Sherlock's elementary years
By Graham Moore |
March 13, 2011, Sunday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
By the time we're 14, most of us have few accomplishments to our name: passing algebra, playing goalie in a football team, stealing a first kiss, if we're lucky. That about covers it. Meanwhile, in "Death Cloud," Sherlock Holmes has managed, at 14, to quell a possible outbreak of bubonic plague, duel a French baron and win the affections of a rambunctious American girl.
What an overachiever.
When the Sherlock Holmes character first appeared, in 1887, he was 33, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle left few clues about his childhood, family or personal history. We know, from the four novels and 56 short stories that Conan Doyle wrote about Holmes, very little. Here, Lane supplies Holmes's missing teenage years. And what adventuresome years they were.
"Death Cloud" begins with Holmes feeling lonely and unpopular at boarding school. He is sent to spend the summer with a cruel aunt and uncle whom he has never met. While staying at the family's country manor, Holmes comes across a mystery: Two victims of what appears to be the bubonic plague are discovered after witnesses report seeing a terrifying "cloud of smoke" pass over their bodies. Holmes investigates his very first case, showing how the precocious teenager becomes the legendary Sherlock Holmes, the world's most influential consulting detective. Lane's command of what will one day become Holmes's signature methods is remarkable, and the lessons Holmes learns here are ones any admirer of his later adventures will recognize: "If you haven't got enough facts to come to a conclusion, then you go out and get more facts," he is instructed at one point. We see Holmes bare-knuckle box, analyze handwriting and develop a fascination with bees - all skills that will later become important in his career.
Lane is attempting a curious feat: to update and adapt Holmes for a new generation, much the way Guy Ritchie has done with a swashbuckling Sherlock on screen. But kids have been reading the original Holmes stories with delight since the 1880s. Indeed, Conan Doyle frequently bemoaned his fate at being considered a writer of mere "boys' books" - he'd meant to write for adults and was chagrined to find his stories frequently reviewed among the teenage adventures of the day. However, while Conan Doyle was suspicious of his younger fans, Lane courts them (and the publisher has put a brazenly Justin Bieber-like figure on the cover in case we miss the point). There is something ironic then in this novel's claim to being "the first teen series endorsed by the Conan Doyle estate," and in any case, the Conan Doyle estate no longer controls the copyright to Sherlock Holmes as strictly as it once did. Yet, in the end, the novel strives to rescue Holmes from the prejudices of his creator, and thereby expand the pool of Holmes devotees. For that we can all be grateful.
What an overachiever.
When the Sherlock Holmes character first appeared, in 1887, he was 33, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle left few clues about his childhood, family or personal history. We know, from the four novels and 56 short stories that Conan Doyle wrote about Holmes, very little. Here, Lane supplies Holmes's missing teenage years. And what adventuresome years they were.
"Death Cloud" begins with Holmes feeling lonely and unpopular at boarding school. He is sent to spend the summer with a cruel aunt and uncle whom he has never met. While staying at the family's country manor, Holmes comes across a mystery: Two victims of what appears to be the bubonic plague are discovered after witnesses report seeing a terrifying "cloud of smoke" pass over their bodies. Holmes investigates his very first case, showing how the precocious teenager becomes the legendary Sherlock Holmes, the world's most influential consulting detective. Lane's command of what will one day become Holmes's signature methods is remarkable, and the lessons Holmes learns here are ones any admirer of his later adventures will recognize: "If you haven't got enough facts to come to a conclusion, then you go out and get more facts," he is instructed at one point. We see Holmes bare-knuckle box, analyze handwriting and develop a fascination with bees - all skills that will later become important in his career.
Lane is attempting a curious feat: to update and adapt Holmes for a new generation, much the way Guy Ritchie has done with a swashbuckling Sherlock on screen. But kids have been reading the original Holmes stories with delight since the 1880s. Indeed, Conan Doyle frequently bemoaned his fate at being considered a writer of mere "boys' books" - he'd meant to write for adults and was chagrined to find his stories frequently reviewed among the teenage adventures of the day. However, while Conan Doyle was suspicious of his younger fans, Lane courts them (and the publisher has put a brazenly Justin Bieber-like figure on the cover in case we miss the point). There is something ironic then in this novel's claim to being "the first teen series endorsed by the Conan Doyle estate," and in any case, the Conan Doyle estate no longer controls the copyright to Sherlock Holmes as strictly as it once did. Yet, in the end, the novel strives to rescue Holmes from the prejudices of his creator, and thereby expand the pool of Holmes devotees. For that we can all be grateful.
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