Graham Moore. The Sherlockian. New York: TWELVE, 2010. 350 pages.
Book Review Friday is back with a bang. After a little bit of a layoff, I’ve recharged myself with some excellent fiction. I really, really liked this book.
There’s only so many places a mystery can go. Someone has to get murdered, and someone has to solve the crime. The answer can’t be too obvious, or it wouldn’t be worth writing about, and it can’t be too outrageously obscure. You change the setting, or change the time period, to get a mystery set anywhere and anywhen from Republican Rome to the 24th century Delta quadrant, but it’s pretty much variations on a theme.
With THE SHERLOCKIAN, Graham Moore’s delivered a clever twist on the genre. His inspiration is the 2004 death of Sherlock Holmes expert Richard Lancelyn Green. David Grann produced an excellent non-fiction treatment of the mystery surrounding the case in The Devil and Sherlock Holmes, and it’s fascinating to see how Moore’s story developed from the kernel of this true event. In Moore’s tale, Alex Cale, an eminent Sherlockian, is found dead in a hotel room; budding young Sherlockian Harold White, with a mysterious female Watson, sets out to solve the crime and discover the whereabouts of a legendary lost Arthur Conan Doyle journal, which Cale claimed to have found.
At the same time, back in 1900, Doyle and his friend Bram Stoker find themselves on the trail of their own mystery. It’s a wonderful portrayal of Doyle: having killed off his fictional detective in 1893, he’s still dogged by Holmes’ hold on the popular imagination. He’d like nothing more than the public to forget about the detective and start to appreciate his writing about the Boer War, but as the reader knows, that’s not in the cards. He’s drawn into a murder mystery that draws him to the underside of late Victorian London, and shows off Moore’s good eye for period detail.
There’s much to commend both stories in the SHERLOCKIAN. Moore is not overly-referential to the Sherlockians, but he doesn’t mock them. He walks a fine line, which is no mean feat, since dedicated Sherlock Holmes fans made Trekkies look well-adjusted; at one point, he mentions the rift between the Sherlockians, who “believe” that Holmes and his adventures were real and that Doyle was only Watson’s literary agent, and the Doyleans, who acknowledge Sir Arthur as the author. Harold, the protagonist, isn’t a brilliant, dashing adventurer, but he’s not a total schmuck, either. Again, it’s a balance that Moore strikes just right. Teaming up Doyle and Stoker might have been literary fan wank in the hands of a less-apt writer, but Moore was able to create in the two authors real characters whose depth goes beyond their writing. Drawing known historical figures into the novel was ambitious, but Moore really delivered.
When all is said and done, THE SHERLOCKIAN is a wonderful novel. While the contemporary story tracks as commentary on the enduring power of literary obsessions, the historical tale gives the reader a sense of the world that Doyle lived in, and in which Holmes solved his mysteries. The result is a phenomenally readable book about writing, reading, and living in the shadow of obsession–one’s own, and those of others. I’m looking forward to reading more from Graham Moore.