyle; while Laing did a decent job in the first film, Edwards is a better fit for the rôle of a slightly-older Doyle, who was withdrawn emotionally from the world after the horrors he has experienced, and who finds, in Grace, a possible soul-mate. And Katie Blake is perfect as Heather Grace, conveying with subtle facial expressions so much of the inner torment that has plagued her for years, and which is exacerbated by her hooded tormentor.
“The Patient’s Eyes” is that rare Holmes film that demands repeated viewing; once the solution to the mystery is known, you can go back and see how fairly, albeit subtly, the clues have been planted, and without resorting to cheap tricks. The challenge of having clues fairly before the viewer has vexed even otherwise excellent TV-whodunit shows; the first seasons of both Murder One and Veronica Mars had their capable and bright detectives learn who the killer was by stumbling upon a convenient inculpatory videotape. And if memory serves, the TV adaptation of P. D. James’s The Murder Room changed the story to have a visual clue, rather than an auditory one, helping Dalgleish reach a solution. By contrast, Pirie cleverly plays on viewers’ expectations to fool them, and in so doing, along with a natural injection of psychological depth into all the main characters, he has managed to create one of the best Sherlock Holmes films ever.
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Lenny Picker, who reviews mystery and crime fiction regularly for Publishers Weekly, lives in New York City with his wife, two sons, three daughters, and several thousand books. He can be reached at [email protected].
NOTABLE HOLMESIAN PAPERBACK PASTICHES & OTHER ODDITIES, by Gary Lovisi
Most mystery fans know that the first Sherlock Holmes story, “A Study in Scarlet” was published in the 1887 issue of Beeton’s Christmas Annual, a magazine—but few fans know that the first Sherlock Holmes book was in fact, a paperback. In 1888 the British firm of Ward Lock & Co. reprinted A Study in Scarlet in a very rare paperback edition. It is considered more rare even than the Beeton’s magazine version, of which a copy sold a while back for $50,000! That paperback was the first Sherlock Holmes book. It began a long line of Holmesian publishing in softcover that continues today over 120 years later. A facsimile was published in 1993 in a 500-copy edition and that has also become collectable. Here then, is a sampling of Holmesian highlights, oddities, and rarities.
Canonical; Books By Doyle
One of the earliest series of canonical Holmes books (collecting the original stories written by Doyle) were those published by Tauchnitz Books. Beginning around 1893 with The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, this German firm specialized in reprinting books by American and British authors for expats and tourists in Continental Europe. All books were printed in English but not for sale in America or the British Empire due to copyright restrictions. They had plain text covers and are uncommon. All Tauchnitz Books by Doyle are scarce and very collectible.
“Pirates” or pirated editions also abounded since America was not then a signer of the Berne Copyright Convention—publishers did not pay foreign authors to reprint their work. One interesting American pirate edition was A Study in Scarlet from the Golden Gem Library, #17 from April 25, 1892, which had a plain text cover in gold lettering. A later version of the same book from the Arthur Westbrook Company of Cleveland, Ohio, was published circa 1900–1910 and had an early illustrated cover.
Pocket Books was the first American mass-market paperback outfit to reprint a collection of Holmes stories in The Sherlock Holmes Pocket Book (Pocket #95, 1941), a first edition collection. It was reprinted many times with the same cover art but the 11th printing in 1944 had a new cover. That variant edition is very scarce.
Bantam Books reprinted three Holmes books in mass-market paperback beginning in 1949 with The Hound of The Baskervilles (Bantam #366). This edition showed sexy bondage cover art by William Shoyer more in keeping with the pulp-style popular at the time than having anything to do with our Mr.
Holmes. More on target was Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (Bantam #704, 1949) with the cover art showing a traditional battle between Holmes and Moriarty, and The Valley of Fear (Bantam #733, 1950) showing Holmes and Watson.
British paperbacks also offer some wonderful cover images; editions from John Murray and Pan Books are popular with collectors. The Valley of Fear (Pan Book #177, 1951) has cover art by Philip Mendoza that shows Holmes and Watson reading a letter—or secret message! The Return of Sherlock Holmes (John Murray, 2nd printing, 1960) shows Colonel Sebastian Moran using his notorious airgun to try to assassinate Holmes in a scene from “The Adventure of the Empty House.”
In 1956, the Western Publishing Company produced Sherlock Holmes, a nicely done collection of stories that was a give-away from Nestles Chocolate. It also appeared in 1968 in a couple of different formats, but always with the same cover art. It has since become scarce.
Pastiches; Not By Doyle:
The pastiche is a time honored form of literature—in the style of another artist. From the earliest days of Sherlock Holmes the popularity of the Great Detective leads to a plethora of pastiche tales. In the early days, at the turn of the 20th Century, copyright restriction caused Sherlockian pastiches (and parodies) to feature detective heroes with the most unlikely names—Herlock Sholmes, Padlock Jones, Hemlock Coombs, and more. Diehard Holmesians wrote their own tales that continued the adventures, or addressed the dozens of intriguing cases mentioned by Watson in the canon, which had been left untold, or to retell existing stories in new and different ways.
Once the copyright on the Holmes stories expired in the 1970s a floodgate was opened up, and the first book to take advantage of this new reality was Nicholas Meyer’s bestseller, The Seven Per-Cent Solution. The book was a Dutton hardcover from 1974, but what a lot of fans and collectors don’t know is that there was a rare advance reading copy published by Dutton months earlier in illustrated wraps (trade paperback size), with the same David K. Stone cave- art which would appear on the hardcover. Meyer’s book really jump-started the pastiche-writing craze which has become a sub-genre, and some may say a mini-industry, all its own today.
Meyer went on to write two more Holmes pastiche novels but neither attained the success of his first. However, many more writers would step up to fill the breach, some who are well-known names in the mystery, science-fiction, fantasy and even horror fields.
Two of what I consider to be the best and most entertaining Holmes pastiches are mystery writer Richard L. Boyer’s The Giant Rat of Sumatra (Warner Books, 1976) a paperback original and his first book—it tells a tale “for which the world is not yet prepared.” Fantasy author Manly Wade Wellman (with son, Wade) offers a classic in Sherlock Holmes’s War of The Worlds (Warner Books, 1975). This later book is made up of four connected short stories, two originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and two were original tales, making this a first book edition and a paperback original. It tells the story of the Martian invasion of Earth after the H.G. Wells story. It is well done and great fun.
Mystery author Stuart Palmer is also known for two well-regarded and enjoyable pastiche stories in The Adventure of the Marked Man and One Other (Aspen Press, 1973). This slim and uncommon volume was limited to only 500 copies as are many small-press, fan-press, or scion-society items. In fact, some of these more off-trail items are limited to only 221 copies, some even under 100 copies!
Science fiction anthologist and mystery maven Kingsley Amis wrote one pastiche, and it is also well-regarded: The Darkwater Hall Mystery, which originally appeared in Playboy, May, 1978. It was reprinted in 1978 in a slim UK paperback of only 165 copies and is quite rare today; copies sell for hundreds of dollars.
Many famous team-ups appear in Holmesian pastichedom since Meyer began the trend of teaming Holmes with Sig-mund Freud in The Seven Per-Cent Solution. In one of the rarest and most sought after items, Holmes teams up with British secret agent, James Bond! Donald Stanley’s Holmes Meets 007 (Beaune Press, 1967, UK), is a hand-sewn slim booklet published in only 222 numbered copies. It can run you a few hundred dollars, if you can find a copy!
Meanwhile Pulptime by P.H. Cannon (Weirdbook Press, 1984), teamed-up Holmes with real-life horror writer H.P. Lovecraft in a memorable and spooky adventure. You could not come up with two more quirky and extreme characters than Holmes and Lovecraft. Science-fiction author Philip José Farmer teamed up Holmes with another popular fictional character, Tarzan of the Apes. The Adventure of the Peerless Peer was originally published in a scarce and limited edition hardcover from The Aspen Press in 1974, but it is the Dell paperback reprint that made this wonderful book easily available to legions of Holmes fans at an affordable price.
Pastiches that tie-in to hit films or have become hit films are always popular. One of the earliest was A Study in Terror by Ellery Queen (actually written by Paul W. Fairman), a Lancer Books paperback original from 1966. This is the first and best Holmes versus Jack-the-Ripper novel, told by Watson and Queen in alternating chapters and made into a pretty good—some might say better—film than the book.
They Might Be Giants by James Goldman (Lancer Books, 1970) is a quirky film starring George C. Scott and Joanne Woodward about a judge who thinks he is Sherlock Holmes. The paperback edition—the only edition—contains stills from the film and reprints the actual film script and is rare.
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes is a tie-in paperback to the hilarious Billy Wilder film and was written by UK Holmesians Michael and Mollie Hardwick. It novelized the Wilder and I.A.I. Diamond screenplay and appeared as a paperback original in the UK from Mayflower Books in 1970, and was also a first US edition paperback from Bantam Books also in 1970. The Bantam paperback has the added bonus of cover art by Robert McGinnis from his US poster for the film.
Marvin Kaye is a man who wears many hats as author and anthologist, and he has written one notable pastiche, The Incredible Umbrella (Dell Books, 1980), a first edition paperback that collects his fine stories featuring the fantastical doings of Professor J. Adrian Fillmore (Gad, what a name!). The first two were written as separate stories and appeared in magazines in the 1970s. It is good to have them all collected in one volume.
Kaye is also known for editing three outstanding anthologies of articles, pastiches, and short stories in the Holmesian genre. All three were originally published in hardcover by St. Martins Press and then reprinted by them in trade paperback.
The first is The Game is Afoot (1994), a gem that collects an amazing array of classic and obscure parodies and pastiches together with newer works by popular authors.
The Resurrected Holmes (1996) features all original stories, new cases for which each was ostensibly written by a classic author in that author’s style. Thus we have Paula Volsky’s “The Giant Rat of Sumatra” as if written by H.P. Lovecraft and Carole Buggé’s “The Madness of Colonel Warburton” as if written by Dashiell Hammett. You get the idea; this one is great fun.
The Confidential Casebook of Sherlock Holmes (1998) once again offers original pastiches by major authors, this time presenting cases supposedly surpressed to avoid scandal…or worse. Now the truth can be told! In these three books Kaye and his contributors offer some of the most ingenious and enjoyable Holmesian pastiches.
Carole Buggé, whose fine work appears in this magazine, has also written two excellent novels published by St. Martins Press: The Star of India (1998) and The Haunting of Torre Abbey (2000). In the former we have Holmes returning to London to discover his arch nemesis Moriarty still alive, while the latter has the Great Detective investigating strange hauntings in a 12th century monastery.
One of the best kept secrets and least known of the newer pastiches is Sherlock Holmes on The Wild Frontier by Magda Jozsa (Book Surge, 2005), a print-on-demand trade paperback original from a talented Australian writer. Don’t let the American Wild West setting put you off; this is a fine p
astiche and true to Holmes and Watson.
While I’ve barely scratched the surface in this short article, and I’m sure we each have our own favorites, collecting Holmesian paperbacks is fascinating fun—and you never know what you might discover!
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Gary Lovisi is an MWA Edgar-nominated author for his own Sherlock Holmes pastiche “The Adventure of the Missing Detective.” His latest book is Sherlock Holmes: The Great Detective in Paperback & Pastiche, a survey, index and value guide with many rare and key covers shown in full color. This large-size, spiral-bound format book is available now for $50. + $5. postage from Gryphon Books, PO Box 209, Brooklyn, NY 11228. His website is:
www.gryphonbooks.com
MEET NERO WOLFE: AN HOLMESIAN PERSPECTIVE, by Bob Byrne
Readers (unknowingly) said goodbye to Sherlock Holmes in 1926’s “The Adventure of the Retired Colourman.” Only eight years later, a new detective who would not only evoke memories of the Holmes stories but also plough new ground arrived in the (oversized) form of Nero Wolfe. The seventy-four stories, written over forty-one years, would be collectively known as the Corpus, akin to the Holmesian Canon.
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