Shades of Sherlock Holmes: Pastiche, Paranormal or Piffle?

In which we consider the Holmes pastiche, for better or for worse…

Holmes forced more of the vile Turkish tobacco into his pipe, wincing as he realised that yet again he was smoking the damnable stuff in order to keep up appearances.

“Despite the fact that you are secretly my half-brother, Watson, and that you were never in the Army, I have tolerated our acquaintance. However, your medical certificate (Failed) from Goa Community College is fooling no-one, and your relationship with ‘Mary’ is an embarrassment.”

I nodded, perhaps relieved that all was being exposed at last.

“And as for you, Lestrade,” the great man continued, “It is clear that you are a Nigerian prince only working within the British police force in order to transfer surprising amounts of money from bank accounts in your homeland. The talcum powder and gum arabic disguise is obvious to even the butcher’s boy – who is, by the way, a midget in the employ of some Oriental genius.”

Lestrade looked at me and sighed, wiping a sweaty hand across his face to reveal a swathe of his true colouration.

Holmes smiled.

“I am, however, a man who relies on empathy and wild hunches, as you know, so tedious deductive reasoning has no place here. I welcome you both as comrades, and am eager to continue our investigations into the supernatural. Carnacki and Silence be damned – let us surge forth and grapple with ectoplasm in our own right.”

He threw his pipe out of the window.

“Mrs Hudson – prepare the submersible. We are bound for Arkham and colonial madness!”

Hello there. Today we’re having an introductory look at the world of the Sherlock Holmes pastiche, and considering what that term actually means. There are two reasons for doing this, apart from idle entertainment. The first is that I write Holmes stories, and often mull over the whys and wherefores of doing such a thing, so why not do it here? The second is that I do like weird stories as well, and Holmes is increasingly being used as a character in weird and supernatural fiction.

Holmes pastiches (artistic works in a style that imitate that of another work, artist, or period) aren’t at all new. For example, J M Barrie of Peter Pan fame wrote a pastiche in 1893, The Late Sherlock Holmes, and in 1913 an anonymous author wrote a Holmes novel, Sherlock Holmes saving Mr. Venizelos, concerning a Greek politician threatened with assassination at a 1912 conference in London.

But we’re here to look at the nature of pastiches , not to repeat lists which others have more ably researched and compiled. Personally, I’m a great enthusiast of accurate, canonical Holmes stories. To some extent those tales fit comfortably with my non-supernatural Edwardian tales of mystery and murder, such as A Loss of Angels.

The canon, the authentic body of work by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is important, because it offers an unprecedented single time-line for a major fictional character and his associates (we’re talking novels and short stories here, by the way. The world of comics, TV and film adaptations is too large to dare contemplating today).

I do like reading and writing Holmes stories which could have happened within that time-line, and within the framework of historical circumstances, characteristics and abilities laid out by Conan Doyle. This allows for a number of enjoyable challenges, such as:

Exploring cases mentioned within the canon but never delineated by Conan Doyle;
Inserting cases within those periods of Holmes’ active investigative career where there is nothing currently documented (and Holmes seems to have investigated more than one case at a time on occasion);
Extending the time-line for the detective before and after Baker Street, even into the period during and after the Great War;
Re-interpreting cases and events to consider alternative explanations which are still fully plausible within the canon and historical reality;
Expanding secondary characters such as Mrs Hudson, Lestrade, Moran etc. and depicting episodes which relate to their lives but again stay within the framework;
Spending more time on character qualities – flaws, addictions, attitudes, tics and curiosities – without directly challenging Conan Doyle’s basics (this one can drag you out of the canon, so beware).

David Marcum, an experienced writer, editor and scholar in this area, has devoted a lot of time to an extensive chronology of stories which fall within the canon.

He edits the very successful MX Books of New Sherlock Holmes Stories, and expressed some of his own views (and commented on the BBC TV version) in an interview on the website I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere last year:

the tangled skeins of sherlock holmes

Of course, if you disapprove of even canonical pastiches, there are still genuine period detectives and investigative mysteries a-plenty. Try The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes (ed. Nick Rennison, 2013), or Shadows of Sherlock Holmes (ed. David Stuart Davies, 1998).

But back to our ramble. Where does this leave the deliberately non-canonical writer? How heretical might he or she be? Discounting the irreverent nature of our opening passage, there are a number of approaches which occasionally yield a good yarn. The most important question is whether or not to keep Holmes (and/or Watson), fully within character and within their range of abilities as described by Conan Doyle.

If you’re not going to stay anywhere near the originals, then it begs the question as to why you’re doing it. One obvious answer is The Brand – the name sells. Stick ‘Sherlock Holmes’ on a story and you have a few people automatically interested. But that’s a bit cheap. I’m tempted to say that you should cut loose at that point and write your own, individual period consulting detective with a proper name, background and set of characteristics. Why half-Holmes it when you’ve gone that far? Be original.

And what might you bear in mind if you write tales which are non-canonical but still contain a distinct Holmes? I’ve nothing against complete spoofs, which can be amusing. However, if you want to retain the Holmesian connection with any dignity, then some thought is needed (for those who take Holmes very seriously, please don’t jump on the messenger. This already happens and there’s inevitably more to come, so the stable door is no longer relevant).

Broadly, you end up with a range of options which include:

Sherlock dislocated – keeping the canonical figures in Victorian/Edwardian settings with the same abilities and resources but written as steampunk, explicit horror, Lovecraftian horror or alternative history stories;
Sherlock transported – taking Holmes and other characters completely out of their natural setting and re-employing them in chronological or geographical settings which would be quite unfeasible within the original body of work;
Sherlock evolved – applying Holmes to fringe period scenarios, such as psychic, supernatural, political or technological mysteries which might eventually require Holmes to change some of his views and approaches;
Sherlock reconfigured – altering one major aspect of the character or abilities but retaining the bulk of the canon. A hard one, because it automatically makes serious Holmesians wince, and it takes us back to the question ‘Why not invent your own detective instead?’

If you want to look at different approaches, then you could peruse books like The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (ed. John Joseph Adams, 2009), an anthology where notable authors explore mysterious and sometimes quite fantastical alternatives to the canon.

Combining a recognisable Holmes and the weird or supernatural is one of the most popular routes. An introduction to this area is the anthology Shadows over Baker Street (2003), edited by Michael Reeves and John Pelan. It’s a mixed bag of stories from eighteen different authors which nevertheless has some very enjoyable moments. The Gaslight Arcanum (ed. Jeff Campbell and Charles Prepolec, 2011) is another more recent collection of uncanny tales.

By the way, Holmes’ most quoted comment on the supernatural is not quite as definite as some think. In The Hound of the Baskervilles he merely refers to his belief that normal investigative techniques and logical deduction would be of no use in supernatural cases.

“If Dr. Mortimer’s surmise should be correct, and we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature, there is an end of our investigation. But we are bound to exhaust all other hypotheses before falling back upon this one.”

Giving in to temptation last year, I ended up with a curious compromise, and wrote a novella, A Study in Grey, which was historically accurate and included a canonical Holmes (nothing changed at all), but also contained a separate plot strand concerning genuine psychic issues. The intent, and possibly the result, was to leave the Great Detective unchallenged but allow the reader to experience that little bit more.

Others too numerous to name have gone further, some of them excellent authors in their own right. William Meikle, a master of the supernatural adventure tale who also contributed to The Gaslight Arcanum, has had the confidence to take a strong, recognisable Holmes and place him in weirder situations than Conan Doyle envisaged (as in Sherlock Holmes: Revenant, 2013), with more to come. Neil Gaiman himself produced one of the best known ‘weird Holmes pastiches’ in his story A Study in Emerald, which is in Shadows over Baker Street, also mentioned above.

Last Minute Addendum: We should also point out that Willie Meikle is ambidextrous in his Holmesian fiction – he has also written several canonical tales, in THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF SHERLOCK HOLMES ABROAD, THE ASSOCIATES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, and the forthcoming SHERLOCK HOLMES’ SCHOOL FOR DETECTION.

I make no value judgements. As writers and readers we can choose pastiches which are canon or non-canon. We can even have both, if we’re wild enough.

If you prefer your Holmes straight, but still like detectives who investigate strange and supernatural mysteries, then the brand new Occult Detective Quarterly is launching this Autumn. See top right for more details.

And we’re done for today. Back in two or three days with something which will be entirely different, and don’t forget that you can sign up for free (top left) to be kept in the greydogtales loop…