Book Review: Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D'Urbervilles

Imagine two men. The first: a mastermind who lives for solving pretty little problems. Eccentric and amoral, he sees the truth through the fog of that distant Victorian London. The second: a war veteran from Afghanistan, tough, scarred, addicted to danger. He’s a faithful sidekick and chronicler. Admittedly, I didn’t mention a deerstalker or pipe, but nevertheless, Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson come to mind.

Except that that’s not who I mean. That description applies equally to Professor Moriarty and Sebastian Moran. Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes’ arch nemesis, is mysteriously – and tantalizingly – absent from most of the Sherlock Holmes stories. He was created by Doyle to kill off Holmes in The Final Problem, turns out to be beyond the events of The Valley of Fear, and appears in none of the other fifty-eight tales. Holmes only encounters him once (with the exception of that fateful meeting at Reichenbach Falls), and Watson himself never actually meets the Professor. In fact, the only time the reader actually “sees” Moriarty is in a narrative by Holmes later related by Watson. That makes Moriarty a rather tantalizingly mysterious blank slate.

Kim Newman has courageously taken up the challenge of filling up that slate in his book Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D’Urbervilles.  He’s put together a delightful series of stories – tied together into a novel – narrated by Moriarty’s right hand man, Sebastian Moran. The idea of Moriarty and Moran as a sort of dark-double duo of Holmes and Watson, with Moran recording Moriarty’s crimes, is not entirely new – there are hints of it in Doyle’s stories (referred to as the Canon), and in a few of the more obscure Holmes movies. But never has it been developed to this extent, and never (with the exception of a particular Neil Gaiman story), as delightfully as this.

These stories don’t take place in Holmes’ world, but in a mirror reflection of it. Everything is exactly the same, except that Moriarty’s quite literally replaced Holmes. Newman has carefully, methodically disassembled the edifice that is the Canon, added a few crooked building blocks of his own, and reassembled the entire thing in a skewed, backwards, disturbing and utterly brilliant way. If Neil Gaiman can be described by a reviewer as a demonic chef, then Newman is certainly a possessed architect.

Newman’s Moriarty makes tea, plots dastardly deeds, drives his enemy to lunacy (or, as the latter would prefer, “moonacy”), and avoids being a walking cliché – all before breakfast. The stories are absolutely stunning in their inventiveness, the crimes are ingenious, and the humor is literally breath-taking. Yet they contain just enough reverence for Doyle’s originals. Particularly remarkable is “The Red Planet League,” a play on “The Red-Headed League” and perfect for fulfilling one’s daily humor needs. The prose – which I can’t call “stunning” because there must be a limit to how many times that word can appear in a review – is sizzling, engaging, witty, and punctuated by particularly remarkable passages, such as the following:

“They’ve called him the Napoleon of Crime, but that’s just putting what he is, what he does, in a cage. He’s not a criminal, he is crime itself, sin raised to an art form, a church with no religion but rapine, a God of Evil. Pardon my purple prose, but there it is. Moriarty brings things out in people, things from their depths.
He poured me tea.”

And, of course, the book has its fair share of witty variations on famous Canonical lines: “To Professor Moriarty, she was always that bitch,” and “the worst and wildest man I have ever known.”

There’s only one downfall to the novel, which is more of a small bump in the road than a pitfall, and that’s the question of the intended audience: avid Sherlockians or casual readers? The book is packed with clever references to minor Doyle villains and other Victorian literary works. The avid Sherlockian likes nothing better than a puzzle to solve, and finding these well-hidden hints to familiar works is like getting an early birthday present – except that the endnotes give it away. Answers at the back of the book may make the story clearer for the casual reader, but it certainly spoils the fun for the Sherlockian. And yet, to enjoy the clever, provocative twists on the Canon Newman offers at the deepest level, the detailed knowledge of a Sherlockian is necessary. For example, Moriarty presents himself as a scientist, juxtaposing himself to a conjurer who dabbles in deductions. It’s a clever contrast to Doyle’s Holmes, who is often referred to as a magician or wizard for the deductive skills that make him a beloved hero. Presumably the Sherlockian who catches this twist would know about the conundrum of why Watson had never heard of Moriarty in The Final Problem? Yet this explanation, like many others, finds its way into an endnote. But that’s a minor complaint, really.

In a world overcrowded with Holmes adaptations, pastiches, sequels, prequels, and re-writes, true gems can be as rare as the Pearl of the Borgias, and this is truly one of those gems that Moriarty himself would create a dastardly plot to obtain. There’s much of the Canon Newman left untouched, and one hopes that one day, more ink may flow from his pen onto paper…

This review was originally published at Blogcritics. 

The Sherlock Holmes Method of Literary Analysis

It was at some point during the twenty-four-hour cycle we call “the day,” and the line between night and morning was becoming just as blurry as the text before my eyes. The play count of several select songs on my iTunes had increased significantly, contributing largely to my feeling of accomplishment, copious amounts of graphite had been left on the pages of a well-worn book in the form of notes and underlining, and I was almost finished with my essay on Wilde’s artistic philosophy as presented in The Picture of Dorian Gray.

It was in that bleary-eyed state that I went for a stroll through the utterly deserted Hyde Park in Chicago. As a part of my brain wondered whether there was another human being left on the planet – hardly likely, it seemed in that complete and utter emptiness – the rest of it considered how well some of Sherlock Holmes’ statements about crime solving applied to literary study.

Of course, that idea is nothing new. That’s what the whole idea of playing “The Game” is about.

If you don’t know what “The Game” is, allow me to explain.

“The game is afoot!” figures among those famous Sherlockian quotes that pop up ubiquitously along with “elementary” and “you see, but you do not observe.” To Sherlock Holmes, that phrase meant that there was a crime to be solved, a challenge to be faced. To us Sherlockians, the notoriously obsessed, it also means that there’s a mystery to unravel. It means pretending that Sherlock Holmes was real and applying his sleuthing skills to fill in the gaps in the Canon. Gaps such as trying to figure out what happened to Holmes’ cocaine habit after The Final Problem, or finding the location of Watson’s strangely mobile war wound.

But what occurred to me during those early morning hours is that those sleuthing skills apply not simply to speculating about how many times Watson was married (between two and six, depending on whom you ask). They apply to writing the kind of literary criticism that the aforementioned essay on The Picture of Dorian Gray involved.

For example:

“I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts,” Holmes states in A Scandal in Bohemia.

The above quote embodies the first rule of the study of literature. One does not come up with a thesis and then look for evidence to support that thesis in the book. One lets the book speak. Each quote, symbol, image, color, literary reference, each word, really, is one piece of data. All the pieces of data must be weighed and examined. Then (in my case, at least), lots of logorrhea must ensue, during which thoughts become theories and theories are refined and perfected. And then a thesis emerges. Which makes it sound, of course, like throwing a bunch of pieces of data into a brain-machine, cranking it up, and coming out with a thesis. That’s not inaccurate: Holmes is described by Watson as a reasoning machine, and I like to be able to immodestly say that I emulate his methodical process.

But the ability to reason like a machine is not the only important one. In The Sign of Four, Holmes outlines “three qualities necessary for the ideal detective.” They are: “the power of observation, the [power] of deduction, knowledge.” The literary critic is also a sort of detective, searching for Truth (or a publishable thesis, as the case may be), and those three qualities are invaluable.

Observation: to know what to look for, to notice themes and images and be able to pick out the significant phrases from a text. To notice the imagery of light in a text dealing with knowledge, or in a science fiction novel – such as the fire at the end of Frankenstein. Knowledge – the knowledge of what those themes and images mean, of literary history and context and the influence of both upon the text in general, of what the author knew and how that could have influenced him or her. The knowledge that light is a metaphor for knowledge, for example, or that the word “miracle” comes from the Latin word “to look.” Deduction – the ability to apply knowledge to observations and make deductions. To deduce, for example, that Frankenstein’s death in a fire at the end of the novel symbolizes his destruction through knowledge.

All of that makes it sound, of course, as if books have one clear, unarguable message; that each classic contains one Truth that is as impossible to contradict as the results of Sherlock Holmes’ hemoglobin test. Which just really isn’t true. Literature does have wrong answers, I would argue, but it doesn’t have one right answer. It has right answers. It’s the search for those answers, and what they mean to us, that makes literature meaningful. A wonderful teacher once said to me that when you come up with a thesis that applies to a work of literature, it “clicks.” Really, I think this is true. There will be certain theories about literature that will feel “right.” They will feel like the truth, even if it’s the truth of one’s subjective world, and Sherlock Holmes just might have had something to do with finding that truth. 

Sherlock Holmes and "Normality"

I would wager that the average person, if asked to describe Sherlock Holmes, would quite probably mention a detective in an armchair, smoking his pipe, putting his fingers together, and saying “elementary, my dear Watson.” The famous deerstalker cap might come up, too, as well as Holmes courteously questioning his clients and coming to a conclusion without leaving the house.

If you asked that same person whether Sherlock Holmes is “normal,” (s)he would probably say yes. A bit eccentric, perhaps, incredibly smart, but a “normal” British gentleman.

“You have really done very well indeed. It is true that you have missed everything of importance, but you have hit upon the method…”

That, if the reader allows us a quote from A Case of Identity, is quite probably what Sherlock Holmes would say.

Of course, “normality” is one of those words that require quotation marks every time I use them. It’s quite possible that I have a profound fear of making an outrageous or unsupportable claim about something so relative as what is “normal.”  But, whatever the reasons, the point remains that “normality” is subjective. Standards change across time and distance.

With that said, I’d like to point out how, well, not “normal” Sherlock Holmes is.

It’s no secret (to Sherlockians, at least) that Holmes never actually says “elementary, my dear Watson,” in the stories. That comes from a film. He also never actually wears the famous deerstalker cap, which is the invention of illustrator Sidney Paget. And as for the pipe, well, Holmes seems to alternate between that and his cocaine addiction.

In fact, when we first meet Sherlock Holmes in in A Study in Scarlet, he comes off as arrogant and eccentric, has an obsession with crime, the IQ of a criminal mastermind, and a complete ignorance of the fact that the earth goes around the sun.  Instead of being the rather altruistic detective who sacrifices himself to free the world of the greatest criminal mastermind, he complains about the lack of criminality:

“There are no crimes and no criminals in these days,’ he said querulously. “What is the use of having brains in our profession?”

Yet the image of Sherlock Holmes that remains in our minds is the one I began this article with. That image is accurate if one reads nothing but The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. In those stories, Holmes is an entirely different man from the one we first meet. He does, indeed, appear to be a normal British gentleman, quotes Goethe, and often laments his inability to prevent a crime.

So, what happened? Why is Holmes so different in the first two novels than in the stories, and why is the latter image of him more prevalent?

I think it would be safe to claim that the most popular Sherlock Holmes books are The Adventures and The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes; even in Doyle’s time, they were far more famous than the two novels that introduced him, A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four. Thus, it seems safe to assume that, given two rather antithetical images of Holmes, the more prevalent one comes from the more famous stories.

But then the question remains: why this discrepancy? That is, if one does not write it off as an error on Doyle’s part, what happened? Did Holmes change and, if so, why?

One possible reading is the influence Watson had on Holmes.  Watson, dear Watson, sometimes comical, always at a loss as to where Sherlock gets his conclusions from, but a loyal friend and chronicler…Holmes finds him indispensable and cannot work without his Boswell. May we deduce from this close relationship between the two that Watson has actually changed Sherlock?  That their “intimate relationship” changed Holmes from a slightly sociopathic loner to a more sociable, though still “Bohemian,” soul?

In any case, one may do well to remember that the original Holmes that readers were introduced to was not the calm, educated gentleman. He’s a man who probably hasn’t heard of Shakespeare. Which raises the question: does the impression we have of the detective come, perhaps, from seeing what we want to see?

The Hounds of Baskerville: Review, Analysis, and Thoughts

My thoughts on Hounds of Baskerville (though there’s only one hound, unless some more are lurking in the shadows…). Spoilers below!

So, last week’s episode provided the resolution to a cliffhanger, the expansion of a 20-page story into a 90 minute episode, and thus complicated, convoluted plot. This week’s episode was much more straightforward, and, arguably, better for that reason. As fun as twists, turns, and guessing games are, there’s a point at which beautiful story arc can get too tangled. This was almost the case last week.

Of course, it could be argued that this week’s plot was overly simple and that the hallucinogens as the solution to the mystery were patently obvious. I thought not. I guess it’s just one of those things where, well, “your mileage may vary.” I didn’t suspect hallucinogens for a variety of reasons, mostly the fact that I found it difficult to believe that several people would be hallucinating the same thing so exactly. Also, Sherlock and hallucinations?

Though where they took that idea is brilliant. Sherlock and doubt. This is yet another example in which the series makes Sherlock just a bit human, just enough to be able to explore his character sufficiently, without making him into a normal, feeling, breathing human being (which he isn’t). He feels fear and doubt – but the story explores to kinds of fear that he has. One is the fear of a being of superior intellect: fear of himself. He doubts, and he fears not knowing – and hence the unknown. The other is the fear of a human being: fear for another he cares about. That’s why he sees Moriarty at the end: because he’s begun to care for John, and knows that Moriarty threatens that. This is a change, of course, from his phrase in The Great Game, “I’ve been informed that I don’t have a heart.” He’s developing one, just a bit of one, and the vulnerability that comes with it. Someone who does not feel has no vulnerabilities, and Sherlock likes to pretend he’s invincible – but he’s not. His one vulnerability is himself, both in the doubt and the sentiment that he experiences for the first time.

The story and the setting are perfect to bring to light that vulnerability. The Hound of the Baskervilles – the most famous Doyle novel - is a Gothic novel, of the supernatural explained variety. It’s supposed to be dark and scary and kind of supernatural, almost a horror story, but there’s a logical explanation at the end. That’s Doyle’s brilliance: he adopts the Gothic novel for his purposes, juxtaposes fear and the supernatural with Sherlock’s realizations. As an adaptation, the episode was brilliantly done. It was bloody scary. I don’t get scared too easily, and I can’t say I was terrified, but nevertheless, I can’t say I watched it calmly. The episode with Watson in the lab, in particular, was nerve-wracking. (in his position, I’d lock myself in the cage too. Smartest solution. Though I figured out pretty quickly it was an experiment of Sherlock’s – did anybody else?)

The interaction between Watson and Sherlock is also wonderful. I’m not quite ready to ship them together yet (I don’t think that’s where the series needs to go), but their relationship is certainly developing. They’ve gotten to the point where their friendship is strong enough that they can insult each other and yet help each other and trust each other. There are scenes where they are being complete bastards to each other: Sherlock running that experiment on Watson, Sherlock giving Watson coffee with sugar which he believes contains a hallucinogen, Watson’s inability to understand Sherlock’s fear. That last scene was particularly grating – Watson just would not shut up, and the idea that there might be something wrong with Sherlock was just so incomprehensible to him. But other scenes make up for that and which show that their friendship can survive: “I don’t have friends. I have one,” is possibly one of the best lines in the entire season. And Sherlock’s worry about John after the little “experiment” is patently genuine.

Also, can I just point out what a perfect piece of cross-referencing that Star Trek reference is? In J.J. Abrams’ 2009 film Star Trek, Spock (who is having a conflict between his emotions and his cold logic, rather like Sherlock, which makes it a really apt reference), says “if you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” He’s quoting Sherlock, of course. So then, when Sherlock says his own line, Watson calls him Spock. Sherlock and Spock being two of my favorite fictional men (read: crushes), that was perfect. Add to that the fact that Benedict Cumberbatch recently got cast as the villain in Star Trek 2 (I really hope his villain is a clever character who can have a battle of wits with Spock…then my life would be complete). And all those lens flares – remind anyone of J.J. Abrams? It’s like the writers/creators knew Benedict would be cast in the Star Trek film before he was….

And now time for the criticisms. There are few, but they exist...

The beginning, where Sherlock, to borrow an expression, “really doesn’t have his shit together.” We know that Sherlock’s mind rebels at stagnation. That it’s like an engine, always running. In fact, that phrase, “my mind rebels at stagnation,” is taken from The Sign of Four, the same one in which Holmes takes a 7-percent-solution of cocaine (hence, talking about needing something “seven percent stronger”). In said novel, Holmes calmly takes his cocaine while Watson watches in despair (at least here Watson has the guts to prevent his friend from being on drugs). Nevertheless, there are other instances throughout the stories that suggest that Holmes can occupy himself with other things: chemistry, books, his monographs. In A Scandal in Bohemia, for example, he remains at Baker Street, “buried among his old books, alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness of the drug, and the fierce energy of his own keen nature.” Clearly, Watson (and Doyle) are suggesting that, despite Holmes’ dependence on the drug, he still has the ability to occupy himself somehow. Surely that engine of a mind must be able to think of something, to solve other problems than detective ones? In any case, Holmes’ anxiety and restlessness at the beginning seem overdone, though it’s clear that they’re a setup for his later breakdown of self-doubt.

Sherlock’s mind palace. The concept is very cool (and quite real, there’s even a wikihow on how to build a mind palace). But the way it was shown was inadequate. Part of the charm of Sherlock’s brilliance is that it’s so beyond the average human mind. It’s something special and of itself. The idea of attempting to transcribe that into a visual medium through words on the screen, manipulated by Sherlock through some ridiculous gestures, is frankly a bit of an insult to Sherlock’s mental abilities. It really does look like the editors decided to have a fun time playing around with different fonts and Google image search. Not to mention that it is rather reminiscent of the slightly hallucinogenic thinking-dream of Robert Downey Jr.’s Sherlock in the Sherlock Holmes movie.

The password. That whole scene was superfluous. It’s a top government secret – and it’s a six letter password, and a name at that? People who work in top secret government facilities are not that predictable with their passwords. And having a brilliant detective character guess the password through profiling really is the oldest trick in the detective story-writing book. It feels like the writers just needed another scene of Sherlock being clever, and this was the best they could do.

Now, on to the most important question: Moriarty the ending, and The Reichenbach Fall(s). The last ten seconds end with Moriarty being released from prison; his cell is covered in the word “Sherlock.” It’s clear that Moriarty has a very intricate plot up his sleeve. A master criminal like him would not allow himself to be caught like that. I’d guess that his arrest is a decoy for what the real crime is; scribbling Sherlock’s name all over the walls as a way to pretend to be insane seems to be a good way to do so. That scene in the teaser which Moriarty is being led from his cell to the courthouse is also rather telling (and, at the same time, not really). It is certainly brilliantly filmed, however - just as it looks like Moriarty’s starting to smile, he walks through shadow, and then his face fades away. But it’s certainly an evil smile….

Which does not bode well for Sherlock, of course. We all know what happened at Reichenbach Falls and about Sherlock’s “death,” and Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat haven’t stopped taunting fans with suggestions of the tears they will have to spill after the next episode. My two cents: we all know that Sherlock didn’t actually die when he fell off the Reichenbach Falls. Doyle brought his character back to life – apparently Holmes faked his death. Both Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss are students of the Canon, and I doubt they would differ from Doyle on so important a point. And besides, the two are rather fans of what is called “trolling.” They are probably relishing the fact that we are falling for exactly what they want us to fall for. But what have they actually said?

“..only the fall remains. You have one week to brace yourselves.”

“St. Bart’s Hospital..end of route” (this was a picture that was tweeted).

“somebody certainly [dies].”

Can I point out that none of those actually confirm Sherlock’s death? Moriarty is also supposed to die at Reichenbach. And given how attached some fans are to Moriarty, isn’t it possible that this is what they’re playing off of?

Furthermore, as much as we like to pretend that art is Art with a big “A,” and not subject to things like money and what the audience want….that’s kind of not true. Sherlock is possibly because the BBC commissions it. And Sherlock is one of the BBC’s most popular shows right now. They will probably commission a third season, and our oh-so-clever screenwriters will have to find an oh-so-clever way to bring Sherlock back. Of course, I (obviously) haven’t seen the third episode, and therefore I can’t vouch for how possible it is for Holmes to come back. Benedict Cumberbatch has said that it’s “quite difficult” for Sherlock to return, but, once again, how ambiguous is that? After all, Sherlock Holmes is the master of the impossible, and besides, we’ve seen characters fake their deaths on the show before (i.e. Irene Adler). I have no doubt that Gatiss and Moffat are clever enough to think of something.

Of course, maybe I’m just in denial, because I really, truly cannot accept the idea of there being no more Sherlock. I haven’t even considered that possibility, because I know it will involve me weeping for hours on my bed. Let’s hope my logical reasoning prevails over an emotional breakdown.

Announcing....A Sherlockian January and Art History Posts

January is very much a Sherlockian month even without my help. The great man, Sherlock Holmes, was born on January 6th, and this year, both the second series of BBC's Sherlock and the new film Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows come out in January (well, at least, in France, where I live at the moment). This has resulted in many January Sherlockian-themed events, dinners and other fancy Goings-On. It has also resulted in my present infatuation (again) with Sherlock Holmes.

Hence, many January posts will be dedicated to Holmes - to analyzing and reviewing the newest episodes of BBC's Sherlock, a review of the film once I see it, thoughts and ideas about Holmes as a character, and some posts about the Fancy Sherlockian Dinner I'll be attending later this month. I'll still be posting thoughts and reviews of other things, of course, but I think that posts will be predominantly Sherlockian.

I'm also going to be trying out a new thing that I'm going to call Masterpiece Mondays until somebody thinks of a better name. Each Monday, I'll be posting some thoughts and ideas about some masterpiece of Western art - after all, I do need to do something with all the thoughts that crowd my head every time I go to the Louvre. I must add that I am by no means an art history expert - I'm a literature major. However, I'm immensely interested in the history of ideas, and will be applying that knowledge and my literary skills to talking about art. We'll see how it turns out.

Happy Birthday...

to Sherlock Holmes! A man who never lived and so can never die.