Happy National Book Lover’s Day!

Posted on August 9, 2016 by girlonbridge

Happy Birthday Benedict Cumberbatch!

Posted on July 19, 2016 by girlonbridge

Wishing an extremely happy 40th to a spectacular Sherlock.

Holmes for the Holidays

Posted on June 23, 2016 by girlonbridge

I just finished writing “The Adventure of the Missing Irregular,” a Christmas-themed Holmes story that will be published in the MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part 5, a holiday story collection coming out later this year.

When one of Holmes’s Baker Street Irregulars vanishes, Wiggins joins forces with his employer and Dr. Watson in a heartwarming tale perfect for reading by a (fake or real) Christmas fire.

My previous story, “The Adventure of the Traveling Orchestra,” is featured in Part 1 of this collection.

TV Review: Houdini and Doyle

Posted on March 16, 2016 by girlonbridge

Harry Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle knew each other, and they had a conflict regarding the validity of spiritualism. Houdini and Doyle, the new ITV-produced miniseries, has this friendship at its core. Lest you expect any further historical accuracy than this general framework, however, let me disabuse you of the notion immediately: Houdini and Doyle is not without fun moments, but it is not a historical series in any respect.

The story wastes little time in getting to the heart of the premise, which is an antagonistically-friendly crimesolving partnership between Houdini and Doyle, who set out to solve the murder of a nun—a murder with supposedly-supernatural overtones. An (expectedly) uncooperative Scotland Yard assigns them the third member of their unit—a female officer named Adelaide Stratton. If you are a student of history, this is, well, an issue. The first female police officer was not hired until 1919, when Doyle was nearly 60. This series presents a younger Doyle, who is acutely mourning the loss of his wife Louise, who died in 1906 (without contending, at least initially, with the reality of his second wife, Jean Leckie, with whom he was already deeply in love when Louise died).

I belabored these points early to get the issue of history out of the way: This series is neither realistically accurate to its time nor is it accurate to its characters. It is both anachronistic and as violently murderous of timeline continuity as Doyle himself was in his stories.

However, and it’s a large however, that is not at all to claim that Houdini and Doyle isn’t very, very fun at times. Seen as a work of fanfiction in which characters loosely based on Houdini and Sir Arthur have been placed in a quirky AU world somewhat resembling turn-of-the-century England with equal parts Steampunk silliness, it actually somewhat works. It’s a bit like the world of Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes films taken to the next level of heightened reality.

Stephen Mangan and Michael Weston do a capable job as the believer Doyle and the skeptic Houdini, respectively, and Rebecca Liddiard plays an eager and self-possessed Stratton. Some of the first episode’s most enjoyable moments exist in the characters’ banter rather than in the solving of the mystery itself, which is fairly standard for a crime series.

Houdini and Doyle presents some very pretty visuals and an amusing way to spend three quarters of an hour. It’s not exactly memorable, and it’s certainly not a work of historical significance, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth checking out if you enjoy light mystery and entertaining procedurals.

Houdini and Doyle can be viewed on ITV Encore in the UK and will begin airing weekly on May 2nd on Fox in the US.

Book Review: Young Sherlock Holmes

Posted on January 21, 2016 by girlonbridge

Young Sherlock Holmes

As a reviewer and Holmes enthusiast, I’ve read a vast number of Sherlock Holmes novels meant for adults, and I’ve encountered quite a few meant for children. The Young Sherlock Holmes Series by Andrew Lane, of which I have several volumes, is somewhat unusual because it fits into the middle, with a preteen to teenaged target audience similar to Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl Series.

Through the stories, Lane provides a rich sensory experience, introducing the young reader to period-accurate details of life in the late 1800s. I was particularly struck by the visceral description of life in a boys’ boarding school. As the action intensifies, the reader is carried along by this attention to detail, through mysteries that will stretch the imagination and give the reader a chance to unravel the truth along with Sherlock Holmes–mysteries that are just gruesome enough, but not too much for the older preteen or teenaged reader.

Speaking of Holmes, his character is well fleshed out and develops in a believable way toward the dichotomies of reason and emotion in his personality. As with any book that explores the detective in his early life, certain decisions have to be made about what, exactly, made him who he is–an issue that most who write about the adult Holmes can either skirt or avoid altogether. Lane’s decisions have structural integrity within the story and build toward the character we know and love. Additionally, the richly-drawn world of Young Sherlock Holmes is complemented by complex original characters and believable appearances by familiar ones.

Some of the events depicted in the series are likely to be too intense for the youngest readers, but preteens, teens, and adults who enjoy reading about the early life of Sherlock Holmes will enjoy detailed stories and the beginning of the career of a remarkable character. Recommended for the young and young at heart, this series is still being written, and more volumes are expected.

Learn about the world of Young Sherlock Holmes and purchase the books here

The above-reviewed work was provided for consideration by the publisher. Opinions expressed are the reviewer’s own.

How to purchase my Sherlock Holmes novels:

(Book 1) The Detective and the Woman: A Novel of Sherlock Holmes is available from all good bookstores and e-bookstores worldwide including in the USA Amazon,Barnes and Noble and Classic Specialities – and in all electronic formats including Amazon Kindle , iTunes(iPad/iPhone) and Kobo.

(Book 2) The Detective, The Woman and The Winking Tree: A Novel of Sherlock Holmes is available from all good bookstores and e-bookstores worldwide including in the USA Amazon,Barnes and Noble and Classic Specialities – and in all electronic formats including Amazon Kindle , iTunes(iPad/iPhone) and Kobo.

(Book 3) The Detective The Woman and The Silent Hive is available from all good bookstores including Amazon USA, Amazon UK, Waterstones UK, and for free shipping worldwide from Book Depository. In ebook format it is in Amazon Kindle.

Happy Birthday

Posted on January 6, 2016 by girlonbridge

Happy 162nd birthday to the world’s first consulting detective!

Review: The Abominable Bride

Posted on January 2, 2016 by girlonbridge

Warning: Spoilers ahead

England is England yet, for all our fears–

Only those things the heart believes are true.

—Vincent Starrett, 221B

The poem 221B by Vincent Starrett is treasured among Sherlockians for its final line, which reminds young and old that “it is always 1895,” but Sherlock’s first holiday special turns my mind to the lines above even more. The Abominable Bride is not really an episode about plot, though it has a good one, and it’s not about advancing the overall arc of the series very much. Instead, it’s about the things the heart believes are true, specifically the heart of Sherlock Holmes. Mycroft Holmes once asked, long ago, in A Scandal in Belgravia, “What might we deduce about his heart?” This episode answers that question.

In the early days of publicity, we were told that the story would be a complete one-off, fully Victorian and unrelated to the series arc as a whole. In recent days, a low-key change occurred, in which cast and showrunners began teasing a series connection after all. The episode began with a confirmation of this in the form of a montage showing the viewer a quick timeline of everything that has happened in the series so far, surely a strange choice if the episode wasn’t going to connect to it. Immediately after, however, we were thrown into an immersive Victorian world, complete with a Doyle-heavy origin story and new-old versions of our favorite characters (with the exception of Vinette Robinson’s Sally, whom I was sad to miss).

The case is brought by a mutton-chop-sporting Lestrade, who introduces Holmes and Watson to the Abominable Bride herself (played by the phenomenal Natasha O’Keeffe), a wedding anniversary murderess-suicide who somehow appears to have risen from the dead to kill her husband—and happens to have killed herself in the exact same way we saw Moriarty kill himself earlier in the series.

What follows is a fairly straightforward investigation that echoes both the style the BBC Series has established and Doylean canon tropes. Two reveals were particularly enjoyable—Mark Gatiss’s Mycroft, bearing the girth and sloth of Doyle’s version, and morgue director Molly in male disguise. At the same time as the case progresses, however, there’s an intrusive subplot that keeps weaving its way through—the female voice in the Victorian Era, with a frustrated Mrs. Hudson going on a silence strike, an angry Mary Watson taking employment without her husband’s knowledge, and a particularly outspoken maid. Hovering above all this is a cryptic tease by Mycroft about an unseen army that needs to win.

It all seems pretty straightforward until it doesn’t. Suddenly, the modern photo of Irene Adler surfaces, and characters begin speaking in increasingly anachronistic terms. The action sequence with the Bride seems like it should be climactic, but it really isn’t, and it’s not meant to be. A Victorian Mind Palace sequence culminates in a visit from Andrew Scott’s Moriarty at his creepy best, and the truth starts to emerge: The case isn’t about the case at all, and furthermore, it’s not even real—the whole thing is a drug-induced delve into Sherlock’s Mind Palace, an attempt to use an unsolved mystery to solve an all-too-modern one.

Knowing this Shyamalan-level twist changes the entire framing of the episode as a whole. No longer are we seeing a surprisingly clever Victorian John; we’re seeing the idea of Watson who lives in Sherlock’s brain. The same is true for each character, and, in turn, they reveal different aspects of Sherlock’s psychology.

The episode’s pre-climax takes place when Holmes unveils the Victorian feminist society that produced the Bride. I’ve seen various confusion and criticism about this, but it’s not a real thing, and it’s not meant to be seen that way. Again, it’s a part of Sherlock’s mind, the working-out of guilt over the women he’s wronged, a gallery led by Molly and including Janine, with whom he engaged in a fake romance. The scene has strong similarities to Sherlock’s courtroom Mind Palace from earlier in the series.

The true climax occurs when the Bride unveils herself and turns out to be Moriarty. As a modern-time, but still dreaming, Sherlock frantically digs up the real-life Bride’s grave to find two corpses (a reference to Lady Frances Carfax), he’s plunged into the canonical version of Reichenbach, a showdown with Moriarty on the edge of the falls.

Except, this time, it doesn’t end the same way. In an echo of long-ago episode A Study in Pink, Watson appears at exactly the right moment and kills Moriarty himself. This is entirely symbolic, Sherlock’s mind finally exorcising the ever-present Moriarty, who has come to represent his weaknesses, by realizing that he will never have to confront his failings alone because he has John by his side.

The end of the episode doesn’t tell us much beyond the fact that Holmes understands the next phase in the (truly dead) Moriarty’s plan and that he’s still using a drugs on occasion, a fact that deeply concerns his brother Mycroft, whose combination of care and anger throughout the episode was played beautifully by Mark Gatiss. We’re left on a cliffhanger, not in a very different place from where we began, but also worlds away from where we began.

Much as The Sign of Three explored the relationship between Holmes and Watson, The Abominable Bride explores Sherlock’s relationship to himself—his fear that he’s far less clever than he’d like to be, his ambivalence about his lack of conformity, and his deep-seated terror of weakness. Ultimately, the series stays absolutely faithful to its own heartbeat, allowing its protagonist to finally, and fully, realize that his hope lies in human connection and in the friendship of his Boswell. The Abominable Bride is the fulfillment of The Reichenbach Fall. The man who fell alone can now fly because he’s not alone any more.

Here dwell together still two men of note

Who never lived and so can never die

In the context of the series, the Victorian Holmes and Watson of The Abominable Bride never lived, but Starrett said it best: They still dwell together, seated by their Baker Street fire, where Sherlock’s heart, and mine, believe they will live forever.

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