There are a few essential factors that make a Sherlock Holmes story good.
There must be a narrator.
If there is one central conceit behind the Sherlock Holmes stories, it is this: they are not fiction, but the written reminisces of his good friend, Dr. John Watson. The very first Holmes story to be published bore an extensive introduction to that effect. Thus, to write an engaging Holmes story, one must have a narrator. It need not be Watson — indeed, some of Doyle’s originals had Holmes himself take a stab at literary autobiography. Holmes is the sole narrator for “The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane” and “The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier,” two unusual stories from the late canon. Furthermore, in “The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual,” Watson is ostensibly the narrator but the entirety of the plot is delivered by Holmes, who tells Watson the details of one of his earliest cases.
So there must be a narrator, and it need not be Watson. I have read some very good stories that were not narrated by Watson. Taking a random example, the stories in Further Associates of Sherlock Holmes are uniformly told from the perspective of other characters. I am particularly fond of “The Last Visitor” by Stephen Henry (narrated by Moriarty) and “The Second Mask” by Philip Purser-Hallard (narrated by Lucy Hebron).
I should also point out all the good work being done by Lyndsay Faye: her Observations by Gaslight is told entirely through the eyes of Holmes’s acquaintances, and we cannot forget her earlier collection, The Whole Art of Detection, which includes a couple of tales where Holmes is the narrator.
I would go so far as to say that it is near-impossible to write a good Sherlock Holmes story from the third-person perspective. Holmes is by nature brilliant, but blindingly so, and needs an intermediary to make him human again. Yes, I am aware that Doyle himself flirted with the third person on a handful of occasions. A Study in Scarlet, Holmes’s debut appearance, contains a whole second half chronicling the murderous activities of a Mormon gang in the American West. How many people have read through that part? It feels that whenever Doyle tried his hand at a novel, he felt obliged to cram in filler material — thus we also see, in The Valley of Fear, a substantial third-person section padding out the novel’s end. Then there is the short story “The Mazarin Stone,” a trifling work which Doyle adapted from a stage play. It, like many of Doyle’s later works, is not terribly impressive. Finally, of course, there is “His Last Bow,” Doyle’s response to the patriotic atmosphere of the Great War, Holmes coming out of retirement one last time in order to foil a German plot.1 That might be the only truly decent canonical Holmes story told in the third person.
I ramble. To reiterate: any really good Holmes story needs a narrator, Watson or somebody else. If you think you can write such a story in the third person, good luck. You will need it.
There must be a basic respect for the facts.
Holmes and Watson do not live in a fantasy world. Their actions should, if at all possible, comport with the history of Victorian London. There can be no rabbits pulled from hats; the story should be “fair,” or at the very least not overtly unfair.
Granted, Doyle himself had a rather loose relationship with truth. He was a writer, and before that a doctor, and rather like Holmes, does not appear to have indulged over-much in the study of other fields. Thus we have Holmes working for the “King of Bohemia” (and later, the “King of Scandinavia”).2 The Watsonian answer is: of course the titles are fictional! Watson would have changed the details to avoid scandal! There are many who believe that the fictional “King of Bohemia” was none other than a certain scandal-prone prince — although there are other times that British royals have appeared directly in the canon, which confuses things in that regard. A far more consequential invention was the “swamp adder,” a snake which is highly venomous and drinks…milk? Doyle was not a herpetologist, unfortunately.
If you need to twist things a little, so be it. But you need to possess comprehensive knowledge of the past before you can start creating things out of whole cloth. The worst is when an author introduces some anachronistic language, for that breaks the illusion entirely. No Watsonian explanation can salvage anything from there! A good Holmes story needs its feet firmly planted upon the cobblestones of London, or possibly the immediate vicinity.
There must be fidelity to the personalities of the characters.
I refer mostly to Holmes, but Watson also. There is a two-dimensional caricature which has sprung up over the years and which unfortunately still holds cachet. Canonically, Watson is a mortal human like any of us, but he is not grossly incompetent. He is an everyman, not a bungler. Adaptations of Holmes and Watson which make him the butt of jokes — throw them in the garbage, where they belong.
But if Watson has been often mischaracterized, Holmes has been mangled far worse. Holmes is brilliant, eccentric, sometimes a difficult roommate, and so forth, but he is not cold, nor is he cruel. He may inadvertently give offense, but he does not go out of the way to kick puppies. Bored out of his mind in “The Adventure of the Norwood Builder,” Holmes finally gets a client — a young man who stands accused of murder! Holmes nearly says that it is “most gratifying” before correcting himself; yes, he is eager to get his teeth into a fun new puzzle, but he isn’t rude.
The issue, I think, hinges on a larger trend than the tendency for inaccurate caricature, which is as old as time.3 I think people just don’t know how to write neurospicy characters.
Not to diagnose Holmes or anything, but c’mon. Dude has special interests which Watson initially finds unusual, but which are actually quite rationally chosen to support his life goals. He expresses emotions in a distinctive way; sometimes he’s ecstatic over successes, other times he treats shocking events with equanimity. That’s to say nothing of his self-medication, and the fact that cocaine, a powerful stimulant, relaxes him.
Put his story in the hands of someone who actually knows what they are doing — maybe, just maybe, you’ll end up with a tale to rival Doyle.4 But a lot of people who write Holmes are incapable of understanding such subtleties. Stephen King, in “The Doctor’s Case” (collected in the anthology Nightmares and Dreamscapes), portrays Holmes as rather more sardonic than healthy, taking the chance to snipe at Watson and Lestrade. (Holmes’s opinion of Scotland Yard was never very high, in canon, but Lestrade is an old associate and deserves better.)
Worse still are examples like that of BBC’s Sherlock. The consulting detective is no longer merely an eccentric human, but a crime-solving übermensch, a demihuman whose superpower is knowing things. His conclusions are either derived from nonsense or arrive from thin air. And to cap it off, he’s an asshole. He’s needlessly abusive towards his friends, his landlady, and everyone else he meets. Words like “sociopath” are thrown around with questionable accuracy.
It’s not interesting enough for someone to be a little odd, to have their own unique ways. Not for the viewers that BBC’s Sherlock were trying to attract. No, there always needs to be an Other. Someone whose personality is only barely recognizable as human. Something to be feared rather than loved.
If any Holmes adaptation goes that route, it is already lost.
But also, just as a final note, there is an aspect of Holmes’s personality that should not be neglected: his genuine affection (dare we call it love?) for Watson.
Holmes has to actually like Watson.
Can that be so difficult to grasp? Watson cares for Holmes, surely, but Holmes would never be deliberately cruel to what is probably his closest friend. (Maybe his only friend. Holmes has other friends, mentioned infrequently, but he spends most of his time with Watson. He’s upset, at the conclusion to The Sign of Four, when Watson leaves to get married!)
I’m not the first person to say all of this (and have cheerfully stolen from earlier critics) but it needed to be said.
So, to sum it all up. Don’t make the characters into things that are not real, with special emphasis on Holmes’s attitude towards Watson. I’m not saying make them into secret lovers,5 I’m saying I’ve had enough of Holmes being a jerk, or so coked-up that he starts mistreating his loved ones. Just...be sensible. Most ideas are possible, but some ideas need perfect execution in order to work.
I suppose, having ranted about Sherlock Holmes, I should list what I feel to be the top Holmes stories. From the original canon, “The Adventure of Silver Blaze” is probably the best story written before Holmes’s “death,” while “The Adventure of the Norwood Builder” is probably the best story from afterwards. I am fond of “The Adventure of Black Peter,” for its introduction of Stanley Hopkins, and of “The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans,” as Mycroft makes an appearance there. And, as stated previously in this essay, “The Problem of Thor Bridge” is an unexpected gem in a rash of near-unreadable late stories.
As for later writers, Lyndsay Faye is the unquestioned champion. I have noted my affection for “The Last Visitor” by Stephen Henry and “The Second Mask” by Philip Purser-Hallard.
“The Dark Carnival” by Andrew Lane was a neat little story. You can find it in Sherlock Holmes: The Sign of Seven (edited by Martin Rosenstock). You will also find, in that collection, a Lyndsay Faye story (“Our Common Correspondent,” one of her best) and “The Adventure of the Deadly Séance” by James Lovegrove (he writes competently, and should be commended for his prolific output, at least — also, he has his own collection, Manifestations of Sherlock Holmes, and there are some nice stories in there.)
We cannot forget Neil Gaiman and two of his stories: “A Study in Emerald” (available for free online) and “The Case of Death and Honey” (available for free online as well, but in less than legitimate style). I loved them both.
And as for Sherlock Holmes in other settings — the book Sherlock Holmes in America has yet another Lyndsay Faye story (one of her earlier ones, I think) and also “The Case of Colonel Crockett’s Violin” by Gillian Linscott. There was another book I discovered in the Williamsburg Public Library, Sherlock Holmes: The American Years, which contains the story “My Silk Umbrella” by Darryl Brock. It is a Sherlock Holmes story as told by Mark Twain. It is outrageously funny. The rest of the book didn’t really catch my attention, but that story sure did.
Well, that’s about it. If you’d care to psychoanalyze me from my taste in Sherlock Holmes stories, go right ahead. And if you happen to work at a magazine that publishes genre fiction, or if you are collecting stories for an anthology, do let me know. I’ve got a small handful of Sherlock Holmes stories (authored by myself!) just burnin’ a hole in my pocket.
Although Holmes had been retired for a long while, Watson would dutifully package up another set of old cases whenever the public clamor reached fever-pitch. I will say to you that I do not think any of the later cases, and I refer to “The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes,” are of much merit, save for “The Adventure of Thor Bridge,” which I quite liked.
I am aware that there was, in fact, a king of Bohemia, but he was also the Emperor of Austria-Hungary and would hardly be referred to with his subsidiary title. In fact, Franz Josef, who reigned from 1848 to 1916, was never actually crowned as king of Bohemia. Meanwhile, during this time Sweden and Norway were in personal union, but their shared monarch was never king of Scandinavia, for there was never a formal political union, and Norway ended up peacefully seceding in 1905.
For example, you ever wonder why “Uncle Tom” is used as an insult while Uncle Tom’s Cabin was a fair-for-its-time abolitionist tract? Because, as it happens, unauthorized stage parodies toured the country for years, in which the characterization was twisted in favor of largely pro-slavery messages. Hence why an “Uncle Tom” is seen today as a collaborator or a traitor. The canonical Uncle Tom was no collaborator, and yet he is unfortunately remembered in that light.
To surpass him, even. Doyle was phoning it in for most of his Holmes-writing career; he saw the character as a distraction for his “better” literature and his Spiritualist writings. It is hard to write a very good Holmes story, but it is easy to eclipse the drivel of Doyle’s latter days.
Although that would be neat, wouldn’t it?
perhaps it is time for me to read sherlock holmes....