FOR THE SAKE OF THE GAME: In The Footsteps of Sherlock Holmes

Zoë Sharp

My introduction to crime, as I’ve probably mentioned before, was from the opposite direction to most readers. Not from the detective’s point of view, but the criminal’s. Simon Templar, known as The Saint, who was hero of numerous novels and short stories, as well as several TV and film incarnations. With a twinkle in his eye, he ran rings around the inept but dogged Inspector Claude Eustace Teal of Scotland Yard.

  

Ivor Dean (l) as Claude Eustace Teal and Roger Moore as Simon Templar

Ironically perhaps, I moved from the works of Leslie Charteris to those of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whose fictional hero also made the police look somewhat like dolts. Sherlock Holmes was no criminal, although he was known to ponder that he would have made an excellent one. I devoured every Sherlock Holmes story and novel, and taking great delight in the black-and-white movies with Basil Rathbone in the title role and Nigel Bruce as the slightly bumbling Doctor Watson—always to my mind an unfair portrayal.

 

Basil Rathbone (l) as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr Watson

The first consulting detective and famous occupant of 221B Baker Street never lacked for TV and movie outings, some taken more seriously than others. I was a particular fan of the version starring Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke. This adaptation did not shy away from Holmes’ cocaine use, and Watson was far closer to the stout companion of the novels.

Jeremy Brett (l) as Sherlock Holmes and Edward Hardwicke as Dr Watson

Those two versions of the Sherlock Holmes stories kept the characters in their original Edwardian setting—more or less. I seem to recall the Rathbone incarnation being stretched into wartime. But more recently there have been two very successful modern takes on the Baker Street detective which have approached things from very different angles.

Elementary, starring Jonny Lee Miller as Holmes very much on the autistic spectrum and a recovering drug addict, with Lucy Liu as his sidekick and sobriety minder, Dr Joan Watson. This is not the only gender-swapped role—Moriarty is now Jamie rather than James—and the action has been shifted almost entirely to the States.

Lucy Liu (l) as Dr Joan Watson and Jonny Lee Miller as Sherlock Holmes in Elementary

Sherlock, on the other hand, keeps the famous sleuth (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) firmly in London, in his flat in Baker Street, with Mrs Hudson as his long-suffering landlady. Dr Watson, perhaps at his most dynamic when brought to life by Martin Freeman, retains originality in that he is still an army medic who was wounded in Afghanistan. Instead of chronicling Holmes’ adventures for the newspapers, Watson pens a blog. The Irregulars—Holmes’ unofficial eyes and ears throughout the city—is a network of the homeless. His older brother, Mycroft, is something sinister in the Security Services.

(l to r) Mark Gatiss as Mycroft Holmes, Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes, Martin Freeman as Dr Watson in Sherlock

So, it’s hardly surprising that if you offer the chance to writers to take the Conan Doyle canon as their inspiration and let their imaginations run riot, you’re going to get a wide range of weird and wonderful stories. Editors Leslie S Klinger and Laurie R King first did this with A STUDY IN SHERLOCK in 2011, featuring writers such as Lee Child, Michael Connelly, and Neil Gaiman. Two more outings followed—2014’s IN THE COMPANY OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, and ECHOES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES in 2016.

I was delighted to be asked to contribute a short story to the latest anthology, FOR THE SAKE OF THE GAME, which comes out on December 4^th. The stories in this book take a variety of forms, including a song and a graphic-strip version.

My own effort, called ‘Hounded’ is a retelling of THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES, modernised, although still featuring most of the elements of the tale. I chose this as it was the nearest to a close-protection plotline, but rather than substitute my bodyguard protagonist Charlie Fox into the roles played by Holmes and Watson as protectors of Sir Henry Baskerville, I approached it from a different angle. By taking a subplot as my main strand, and relegating the infamous hell-hound to a subplot, I hope I’ve managed to provide an entertaining new take on the story while still paying homage to the original, even down to some of the dialogue and certain characters’ enthusiasm for phrenology and butterflies.

This week’s Word of the Week is snickersnee, which is a large knife. The word comes from a Dutch phrase, steake or snye, from the Dutch words steken, meaning to thrust or stick, and snijden, to cut. A similar phrase in English is ‘cut and thrust’ but as this Dutch phrase was often written as stick or snee, or snick-a-snee, it came into common usage as snickersnee. 

Events:

Fellow author David Beckler has very kindly included my latest standalone novel, DANCING ON THE GRAVE, in a multi-title giveaway of signed print books by Northern English writers. The other books are NO TIME TO DIE by Andrew Barrett, KISS OF DEATH by Paul Finch, CRASH by Keith Houghton, and THE BLOW OUT by Bill Rogers. More details on how to enter the sweepstake here. The event ends on December 12^th.