{"id":2866,"date":"2016-09-20T17:29:00","date_gmt":"2016-09-20T17:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/greydogtales.com\/blog\/?p=2866"},"modified":"2016-10-31T23:36:42","modified_gmt":"2016-10-31T23:36:42","slug":"more-shades-of-sherlock-holmes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/greydogtales.com\/blog\/more-shades-of-sherlock-holmes\/","title":{"rendered":"More Shades of Sherlock Holmes"},"content":{"rendered":"

So, dear listener, we escape occult detectives only to find that we haven’t, not quite. We thought we’d have a look at the Sherlock Holmes<\/strong> themed issue of Mystery Weekly<\/em>, share a 1904 parody by P G Wodehouse<\/strong> and mention more Conan Doyle<\/strong> trivia than you could possibly want, but in the process we found that one of the Mystery Weekly<\/em> Holmes stories is itself an occult detective tale. There is a joyous doom upon us, we fear (see also our earlier article on pastiches – shades of sherlock holmes\u00a0 ).<\/p>\n

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Yes, we’re entering the world of strange connections once more, starting (obviously) with cricket. Regulars will know that we often refer to the Flaxman Low supernatural investigator stories, written by the remarkable Hesketh Hesketh-Prichard<\/strong> and his mother. Hesketh-Prichard, like many of his contemporaries, was a devil for the thwack of willow on leather. He also liked cricket, and knew Arthur Conan Doyle.<\/p>\n

A great adventurer in the classic mode, he travelled the world recording or shooting things, sometimes both. A rarely mentioned fact is that he had a sub-species of South American grass named after him, poa alopecurus prichardii<\/em>, though there is no record of whether or not he shot it afterwards. Despite the fact that some say the character Lord John Roxton (The Lost World<\/em>) was modelled on another of Doyle’s associates, Roger Casement<\/strong>, we see a fair chance that Hex was in fact the original model for Roxton.<\/p>\n

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poa alopecurus prichardii (or similar subspecies). it’s a grass, anyway. who searches for pictures of grass subspecies in their spare time? blimey.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It was Doyle who recommended Hex to play for Hampshire, which he did with some success. Doyle was also a cricket lover, and played cricket at one point for J M Barrie\u2019s<\/strong> team, the Allah-akbarries<\/em>. The name seems to be a deliberate mix of the expression Allahu Akbar<\/em> (God is Great) and Barrie’s surname. Other players included included Rudyard Kipling, A E W Mason, H G Wells, G K Chesterton, Jerome K Jerome, A A Milne<\/strong> \u2013 and P G Wodehouse.<\/p>\n

An aside: We should probably do a cricketing ghost stories\/horror post one day, but that’s for another time. <\/strong><\/em>H Russell Wakefield<\/strong> has a rather neat one, Not Quite Cricket, in The Clock Strikes Twelve.<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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p g wodehouse<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

P G Wodehouse, though much younger than Arthur Conan Doyle, was a lifelong enthusiast of the man and his work. In his twenties he wrote a number of Sherlock Holmes parodies including The Strange Disappearance of Mr. Buxton-Smythe<\/em> and The Adventure of the Split Infinitive<\/em> starring Burdock Rose and Dr. Wotsing (he also wrote The Adventure of the Missing Bee<\/em>, and we’ll come back to that later in this article).<\/p>\n

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Which warps us on to Holmes, and Mystery Weekly<\/em>. This is a monthly e-magazine (just to fool you, though there is a weekly newsletter), widely available, and edited by C F Carter<\/strong> and K Carter<\/strong>. It presents:<\/p>\n

\u201cCrime and mystery short stories by some of the world’s best established and emerging mystery writers. The original stories we select for each issue run the gamut from cozy to hardboiled fiction\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n

Sot it’s not occult, though it does include period tales. We don’t read much of this sort of thing nowadays \u2013 it’s a time problem, not a taste problem – but we were intrigued when we found out that they’d done a themed issue which focussed on the adventures of Sherlock Holmes. So we had to have a look.<\/p>\n

As greydogtales<\/em> is not a review site as such, we decided to look only at the Holmesian elements of the fiction, and were pleasantly surprised. We’ll leave you to judge on their merits, as we usually do, but give a hint or two as to content. The themed issue contains three Holmes pastiches:<\/p>\n