I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere

Sherlock #221back Special Teaser Features Cumberbatch & Freeman in Period Clothing

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<b>"Engage a special." [FINA] </b></h4>
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We've all been waiting anxiously for news of Series Four of the BBC's <i>Sherlock</i>, which has been up in the air due to the massive scheduling pressures of stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, as well as that of writers and show runners Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat. Each of their stars have risen with the international success of this show, as well as numerous movies and television series.<br />
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So, imagine the collective excitement when Sherlock producer Sue Vertue tweeted:<br />
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This is what we've been doing today! Later on a pic of Sherlock and John as they'll appear in the Special <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/221back?src=hash">#221back</a> <a href="http://t.co/Aq4vncKpKy">pic.twitter.com/Aq4vncKpKy</a><br />
— sue vertue (@suevertue) <a href="https://twitter.com/suevertue/status/537253723022852096">November 25, 2014</a></blockquote>
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And just like that, the Internet was all atwitter today. The entertainment sites - from The Hollywood Reporter to E! Online to Perez Hilton and more - all lit up with what Twitter was onto.<br />
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And sure enough, the @BBCOne Twitter account followed up with the promised image and #221back hashtag:<br />
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<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/221back?src=hash">#221back</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Sherlock?src=hash">#Sherlock</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/notkidding?src=hash">#notkidding</a> <a href="http://t.co/iTfDqfJI0R">pic.twitter.com/iTfDqfJI0R</a><br />
— BBC One (@BBCOne) <a href="https://twitter.com/BBCOne/status/537308030933934080">November 25, 2014</a></blockquote>
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<b>"Oh, my God!" I gasped. "What is it? What does it mean?" [HOUN]</b></h3>
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At this point, like Sherlock Holmes, we cannot make bricks without clay. We need more data. All we have at our disposal is the cover of the read-through draft, issued on 22 November 2014 and the image portraying Cumberbatch in a top hat and Freeman in a bowler. </div>
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Are we to assume that the pair has been transported in time by some apparatus? While Steven Moffat has done his fair share of <i>Dr. Who</i> work, <a href="http://www.ihearofsherlock.com/2014/08/about-sherlock-doctor-who-crossover.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">he has previously denied the likelihood of a crossover</a>. Or perhaps Mrs. Hudson was knocked unconscious and slipped into a dream-like state, with this manifestation of her famous dwellers. While <a href="http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2014-11-25/the-sherlock-special-reveal---what-does-it-mean" target="_blank">some have speculated</a> a dramatization of "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle," it's unlikely that it will happen in time for Christmas of 2014. Next year could be an alternative - although Holmes was wearing a bowler rather than a top hat in that story.</div>
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Perhaps the pair were invited to a costume party and they chose these outfits as a clever homage to their forbears. Or maybe they got caught up in the cosplay of the edgy Sherlock Holmes fans who were featured in "The Empty Hearse."</div>
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Anything we suggest at this point is pure speculation.</div>
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<br />We do have to admit one thing, though. The costuming reminds us of another dynamic duo of Baker Street from some 30 years ago:<br />
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We would be interested to hear your theories.<br />
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Sherlock #221back Special Teaser Features Cumberbatch & Freeman in Period Clothing

"Engage a special." [FINA] We've all been waiting anxiously for news of Series Four of the BBC's Sherlock , which ha...

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by Scott Monty

The Art of the (Sherlockian) Murder

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"It is murder, Watson -- refined, cold-blooded, deliberate murder" [HOUN]</h4>
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Murder, like a forbidden back-alley bar, is a preoccupation. But it's a curiosity we can forgive. Because outside of the gory, sordid details, the promise of <a href="http://www.ihearofsherlock.com/2014/06/basil-rathbone-reluctant-sherlock-holmes.html" target="_blank">a hero</a> -- a doctor, a soldier, <i>a detective</i> -- makes the whole unseemly business somehow more understandable. In her recent book <i><a href="http://amzn.to/1xrssMy" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Art of the English Murder</a></i>, <a href="http://www.lucyworsley.com/" target="_blank">Dr. Lucy Worsley</a> explains the by-night fascination with unhinged minds and forensics in the context of some of Britain's most famous crimes, criminals, and fictional characters. <br />
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Including our namesake. The Sherlockian story begins in Victorian Wiltshire:<br />
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<i>1860. Road Hill House, a Georgian estate belonging to Samuel Kent and his second wife, Mary. Nighttime. As the Kents sleep on, their three-year-old son Saville disappears from his cot. His body is found early the next morning, crammed down the backyard privy. Nearly beheaded.</i></blockquote>
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This case played out with morbid fascination even in London newspapers. Among Scotland Yard’s best, Detective Inspector Jack Whicher was tasked not only to unravel little Saville's tragic demise but to deal with the many write-in deductions of England's new class of armchair sleuths: A mixed class of clerks, shopkeepers, and accountants with <a href="http://www.victorianperiodicals.com/Contents/Overview.asp" target="_blank">increased access to and interest in</a> shocking news from the too-tidy countryside. <br />
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"Despite its lack of artistic merit," writes Worsley, "the literature of murder tells us not what people thought they ought to read. It tells us what they really read." <br />
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Such a notion of quiet hypocrisy directly compels the popular image of Victorian domestic life -- of sexual, violent desires stifled by corsets and crinolines. Indeed, many supposed from the well-publicized testimonies that Mr. Kent had been having an adulterous relationship with one of his housemaids. <br />
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More bewitching still was the newly discovered science of forensics. Over the course of the 19th century, Worsley explains, professional detectives and their amateur (<i>ahem - unofficial consulting</i>) counterparts were interpreting medical evidence collected at crime scenes and from the dubiously maimed bodies themselves. Whicher concentrated the early part of his investigation, for instance, on a bloodstained nightgown that had been lodged in the chimney.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhi0w531tlM3RcbAA65ECGvRvJyAh5dGl6S0wvANRp4Fn0vOQ5aCp-YKvAN7wTxNJBqpN2AMXH8h_F6ueADkom75Lm_rcLfxRxZxgkQh0aBt4NePr5U3G4ZN884qBwfonZWy-Zo244024GE/s1600/Morgue.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="416" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhi0w531tlM3RcbAA65ECGvRvJyAh5dGl6S0wvANRp4Fn0vOQ5aCp-YKvAN7wTxNJBqpN2AMXH8h_F6ueADkom75Lm_rcLfxRxZxgkQh0aBt4NePr5U3G4ZN884qBwfonZWy-Zo244024GE/s1600/Morgue.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 107%;">A Victorian-era morgue. Doctors examined cadavers with their bare hands.</span></td></tr>
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Such a discovery was scandalous. Exciting. What <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensation_novel" target="_blank">sensationalist</a> author Wilkie Collins later described as symptomatic of a sort of sickness:<br />
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Do you feel an uncomfortable heat at the pit of your stomach? And a nasty thumping at the top of your head? I call it the 'detective fever.'</blockquote>
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Armed with a Stradivarius, a laboratory of gruesome poisons and chemicals, a magnifying glass, and a riding crop, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's indomitable Sherlock Holmes nourished the fever pitch. He pursued criminals over pages that read to this day like <a href="http://www.ihearofsherlock.com/2011/05/great-teacher-cree_30.html" target="_blank">Dr. Joseph Bell's</a> autopsy reports. He applied reason to <a href="http://www.universityherald.com/articles/10694/20140731/nasa-unveils-rover-that-will-explore-mars-in-2020-is-its-name-an-ode-to-sir-arthur-conan-doyle.htm" target="_blank">the unknowable</a>. To the equally terrifying and titillating. <br />
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And there is comfort in that. When <a href="http://www.salon.com/2014/10/18/jack_the_rippers_long_shadow_from_sherlock_holmes_to_jekyll_hyde/" target="_blank">monstrous murderers prowl the night</a>, when the world seems to have completely lost its way, we take refuge in the constants -- damning facts and a damn good story. No one does <i>it</i>, the <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2852/2852-h/2852-h.htm" target="_blank">dogged</a> hunt for exact knowledge, better than our Holmes. <br />
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Worsley cites <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Age_of_Detective_Fiction" target="_blank">Golden Age</a> author Dorothy L. Sayers for conclusive perspective. <br />
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"Death," she says, "seems to provide the minds of the Anglo-Saxon race with a greater fund of innocent amusement than any other subject." <br />
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<i>Click to read more about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constance_Kent" target="_blank">the murder at Road Hill House</a>. </i><br />
<i><br />Image credit: Wikipedia </i><br />
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The Art of the (Sherlockian) Murder

"It is murder, Watson -- refined, cold-blooded, deliberate murder" [HOUN] Murder, like a forbidden back-alley bar, is a pr...

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by Jessica Levine

Review: The City of the Saved: Tales of the Great Detectives

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"I shall commence with the City" [FIVE]</h4>
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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's interest in the afterlife has finally found a suitable partner/ ghost writer in the team assembled by British sci-fi giant Phillip Purser-Hallard. <br />
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The eclectic creator has edited a third book in his series <i>The City of the Saved</i>, stories set in a megalopolis of the afterlife (Heaven?) in which exist every human and fictional construct ever created. This third entry in the <i>CotS</i> series muses upon the possibilities of all incarnations of the Great Detective and his humble sidekick as well as his eternal nemesis, his bumbling police contacts, his landlady.<br />
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In other words, it's heaven (or Victorian England) and everybody is there, and the city goes on forever, and it's London but it's not London, and there is an entire detective agency populated by different versions of the one and only. Purser-Hallard and his team of writers all leap off the ideas fermented in his previous <i>CotS</i> works. Once the reader grasps the basic idea (and it is a stretch) the volume <i><a href="http://obversebooks.co.uk/product/detective_tales/" target="_blank">Tales of the Great Detectives</a> </i>makes for great fun seasoned with a refreshing sprinkle of eschatological philosophy.</div>
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Not unlike collections such as <i>A Study in Sherlock</i> in which multiple versions of Holmes and Watson stalk and detect across multiple venues and eras, <i>Tales of the Great Detectives </i>benefits from the multiple authors creating their own deerstalker-clad hero, giving us their own spin on a character who after a century and more is still as elusive as the vapors of The Thames but as immediate as Benedict Cumberbatch's voice.<br />
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The collection consists of seven tales, pro-and epilogued by brief sketches setting the scenes.  The opening tale gives us the landscape and breadth of the seemingly infinite City of the Saved and connects in a deft descriptive analogy to Holmes' aviary passion also linked to in the brief ending tale (a stream of conscious look at the death of an aged Holmes among his bees in the gardens of Sussex).<br />
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From the brief opening the book becomes immediately engaging, and the reader is not far into the first tale when she realizes that the scenario being played outs connects seamlessly with the last scenes of the 1986 film Chris Columbus film <i>Young Sherlock Holmes</i>. One tale gives us Conan Doyle himself as the murder suspect, out to silence his consulting detective forever as he failed to do at the end of "The Final Problem."<br />
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Perhaps most engaging is the various handling of Watson, who in this volume ranges from a philandering roue to a video game character.  Briefly told, the stories engage incredible Holmes/Watson scenarios set on the other side of existence in a city that never ends.  Fans of science fiction will be engrossed, followers of religious debate on the End Time will be engaged, and the average fan of Sherlock Holmes will feel an odd familiarity in all the unique renderings of Holmes and his detection of crime in an afterlife that knows no death, no murder, no crime.<br />
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<a href="http://obversebooks.co.uk/product/detective_tales/" target="_blank"><i>The City of the Saved: Tales of the Great Detectives</i></a> is available from <a href="http://obversebooks.co.uk/" target="_blank">Obverse Books</a>.<br />
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Review: The City of the Saved: Tales of the Great Detectives

"I shall commence with the City" [FIVE] Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's interest in the afterlife has finally found a suitable...

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by N. Thomas Padilla

Ebook Review - 221b: The Curious Case of the Drugged Dog and the Jammed Window

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"You come to a London house-agent!" [SOLI]</h4>
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A young woman working as a temp at a housing agency may not sound like a candidate for a Sherlock Holmes stand-in, but in Brendon Connelly's novella <i><a href="http://amzn.to/1sBYoZ3" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">221b: The Curious Case of the Drugged Dog and the Jammed Window</a></i>, that’s exactly the case.<br />
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Emily and her fellow temp Jenny work at Homes Brothers Estate Agents, a real estate company located at 219-223 Baker Street. The company, of course, receives mail addressed to Mr. Sherlock Holmes, and they use it for a bit of good-natured publicity. Emily and Jenny are tasked with answering Mr. Holmes's mail and stumble upon a genuine mystery when Emily takes it upon herself to look into the details of a particularly odd letter. <br />
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This novella is the first of a series; according to the author, each novella is a self-contained case, with an overarching plot connecting all six. The author describes the first as the "pilot episode" of his series and, much like pilot episodes of television shows, the series’ potential still has a few wrinkles that need to be ironed out.<br />
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The transitions between scenes are often clumsily sudden, like a quick cut in a film but without the visual cues to ground the viewer. Emily, the story's Holmes equivalent, is so puzzled by people's skepticism of her deductive prowess that it comes across as naive. Believing a Holmes enthusiast could work out a case on her own is one thing - asking the reader to believe such a person would honestly expect the police to listen to her pushes her credibility.<br />
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The case itself is a unique twist on "The Empty House," but the end is too easy. Connelly presents a classic 'drawing room explanation,' where all the details are spelled out, the deductive leaps are illuminated and loose ends are tied up, but without the case having any of the suspense or tension that makes such a scene enjoyable. Too much of the case has been kept in the dark, not only from other characters, but from the reader as well. The clues are mentioned, but Emily lacks Holmes's flair for the dramatic to keep the reader's attention. The reader isn't even sure what crime it is exactly that the ladies have been investigating until the last few pages. What was likely intended as a major reveal at the end instead falls flat and feels a little like cheating.<br />
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While the end is dissatisfying, getting there is enjoyable. The story is light, fun, and loaded with references to Sherlockiana. The character Jenny, the Watson to Emily’s Holmes, is very believable as the excitable friend who gets pulled along and discovers she’s actually enjoying herself. She’s got a head on her shoulders, and the two of them hit it off well. Emily is well meaning if a bit awkward, and very singlemindedly driven to find the solution to the puzzle out of the sheer fun of it. Connelly is very good at describing locations, and his enthusiasm for his characters and the story is engaging and keeps the momentum moving. <br />
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It needs work, but it’s a fun read with enough potential to warrant taking a look at the rest of the series once it’s released. <i>221b: The Curious Case of the Drugged Dog and the Jammed Window</i> is available on Amazon as an e-book.<br />
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