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It’s Elementary: Sherlock Holmes in the Horror Genre

Sherlock Holmes is one of the most beloved characters in fiction. He’s not particularly lovable, or even likable; in fact, he’s a depressed, drug-addicted, arrogant, misogynistic, obnoxious know-it-all. Even his  creator tried to kill him off. There’s just something about him that draws people to read about Holmes and his faithful chronicler, Watson, and to visit and revisit the characters. Holmes can’t be contained to just the stories Arthur Conan Doyle wrote anymore, most of which are now in the public domain. He belongs to his readers, the visitors to Baker Street.

 

Or does he?

 

The estate of Arthur Conan Doyle approached the publisher of the soon-to-be-released anthology In The Company of Sherlock Holmes, co-edited by Leslie Klinger and Laurie R. King, and attempted to extract a license fee, threatening to discourage distributors from carrying the book unless the fee was paid. Klinger sued the Conan Doyle estate in federal court, asking for a judgement that Sherlock Holmes and a variety of characters and elements from the Holmesian universe were in the public domain and that reference to them does not require that a license fee be paid to the Conan Doyle estate. The judge mostly agreed with Klinger. You can read that story here.

 

What’s important about this is that people don’t just want to read the original stories. They want new takes. There’s a tradition of Sherlock Holmes pastiches– homages to the Master Detective. Some are very good, and some are a lot of fun to read. And many of these fall into the horror genre. Did Arthur Conan Doyle deserve to profit from his creation? Absolutely. But should his estate be bullying writers and publishers a hundred years later, even after the majority of the stories have entered the public domain? It doesn’t make sense to me. It’s past time to explore characters that just can’t stay in the pages of their original stories, and see what new writers can do. Want to check out some of the horror genre’s takes on the Great Detective?  Here are some possibilities.

 

Victorian Undead  by Ian Edginton, illustrated by Davide Fabbri . Victorian Undead is a graphic novel that collects the comic books for this limited series of  six issues, which pit Sherlock Holmes and Watson against zombies, led by Professor Moriarty. It is followed by Victorian Undead II, in which the duo go up against Dracula. The Monster Librarian, a zombie fan, really enjoyed this series. Be warned, there is a fair amount of gore, which is not exactly a signature of the Holmes oeuvre, so this is probably a better way to introduce a zombie-loving reader to Sherlock than a Sherlock lover to the horror genre.

 

   Gaslight Arcanum: Uncanny Tales of Sherlock Holmes  edited by J.R. Campbell and Charles Prepolec.  This is the third volume in a series of anthologies that introduce the supremely rational Holmes to the supernatural and horrific. You can read our review here. Gaslight Grimoire: Fantastic Tales of Sherlock Holmes and Gaslight Grotesque: Nightmare Tales of Sherlock Holmes precede this volume in the series. While these books have both excellent and not-so-excellent stories, there are definitely more winners than losers, and there are some fantastic authors included. Gaslight Arcanum includes a fantastic story by Kim Newman. This is a good volume to offer to both Holmes lovers and horror lovers, so if your library doesn’t have it already, you might consider it for its appeal to both mystery and horror readers.

 

   Sherlock Holmes: Revenant by William Meikle. William Meikle grew up in Scotland reading Sherlock Holmes, and you can really tell. Read our review here. It’s not long, but it gets the point across. Again, keeping in mind that you can’t please everyone all of the time, this is a great story appreciated by lovers of both Holmes and the supernatural.

 

  Shadows Over Baker Street (Sherlock Holmes) edited by Michael Reaves and John Pelan. Here you’ve got a collection of stories in which Sherlock Holmes and company encounter the gods and creatures of the Cthulu mythos. I am admittedly not a fan of Lovecraft, so I haven’t picked this up, but it’s an intriguing concept and when the two come together in the right way, could make for some really effective storytelling. This might be a way to introduce Lovecraft and Lovecraftian fiction to a new audience– like Sherlock Holmes, the Cthulu mythos has moved beyond the original stories to reach its tentacles out in many directions.

 

The Canary Trainer: From the Memoirs of John H. Watson by Nicholas Meyer. Nicholas Meyer’s pastiches are considered to be some of the best. Preceded by The Seven-Per-Cent Solution and The West End Horror, The Canary Trainer pits Holmes against The Phantom of the Opera.

 

Dust and Shadow: An Account of the Ripper Killings by Dr. John H. Watson by Lynsay Faye. Naturally, as a horror review site, we couldn’t leave out Jack the Ripper.  The combination of Sherlock Holmes and Jack the Ripper is a tempting one for many authors, so there are quite a few pastiches that take on this theme. Faye’s 2009 debut novel received great reviews, so if you’re looking for a pastiche that pits Holmes against the Ripper, this one is a good choice.

 

  Sherlock Holmes and the Horror of Frankenstein by Luke Kuhns, illustrated by Marcie Klinger. Now, frankly, I don’t know anything about this book, but it appears to be a graphic novel, and just the cover makes me want to open it up. Frankenstein and Sherlock Holmes– what a perfect combination! It’s just out, so if you decide to try it out I would love to find out what you think of it.

 

This is not anywhere near the number of pastiches of varying quality out there that you can check out, and I’ve shared just a few of them here (so please don’t feel indignant if I left one of your favorites out). There are many short stories as well, including Neil Gaiman’s excellent “A Study in Emerald”. For more suggestions, you can visit this blog post at Tor.com, which did a project a while back titled “Holmes for the Holidays”.  Enjoy!

 

Interview with a Vampire Novelist: Kim Newman

As the announcement for HWA Vampire Novel of the Century drew near, intrepid reviewer Wendy Zazo-Philips approached Kim Newman, author of nominee Anno Dracula, for an interview, and he graciously answered her questions.  Wendy asked some pretty interesting questions- you can check out his answers below.

 

 

Interview with Kim Newman, with an introduction by Wendy Zazo-Philips

I’m not sure if there has ever been a more prolific writer than Kim Newman. He is an English writer, journalist, and film critic whose works have spanned over four decades and have earned him many accolades, including the Bram Stoker Award and the International Horror Guild Award.  In horror fiction, perhaps his best-known novel is Anno Dracula, which was followed by Anno Dracula: The Bloody Red Baron, and Dracula Cha Cha Cha. Anno Dracula and The Bloody Red Baron have recently been republished by Titan Books.  One of his latest works is Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D’Urbervilles , which is a collection of short stories based on the characters of Professor James Moriarty and Colonel Sebastian ‘Basher’ Moran.

 

Wendy:     When you adopt a well-known character like Sherlock Holmes’ nemesis, Professor Moriarty, you must satisfy two groups of readers: the fans (or potential fans) of your work as well as the fans of the character himself.  Can you tell us more about how these two groups will be satisfied with your new collection Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D’Urbervilles?

 

Kim: It’s a little presumptuous to assume these groups will be satisfied with the book, but I hope they are.  I tend not to think too hard about how readers will respond to the work while I’m writing it – sometimes in revisions, I’ll change or delete things that strike me as too obvious or too obscure or generally in the way.  I did know with this book that there would be a significant percentage of readers who are very familiar with the Conan Doyle stories, and so I salted through a lot of things that they might pick up – though I assume the general reader gets many of the Holmes jokes too.  I did want to give my particular spin to the characters – and, like the Holmes stories as a whole, it’s a book about two characters rather than one – but it still derives from Doyle.  I decided early on that I wouldn’t contradict anything Doyle writes in order to make things easier for me, though I do point out where he contradicted himself.  I know there are people who follow my work, but I also know that I’m unlikely ever to attract the level of minute analysis that the Holmes stories have had over the years.  I hope Thomas Hardy’s fans won’t be too upset by The Hound of the D’Urbervilles either.

 

 

Wendy:    In the short story “The Adventure of the Six Maledictions” in Gaslight Arcanum: The Uncanny Tales of Sherlock Holmes, one of the pivotal plot points is a recounting (with commentation by Moran) of “The Ballad of Mad Carew,” which was an actual poem written in 1911 by J. Milton Hayes.  Was the poem the genesis of the story, or was it (and the Mad Carew character) added later?

 

Kim: Yes, I started with the poem – though it was a way to get into the recurrent 19th century motif of the cursed jewel or object.  The initial idea was that the component stories of Professor Moriarty would all arise from a collision of Doyle’s world with that of another writer – Zane Grey, Anthony Hope, Thomas Hardy, H.G. Wells, etc. – and Hayes certainly isn’t as famous or well-remembered as they are.  The poem is obviously influenced by Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone, which is the best of the cursed jewel of Empire stories (Doyle’s “The Sign of the Four” is another key entry in the cycle), but that takes place a bit before the 1880s/90s time period of Professor Moriarty.  I also wanted to make something of the character of Carew.

 

 

Wendy:   You mentioned in a previous interview that there are people that will claim not to enjoy reading or watching horror stories, but yet almost everyone has read or seen (i.e.) A Christmas Carol and/or The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.  What is it about horror stories that draw people to them, and why do you think people are generally skittish about admitting to liking them?

 

Kim: Horror is one of those forms that thrives on being disreputable, and probably needs to be in order to do its job – which ranges from just being harmlessly spooky to addressing the deepest, darkest material there is.

 

 

Wendy:  There has been a deluge of young adult vampire novels in recent years, to the point that we had to launch a sister site, Reading Bites, for those reviews.  Can there be such a thing as oversaturation of the vampire genre?

 

Kim: As someone interested in vampire fiction, I think there is now such a proliferation of material that I find it impossible to keep up with.  In the reissue of The Bloody Red Baron, there’s a new novella (“Vampire Romance”) which was written partly to address developments in vampire fiction since I last worked on the Anno Dracula series.

 

 

Wendy:    You’ve mentioned a couple of times before and in your biography that you used to work in cabaret, but (at least where I’ve read) you never discussed it in detail.  Did working in musical theater affect your writing process?

 

Kim: In the early 1980s, I wrote plays and musicals and performed with a group called Club Whoopee.  Based in Somerset, we appeared at Arts Centres, pubs, a few parties, etc., under the aegis of an organization called Sheep Worrying, which published a fanzine, put on stage shows, prompted local bands, issued a few tapes and records and did other vaguely countercultural (the buzzword of the time was “alternative”) things.  One of the groups we toured with evolved into P.J. Harvey’s band.  We weren’t very successful or, frankly, very good, though we did generate some good material.  Some of my later fiction grew out of things I wrote for the stage, and I’d like to work in that medium again sometime (I’ve enjoyed writing plays for radio in the last few years).  I certainly grew as a writer while doing this stuff, and a couple of odd things stay with me – in the musicals I wrote, I was working with a large group of people with a range of ages, talents and commitments but I learned to make sure that everyone in every show had some bit of business (a funny line, a character trait) that let them show off a bit.  I did this because I noticed other people didn’t, and that small-part actors (who still had to show up all the time) got fed up with just standing about feeding nothing lines to the few “stars” in a show.  Now I try to make sure every little character I write has something going for them, even if it’s very small.  I enjoyed the technical stuff: writing to cover scene changes or contriving the action so it all takes place in a single space, directing the audience’s attention to one part of the stage to set up a surprise somewhere else, etc.  One of the things that made it fun also led in the end to me moving on – you have to rely so much on other people, whereas writing prose it’s just your fault.

 

 

Wendy:  I read with delight about the “Peace and Love Corporation,” which was a company of writers that included you, Eugene Byrne, Stefan Jaworzyn, Neil Gaiman, and Phil Nutman.  What was that like?

 

Kim: Being in a small room throwing jokes at each other, with someone designated to take notes and write up the articles.  We mostly wrote humorous pieces, firstly for men’s magazines and then for a short-lived comedy magazine called The Truth, though Neil, Eugene and I fiddled with some fiction projects that didn’t get finished, and Neil, Stefan, Phil and I worked up film outlines that didn’t get bought (I turned some into novels – Bad Dreams and Orgy of the Blood Parasites).  The last real P&L project was Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock – a parody of rock musicals (music by Brian Smedley) that Eugene and I wrote, with a few scenes and songs involving Neil.

 

 

Wendy:  More and more, we are receiving requests to review independent and self-published works.  How do you see these changes in the industry, and what do you think the future holds for authors?

 

Kim: I still think it’s difficult to reach an audience without a conventional publisher – they have publicists, etc. – and I personally value the process of editing that tends to get skipped in self-publishing.  I think the future will be difficult, but it’s never been easy for most authors.  George Gissing’s New Grub Street (1891) is still horribly pertinent about how hard it is to earn a living as a writer.

 

 

Wendy:   Was going to the library a part of your childhood?  Do you still go?

 

Kim: Yes.  I spent a lot of time in libraries as a kid, a teenager and in my twenties – I even went through a staying-out-of-the-cold-and-reading-a-novel-off-the-shelves-in-an-afternoon phase when I was really poverty-stricken.  I’m afraid I don’t go these days – I have more books here than I can possibly read, and even when not using the internet to research I tend to track down and buy reference books for particular projects.  I passionately believe in the importance of libraries and think that there’s no real replacement for them.

 

 

Wendy:  If you could suggest one or two books for librarians to purchase to introduce their patrons to Kim Newman, which ones would you suggest?

 

Kim: My novel Anno Dracula and my non-fiction book Nightmare Movies, both recently reissued in expanded editions.

 

 

Wendy:  The purpose of our website is to help librarians make well-informed decisions about which horror-genre books to purchase for their collections.  What books written by other authors do you feel are “must have” titles for libraries?

 

Kim: I’d cite two other books with my name on the spine – Horror: 100 Best Books and Horror: Another 100 Best Books, edited with Stephen Jones, which each contain a hundred essays by horror authors on their favourite horror titles and an extensive list of further reading suggestions by me and Steve.

 

 

Wendy:  What projects are you working on now?

 

Kim: I’m doing a new Anno Dracula novel (the long-delayed Johnny Alucard) and pondering some other long-in-the-works projects, a novel called An English Ghost Story and a 1920s schoolgirl adventure called Kentish Glory.  Just now, I’m writing a new novella (set in swinging London) to go in the reissue of Dracula Cha Cha Cha.

 

 

Wendy:  Is there anything else you’d like librarians and readers to know?

 

Kim: Just that I appreciate them very much.

 

 

Check It Out: HWA Vampire Novel of the Century

 

A couple of months ago we got a press release from the Horror Writers Association. It read, in part:

 

The Horror Writers Association (HWA), the international association of writers, publishing professionals, and supporters of horror literature, in conjunction with the Bram Stoker Family Estate and the Rosenbach Museum & Library, proudly announce the nominees for the Bram Stoker Vampire Novel of the Century Award™, to be presented at the Bram Stoker Awards Banquet at World Horror Convention in Salt Lake City, Utah, on March 31, 2012. The Award will mark the centenary of the death in 1912 of Abraham (Bram) Stoker, the author of Dracula.

A jury composed of writers and scholars selected, from a field of more than 35 preliminary nominees, the six vampire novels that they believe have had the greatest impact on the horror genre since publication of Dracula in 1897. Eligible works must have been first published between 1912 and 2011 and published in or translated into English. The winning book will be announced on March 31, 2012. HWA will also celebrate its twenty-fifth anniversary on that date.

 

 

We at MonsterLibrarian.com are here to help you learn a little about these titles. Here’s a link to a page we’ve created with reviews of each of the nominated books. Some of these are now out of print or difficult to find (The Soft Whisper of the Dead was a limited edition of only 2,800 copies) but if you search your existing collection you may find these books are already on your shelves. Even if they aren’t, and you can’t snag yourself a copy, this is a great time to showcase your vampire novels and movies. Chelsea Quinn Yarbro has just come out with the twenty-fifth book in her Count Saint-Germain series, Commedia della Morte. Nominee Hotel Transylvania is the first book in that series. Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend has been made into three movies since it was published in 1954.

Want to find out more about the authors and their works? Click on the name of the author of each nominated book on the list below.

 

Nominees for HWA’s Vampire Novel of the Century

The Soft Whisper of the Dead (1983) written by Charles L. Grant.

Salem’s Lot(1975) written by Stephen King.

I Am Legend (1954) written by Richard Matheson.

Anno Dracula (1992) written by Kim Newman.

Interview with the Vampire (1976) written by Anne Rice.

Hotel Transylvania (1978) written by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro.

 

I personally have a hard time believing that it’s possible to pick ONE vampire novel from the past hundred years as having the most impact on the horror genre. But a list? That’s interesting, and it gives us- reviewers, librarians, educators, and readers- something to talk about and to share with others.  So several of our reviewers volunteered to write reviews for the books on the list. Some of the books were treasured possessions, others were library copies or first time reads.

I learned new things from reading about the books and their authors. Four of the named books were first in a series- Charles L. Grant wrote twelve books set in Oxrun Station; Chelsea Quinn Yarbro just published the 25th title in her Count Saint-Germain series, which begins with nominee Hotel Transylvania; Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula is the first in a trilogy; and Anne Rice followed Interview with the Vampire with so many other vampire tales that I’ve lost count. Three of them were published in the 1970’s- Salem’s Lot, Hotel Transylvania, and Interview With the Vampire. Interview With the Vampire, Salem’s Lot, and I Am Legend have all been made into movies. I was surprised to find that a few of the books are difficult to track down or out of print- Hotel Transylvania is only availalble as an ebook,  Soft Whisper of the Dead had a very limited print run, and reviewer Sheila Shedd had to send away for her copy of Anno Dracula. Again, check  your library shelves to see if you already own these. You might.

Even if you don’t own the books and can’t get them, this is still a great opportunity to showcase your vampire books and movies (no sparkles allowed). Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s Commedia della Morte comes out this month, for starters; and if you click here you’ll find a list of additional titles as well as a few links to help you fill out your display. This is also a gold mine for discussion.  Here are some interesting questions to get you thinking…
 

  • Is it possible for there to be one vampire novel with more impact than any other?
  • Do you agree with the novels nominated for the award? Is there another book you’d include?
  • Which book do you think will win the award? Which one would you like to see win the award?
  • Did any of our reviews intrigue you enough to check out the book, if you haven’t already?

This inquiring mind would love to know! Enjoy, and please leave a comment!