Thomas Kent Miller on his Holmes/Haggard pastiches

There is a new interview with Thomas Kent Miller on the re-release of the first of his three Sherlock Holmes (with a dose of H. Rider Haggard) pastiches:

Another way Miller’s books differ from other Holmes pastiches is they are not written in Doyle’s voice, but in Haggard’s [character from She, Leo Vincey].

“I read a lot of the original Arthur Conan Doyle stories to get a clear sense of who Sherlock Holmes is supposed to be, how he would react, the kinds of things he would think and say,” Miller said. “Whenever anything is told through another party the sensibilities of that person change that story. Sherlock Holmes stories all came through Watson. Well, (in Miller’s first book, “Sherlock Holmes on the Roof of the World”), Leo Vincey’s telling his story, so it’s filtered through Vincey’s sensibilities.”

For the full article click here.  

Order the first book from Amazon.com ($9.95) here, or Amazon.co.uk (£6.99) here. (Volumes two and three will be released in September and November respectively.)

Sherlock Holmes on the Roof of the World

Sherlock Holmes finds a 2,000-year-old manuscript presumably written by Jesus, hidden away in a library in Tibet. It’s a murder mystery told by Leo Vincey from the H. Rider Haggard novel, “She.”  Published June 20th, 2017

THE CHALDÆAN MYSTERIES: Arthur Machen and Sherlock Holmes

In Arthur Machen's story "The Inmost Light" (from The Great God Pan and The Inmost Light, 1894), his literary amateur and occult detective Mr Dyson insists to his friend Salisbury that the strange and wonderful are often to be found concealed beneath the dreary and everyday. He exemplifies this idea by commenting on how even in mean and laborious streets there may lurk those whose occupations belie their surroundings: "You may point out a street, correctly enough, as the abode of washerwomen; but, in that second floor, a man may be studying Chaldee roots, and in the garret over the way a forgotten artists is dying by inches."

That phrase "Chaldee roots" is well-chosen. It is impressively arcane and specialised. We receive an impression, a glimpse, of some matter deep and intricate, antiquarian and mysterious. And, tantalisingly, no more is said. Salisbury is sceptical, and suggests Dyson is “misled by a too fervid imagination”, but he does not confess doubt or perplexity about the Chaldee roots Dyson has invoked. Yet it so happens that in those two words Machen was evoking and implying a great deal.

“Chaldee” is an archaicism for “Chaldæan”. It refers to a people who lived in the estuary and marsh lands between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates but is a term also often used more widely for the whole region of Mesopotamia and the empire of Babylon. Chaldee was the original language of parts of some of the books of the Bible (eg Daniel and Ezra) and is regarded as one of the root languages of the Talmud.

Chaldæan beliefs are inferred from a set of cuneiform tablets dated c. 670 BC which reported astrological information in the court of King Ashurbanipal. The Chaldæan /Babylonian system recognizes seven moving lights or forces (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn) set among twenty-eight asterisms or "mansions" (manázil, in the later Arabic), different to the constellations now commonly used. They regarded the world as eternal, with no beginning or end, and the Sun, Moon, and the five planets they knew were seen either as intelligent beings, or as forces guided by some divine intelligence.

The Chaldees exercised a considerable fascination over the Ancient Greek and Latin civilisations, and the term “Chaldæan” came to be synonymous with “astrologer”, “magician” or “seer”. Their ideas found their way into the Mystery religions of the ancient world, such as those that Machen evoked in his youthful poem Eleusinia. The Chaldæan Oracles played a role in Hellenistic mystery religions of the first centuries BC and AD.

We know that Machen himself had lived in humble quarters, surviving on only dry bread, green tea and dark tobacco, and his studies were frequently esoteric. If he was not quite a “forgotten artist, dying by inches”, he was not altogether distant from that fate, living on very little. He worked for the occult publisher and bookseller George Redway, and he was in effect an unacknowledged editor of Walford’s Antiquarian, a journal devoted to obscure notes and queries about the byways of history. Is this, then, a wry reference to himself ? Or did he know another obscure scholar who was studying Chaldee roots? Or was there no such specific counterpart, even though the point might be poetically true?

Well, Machen's Mr Dyson was not the only investigator to be interested in matters Chaldee. One of Machen’s fellow members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was Florence Farr, esotericist, actor, player upon the psaltery, and author of the Nineties novel The Dancing Faun. She also wrote a 16pp monograph, as by F. Farr Emery, entitled The Way of Wisdom. An Investigation of the Meanings of the Letters of the Hebrew Alphabet, considered as a Remnant of Chaldæan Wisdom (J.M. Watkins., London, 1900). But, though she was at times no doubt as impecunious as any other artist or idealist, she was an habitué of Chelsea and does not seem to have lived in the obscurer quarters Machen pictured.

The aesthetical Irish poet Herbert Trench (1863-1923), a contemporary of Machen, in his ‘To A Dead Poet’ a paean to Edgar Allan Poe, evoked him as a “seer Chaldæan belated”, “Hymning Terror and Chaos”, but this may have been purely a literary flourish. He was a Fellow of All Souls’, Oxford, and later a public official, and, though his work was often ethereal, he does not fit Machen’s idea of the starving scholar.

However, some years after Machen’s story, Sherlock Holmes conceived the idea that the Cornish language is akin to the Chaldæan, and had been largely derived from Phoenician traders in tin visiting these shores in ancient times. His interest is noted in the story "The Devil's Foot" (Strand Magazine, December 1910):

"In every direction upon these moors there were traces of some vanished race which had passed utterly away, and left as it sole record strange monuments of stone, irregular mounds which contained the burned ashes of the dead, and curious earthworks which hinted at prehistoric strife. The glamour and mystery of the place, with its sinister atmosphere of forgotten nations, appealed to the imagination of my friend, and he spent much of his time in long walks and solitary meditations upon the moor. The ancient Cornish language had also arrested his attention, and he had, I remember, conceived the idea that it was akin to the Chaldæan, and had been largely derived from the Phoenician traders in tin. He had received a consignment of books upon philology and was settling down to develop this thesis when suddenly, to my sorrow and to his unfeigned delight, we found ourselves, even in that land of dreams, plunged into a problem at our very doors which was more intense, more engrossing, and infinitely more mysterious than any of those which had driven us from London."

At the conclusion of this case, Dr Watson is reassured to see Holmes resume his earlier interest. He notes: “we may. . .go back with a clear conscience to the study of those Chaldæan roots which are surely to be traced in the Cornish branch of the great Celtic speech”. Holmes’ interest in Cornish miracle plays, also evinced in the story, may also have been in quest of survivals of Chaldee lore. A (possibly apocryphal) monograph on Chaldæan Roots in the Ancient Cornish Language has since been attributed to Holmes.

There cannot have been many researchers into Chaldee roots in London in the early 1890s when Machen wrote his story, and Watson does not say that Holmes had newly discovered this interest, only (by implication) the Cornish connection. What is more likely then that Machen, an inveterate wanderer in the byways of London, and a connoisseur of eccentrics, had encountered Holmes and drawn him out on matters Chaldee? Perhaps in 1890 when Holmes had only a few cases at hand and may have taken himself off to pursue his studies incognito? Or just possibly, after the detective's Great Disappearance in 1891, some part of his time was spent not only in Tibet but also under another guise, as a poor scholar in washerwomen's rooms?

The Return of Kala Persad

The Divinations of Kala Persad (1895) by Headon Hill introduced possibly the first Hindu detective in Victorian fiction. The title character, however, is kept out of sight in a secret room. He listens to the cases brought to his friend Mark Poignand, and uses his mystic powers to see the solution. His enquiry agent colleague then goes off to find more orthodox proof. Kala Persad is thus most like M P Shiel's Prince Zaleski, an exotic visionary. It seemed to me that he had more potential and that it might be interesting to see how he would work as an independent character. The first episode in this career, "The Return of Kala Persad", will appear in Seventeen Stories from The Swan River Press, Dublin, next month. The story reveals that Kala Persad was not quite as depicted by Poignand, who did not fully understand his friend's powers: "When he would find me reclining idly, as he supposed, I was in fact transfixed in meditation, training my mind to that acute level of discernment which enabled me to solve his cases for him in a moment. And when I huddled close to the flames, it was not because I was cold, since I have long mastered matters of the body, but to sharpen my spirit by observing the golden dance of Agni, the fire-god." We also make the acquaintance of the seer's companion snake, the cobra Kalpa, an old soul, whose sudden emergence from his basket in a vegetarian restaurant startles a young and troubled Englishman. "The Return of Kala Persad" is one of three tributes to singular Victorian detectives in the book, along with "The Green Skull" (a Sherlock Holmes case) and "Prince Zaleski's Secret". In the latter, Shiel's refulgent sleuth pits his wits against decadent poet, mountaineer and occultist Anstruther Rook in a case threatening the delicate diplomatic balance between the Great Powers, indeed perhaps the fate of the Empire and the world. Other sets of stories offer Four Curious Books; Three Strange Places; Three Odd Societies; and Four Haunted Figures. Advance orders for Seventeen Stories are available now.

IN THE SHADOW OF SHERLOCK HOLMES: R Austin Freeman's Dr Thorndyke

Who is second to Sherlock Holmes as a detective ? Who is second to Arthur Conan Doyle as a writer of detective fiction ? Two rather different questions, but both sure to be warmly debated. However, for many, the answers are clear. Dr Thorndyke of the Middle Temple, the expert in “medical jurisprudence”, is very close to the great man in his attention to detail, his calm reasoning, and his flashes of ingenuity. And his creator, Richard Austin Freeman, is the eternal vice-captain in the team of great crime writers of the Golden Age.

Freeman was born in London in 1862, and one of the incidental pleasures of his books is the way they explore the many forgotten streets, squares and courtyards of the capital. Like Dickens (a favourite writer of his) before him, and like Freeman’s contemporary, Arthur Machen, he evokes the by-ways of the great city so well, it is almost like a character itself in many of his books. From fairly humble beginnings – his father was a tailor and his mother a dressmaker – Freeman gained a medical qualification and secured a colonial appointment as a doctor in West Africa. Fever drove him back to Britain when he was aged thirty and for a while it wasn’t clear what he would do next. Strikingly like Conan Doyle, he served as a locum doctor and used his ample spare time - when patients were unreasonably healthy - to write short stories.

In around thirty books, from The Red Thumb Mark of 1907 to The Jacob Street Mystery of 1942, Freeman brought a strong imagination to bear. Nearly all his cases feature the eminent Dr Thorndyke, whose investigations allow Freeman full rein to demonstrate his shrewd plotting and strong sense of the possibilities of forensic science, long before this was widely practised.

He is also notable for his willingness to innovate in the field of crime fiction. Freeman was one of the first, with The Singing Bone (1912), to deploy the “inverted” crime story. The reader knows who the murderer is from the outset, and the pleasure is in seeing how he can possibly be uncovered. This was an audacious move, but it’s generally recognised that Freeman makes it work. “The interest focuses on the unexpected significance of trivial circumstances,” he explained, and he recommended that the reader should pause after all the facts are laid out, to assess these. I am not so sure myself that this vicarious sleuthing is always the real interest of his tales though. I think he under-estimates his own skill at creating a sinister atmosphere, and the reader’s enjoyment of the lofty omniscience of Dr Thorndyke.

Another of his innovations was to tell the story from the standpoint of the villain, as in The Exploits of Danby Croker (1916). Though most crime fiction is written from the side of law and order, in fact Freeman found that the reader can also enjoy seeing a roguish character get away with it. Of course, E.W. Hornung had done that with the Raffles stories, but Freeman brings great gusto to his bounders and reprobates.

Freeman’s career began, in fact, with just such a character. Under the pseudonym of Clifford Ashdown, a name that disguised a collaboration with Dr J J Pitcairn (a prison surgeon he assisted in one of his temporary posts), he published in 1902 The Adventures of Romney Pringle. His hero – if that’s quite the right word – is in theory a literary agent but actually a consummate con man – if such a distinction is possible. A second series was published in Cassell’s Magazine in 1904 (though not collected in book form until 1969). Alas, something seems to have happened to mar his friendship with Pitcairn. Freeman was soon writing on his own, and under his own name, and Romney Pringle was heard of no more.

It’s some consolation, though, that in his place Freeman gave us his magisterial Dr Thorndyke. By making him both a qualified medical man and a barrister, Freeman gives his detective a highly advantageous set of skills and qualities for the investigation of crime. He is ably assisted by his Watson, Dr Christopher Jervis, by a solicitor, Mr Brodribb, who sometimes introduces cases to him, and by his factotum, Mr Polton – a craftsman in all things of the laboratory or workshop. The latter is essential to Thorndyke’s work, because, throughout the many novels and stories recounting his cases, Thorndyke makes great practical use of scientific experiments, for example with hair, shreds of clothing, soil, anything in fact that might yield up secrets invisible to the naked eye. It has been claimed that in many of these Freeman was actually ahead of the real detectives of his day, and that the methods Thorndyke deploys were taken seriously and studied by the Surete and Scotland Yard.

And there is no doubt Freeman saw this detailed analytical work as being at the heart of his stories. “The Detective Story differs from all other forms of fiction in that its interest is primarily intellectual,” he asserted. He conceded (perhaps a little grudgingly) that “emotion, dramatic action, humour, pathos, “love interest”” might also be allowed, but as “mere accessory factors”.

Some critics, conversely, have thought that all this scrutiny with scientific apparatus can give the books a cold, clinical air, and that the excitement of genius – such as one feels in the presence of Holmes – is missing from his more ponderous rival. But this is mostly unfair. Perhaps occasionally, some of the analytical detail is a little too minutely described. Yet most of the time it is briskly done, throws light on interesting subjects, and seems to the lay reader entirely sound. And Freeman often infuses Thorndyke with human warmth and a determination to aid the distressed and perplexed that counter-balances all this hard logic.

Freeman was also clear that the author must play fair with the reader and laid out three rules to ensure this: “1. The problem must be susceptible of at least approximate solution b y the reader; 2. The solution…must be absolutely conclusive and convincing; 3. No material fact must be withheld from the reader. All the cards must be honestly laid on the table…”. How many detective writers consistently obey all those ?

Perhaps his first great success was with The Eye of Osiris (1911), an excellent mystery involving a museum, a missing Professor, and a mummy, still highly-regarded today. The novel caught the imagination of readers who were in thrall to the exotic symbols and magical allure of ancient Egypt, which authors such as Bram Stoker (The Jewel of the Seven Stars), H. Rider Haggard (Cleopatra, etc), and Sax Rohmer (The Green Eyes of Bast and others) had fostered.

Another highly regarded novel is Mr Pottermack’s Oversight (1930), which makes excellent use of Freeman’s two unconventional techniques I mentioned earlier: the ‘inverted’ story, and sympathy with the villain. In this case, Mr Pottermack is being blackmailed. He does away with his persecutor, as the reader finds out very early on, and uses an ingenious device to quite literally lay a false trail. So – we know who the murderer is, and how he did it. But our interest is wonderfully sustained as we watch how Thorndyke uncovers his deception, even though we almost don’t want him to.

Undoubtedly one of the most startlingly bizarre of his books is For the Defence: Dr Thorndyke (1934), in which an innocent young man ends up (through an extraordinary set of incidents) standing trial for murdering himself. The book takes astonishing liberties with the laws of coincidence, but somehow the reader still has to keep on with the book, slack-jawed at the author’s impudence. I’ve often wondered if Freeman did it for a bet, if only with himself .

Freeman went on producing a new crime novel at roughly the rate of one a year – indeed, some dustwrappers actually announced it as if it were a regular annual event – “Mr Freeman’s 1930 Novel”. It’s fair to say that he always maintained a sound standard, though some critics sense the later titles strain at the possibilities a little. Also, perhaps understandably, he seems to have lost the appetite to innovate, and we remain in the essentially Edwardian world of his first books.

So, by the time of Freeman’s death in September 1943 at Gravesend, Kent, the place he had made his home for nearly 40 years, his fame had faded a little. That Golden Age atmosphere was no longer so much in demand. But over time, collectors began to rediscover his work and appreciate anew how satisfying it is. It is fair to say that a good half-dozen of Freeman’s books ought to be in every connoisseur’s crime fiction collection. But the true savant will want to track them all down.