I've been trying to get back to Sherlock Holmes for a while now, looking for an avenue to sneak back onto the topic that would hold its structure enough to not collapse inward into 'Gosh! Sherlock Holmes!', so the novel by Lyndsay Faye (Baker Street Babes!) was as good an excuse as any, and will also feed into the post being written on 'Murder By Decree'. You see, this book and that movie are connected thematically, both being about Holmes investigating Jack the Ripper and both being unusual in that Sherlock gets emotional.
No story by any author other than Conan Doyle is canonical, and most aren't even true to the style. In truth, of those that I've read only Nicholas Meyer's 'Seven-Per-Cent Solution' comes close to being eminently Doyle-ian in style and then perhaps unintentionally. So, 'Dust and Shadows' approaches the story via the characters rather than by some stylistic apeing. It does so wonderfully but somewhat grimly as the tones of Sherlock Holmes and the Ripper do not easy bedfellows make. They clashed awkwardly in 'Murder By Decree' and again here. There seems to be a temptation to mix the infamous real world maniacal serial killer and contemporaneous fictional Master Detective, and -- Oh boggle! Of course there's a temptation! It's like mixing chocolate chip cookies with ice cream! Except that in this case we can't tell which is which. If you see sensationalist fact and sensationalist fiction conveniently set in the same time frame then who's going to not think about it?
Stop. Recoup. How I loathe critics. We can make up our own minds about what's good and bad; We don't need elitist snobs setting themselves up to favour us with their barbed shafts of critical wit. Humbug to them, and then make them watch Fleischer Popeye cartoons and work out what's really going on in the world. I rather like those cartoons, by the way. Fleischer were cool. Very fluid.
Back to 'Dust And Shadow', and perhaps it's best to avoid traditional criticism as it becomes destructive if used widely or for too long. My reaction was generally positive but in this case the cookies and the ice cream don't go together as well as we thought they might. In fact, we already know this to be true from 'Murder By Decree', which inspires shudders of dissonance in recollection. The character of Sherlock Holmes is not the one who can react to the outrage spectacularly enough to fulfil the role of the hero in this story. Sherlock Holmes is a man, a fictional man, of such steely resolve that he'll live through the case and perhaps even catch Jack, but then lock the horror up within himself as fuel to carry himself onward. That's not the hero of the story we need. In fact, if anyone should be the hero it is Dr Watson, and he is the one to resolve it all in the end. We sometimes forget Watson is a soldier, and the one out of the two who has experience of doing terrible things for good ends. Indeed that's often the lot of the doctor as well as the warrior. Interesting. Doctors fight wars just as much as soldiers, but theirs are eternal and never ending.
It's a staggeringly well researched book, full of little details and a clear love for the canon and the characters - are the characters part of canon or does that refer to the stories only? Canon is a fuzzy word, like chamomile or marshmallow - but the central twinned cores of the story can't coexist and remain true to themselves. You can have Sherlock Holmes being taken to see Sigmund Freud, or even trash everything and have 'Young Sherlock Holmes', but the Ripper is too real. It's a shame as I have nothing but admiration in every other sense of the work. There was another Holmes pastiche - 'pastiche' is the word they use for non-canonical Sherlock stories - recently, called the House of Silk, and that had similar problems in that the ultimate resolution of the story was too grim and too real to fit into the world of Sherlock Holmes. Also, it just wasn't as well written as 'Dust and Shadow', or 'The Seven-Per-Cent Solution', or 'All Consuming Fire' or the majestic canon itself. It's like trying to light a candle and pass it off as a bonfire. I can't believe I haven't mentioned 'All Consuming Fire' before this, by Andy Lane. If you know what that is then you get a gold star, a pat on the head, and then a giant glass of milk. Hmm, three pastiches here and not two...
Having said all that, I'll keep 'Dust And Shadow'. It's a well written beast, but just a trifle too inevitably grim. How could it be otherwise?
O.
PS Oh, and on this day of Doctor Who mania, I have only two words for you: Sherlock Lives.
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