Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine #32 E-Book

Arthur Conan Doyle

• Herausgeber: Wildside Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 284

Beschreibung

Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine returns with an intriguing issue featuring 9 original tales of crime and mystery, plus a classic by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Here's the lineup:

CANYON FODDER, by John H. Dromey
THE SAN FRANCISCO ADVENTURE, by Hal Charles
NO PLACE LIKE HOME, by Veronica Leigh
THE THREE LITTLE BIGGS, by John M. Floyd
THE CASE OF THE BELGRAVIA BEAST, by Gary Blackwood
THE CELL PHONE, by Ellen Wight
THE QUIGLEY METHOD, by Marlin Bressi
MILLER’S LAKE, by Ellen Denton
THE NEW SHERIFF, by Greg T. Nelson

CLASSIC SHERLOCK HOLMES:
THE ADVENTURE OF THE GOLDEN PINCE-NEZ, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

SHERLOCK HOLMES MYSTERY MAGAZINE #32.

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

CARTOON, by Marc Bilgrey

STAFF

FROM WATSON’S NOTEBOOKS

ASK MRS HUDSON, by (Mrs) Martha Hudson

SCREEN OF THE CRIME, by Kim Newman

THE PERPLEXING PROBLEM OF THE PUZZLING PROPOSITION, by S. Brent Morris

HOPE, ORDEAL, SASSYWOOD, by O’Neill Curatolo

CANYON FODDER, by John H. Dromey

THE SAN FRANCISCO ADVENTURE, by Hal Charles

NO PLACE LIKE HOME, by Veronica Leigh

THE THREE LITTLE BIGGS, by John M. Floyd

THE CASE OF THE BELGRAVIA BEAST, by Gary Blackwood

THE CELL PHONE, by Ellen Wight

THE QUIGLEY METHOD, by Marlin Bressi

MILLER’S LAKE, by Ellen Denton

THE NEW SHERIFF, by Greg T. Nelson

THE ADVENTURE OF THE GOLDEN PINCE-NEZ, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

SHERLOCK HOLMESMYSTERY MAGAZINE #32.

Vol. 9, No. 2, Issue #32.

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

Copyright © 2023 by Wildside Press LLC. All rights reserved.

Visit us online at wildsidepress.com

CARTOON, by Marc Bilgrey

STAFF

Publisher & Executive Editor:

John Betancourt

Editor:

Carla Kaessinger Coupe

Assistant Editors:

Sam HoganandKarl Würf

FROM WATSON’S NOTEBOOKS

Our Editor has kindly shared the contents of this issue with me, and I have passed several enjoyable afternoons reading the articles and stories. Gary Blackwood’s macabre “The Case of the Belgravia Beast” reminded me of so many of Holmes’s outre adventures. I daresay Holmes would have congratulated Mr Field on solving such a series of mysterious deaths.

Holmes himself narrates “The San Francisco Adventure,” filtered through the memory of Hal Charles. I read the story with great interest, for it not only took place during those years I believed him dead, it sheds light on the well-known personages Wyatt Earp and Josephine, his charming and courageous wife.

Lastly, I must protest the aspersions S. Brent Morris casts on my reporting in “The Perplexing Problem of the Puzzling Proposition”. Advanced mathematics may not have been part of my pre-med curriculum, but I am quite certain that I faithfully recorded Holmes’s words. While I do not intend to sully the character of my long-time friend, remember that he was under considerable strain at the time, and may have mis-spoken. Despite this, I found Morris’s article interesting.

And now I shall hand my pen to Our Editor, who no doubt has more to say.

* * * *

I’m pleased to present issue 32 of Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, which will hopefully provide you with an excuse to sit in the shade and sip a cooling drink while you read.

As usual, we begin with a cartoon by the talented Marc Bilgrey and columns from our regulars, Mrs Hudson and Kim Newman. In addition to dispensing sage advice for lovers young and old, Mrs Hudson includes several delicious recipes for cold sandwiches, perfect for these hot days. Continuing his exploration of Sherlockian films and television adaptations, Kim Newman reviews the recent movie Enola Holmes 2 as well as a short-lived Larry Hagman vehicle, a Russian The Hound of the Baskervilles, and a recorded performance of Gillette’s play.

Poisons and propositions are the subjects of our articles by regular contributors O’Neill Curatolo and S. Brent Morris. In “Hope, Ordeal, Sassywood,” Curatolo traces Jefferson Hope’s use of two pills to evoke justice to the practice of Trial by Ordeal, in past and present forms. As Dr Watson mentioned above, Morris tackles “The Perplexing Problem of the Puzzling Proposition”. You must make up your own mind about who was wrong: Holmes or Watson.

This issue’s stories range from a tale of revenge to a Golden State adventure, so I’m sure there’s something for every taste.

In “No Place Like Home,” Veronica Asay asks: what do you do when you have agoraphobia and need to protect the woman you’ve loved from afar? Meanwhile, interoffice rivalries turn deadly in Ellen Wight’s “The Cell Phone”.

We’ve all heard about how some actors will take any role for money. But what happens if the director unexpectedly changes the script? Marlin Bressi explores this in “The Quigley Method”. Love, local politics, nepotism, and earphones can lead to deadly results in “The New Sheriff” by Greg T. Nelson. An old case is reopened in Ellen Denton’s “Miller’s Lake,” and it becomes clear that it was love that led to the tragedy.

We finish up in the west with John H. Dromey’s “Canyon Fodder”. An old man might be an easy mark, but the women who loved him are another matter. Finally, regular John Floyd’s Sheriff Lucy Valentine and her mother solve the case of a greedy heir in “The Three Little Biggs”.

Our classic Holmes story this issue is “The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez”. Breakfast and betrayal, cocoanut matting and cigarette ash are critical in this twisted tale, where death arises from the sins of the past.

Happy reading!

Canonically yours,

Carla Kaessinger Coupe

ASK MRS HUDSON,by (Mrs) Martha Hudson

As I sit down to write this, my little column, we are headed quickly towards Lammas Day. This year has flown by, filled with exciting—and occasionally dangerous—adventures for my illustrious boarder and his best friend, and lots of tea-making, door-answering, floor-pacing, and hand-wringing for me. Dear readers, you cannot imagine the strange things I have had to clean in that upstairs flat! But, while I might occasionally have a wistful thought of my quiet life before that January day, I would never wish to return to my lonely widowhood.

Lammas brings with it other memories, however. The hot summer day when I, a country girl, just sixteen, from a village near Dorking in Surrey met a young man from Nottingham. My father, a tinsmith with eight daughters, had died that June and, determined to support myself and help my mother and sisters, I had travelled to London, hoping to find a position in service with a wealthy family. I have always had a gift for homemaking and thought I could do better than working for the local vicar, who was well-known for….

But we must not speak ill of the dead.

I was fortunate enough to have a cousin in service in London, and while her master did not have a place for me, she was able to direct me to a reputable registry office, which saved me from falling prey to one of the many fraudulent “employment” agencies. Mr Holmes has, through the generosity of his great heart, rescued many a poor thing from one of those “contracts” and sent her home, poorer, but sadly wiser.

And so, I was nicely set up in the kitchen of a lovely home in Grosvenor Square, where I went to bed every night with dreams of one day becoming head cook. Fate had her own ideas, however, and that Lammas Day, while returning from the market with a basket filled with eggs, I stumbled over a loose brick in the yard. In that instant, I had a vision of three dozen smashed whites and yolks, and myself sent back to Surrey—but suddenly I felt two strong hands grabbing my forearms and looked up to see two deep brown eyes staring solicitously into mine.

My eggs and my position were thus saved by Richard Hudson, but my heart was forever lost. He was the new stable boy, but like many a young man from a land-locked town, he dreamed of going to sea. It was not long before I was a sailor’s wife. I must shake my head when I see Dr Watson reading yet another of his “sea stories”; shipboard life is not the romantic stuff he imagines it to be, and for the wife waiting at home, the weeks are lonely and long, and can remain so, even when her husband comes home. Gradually, those brown eyes grew distant, filled with sights I could not share, until one day the sea swallowed them entirely. But while married life was not the blissful condition I believed was mine the day my Richard and I exchanged our vows, the heavy summer air today reminds me of soft brown eyes and young love.

Romance is often on my readers’ minds as well. If I could have a penny for every letter in which a young lady inquires—discreetly, she thinks—into the state of Mr Holmes’s and Dr Watson’s private lives, with the obvious hope of one day becoming mistress of 221B, I should be able to buy Buckingham Palace! Save your ink, my dears. Dr Watson may portray himself as a dashing hero with an eye for the ladies, but it has only been two years since he lost his dear Mary, and I fear that no woman shall ever have his heart as she did. He does flirt a bit with shop girls and, on occasion, clients, but there have been many late-night conversations by the hearth in which he has confided in us that he does not believe he shall ever remarry, no matter how winsome the face or gentle the heart. “Few are the women who could tolerate, let alone encourage, the life I lead,” he said. “Lord knows it was difficult on my Mary, and I have scant hope of finding another like her. I am not like you, Holmes—I do not mind a bit of ‘grit’, but I have come to see the wisdom of your devotion to bachelorhood.”

Holmes nodded, staring into the fire. “There are good reasons why the wives of physicians, soldiers, and policemen are among the most unhappy of women. I learned early on that the life I must follow is not one which accommodates marriage and family life.”

The doctor and I were both startled at this. Mr Holmes rarely speaks of his life before 221B, and I must say we scrabble like greedy birds for those tidbits he does drop. But he said nothing more, and when he had finished his evening pipe, he retired early. I suppose that he, Dr Watson, and I shall always be one little household together, and while that is enough for an old woman like me, I do sometimes wish my “boys” had more than sorrows to look back upon.

And so, we come to today’s letters, each from a broken heart in need of balm.

* * * *

Dear Mrs Hudson,

I am writing you as I feel I have nowhere to turn. My mother died when I was six years old, and my father has never remarried. I have had a succession of governesses, maids, and companions, and I have many friends, but no one I consider experienced in “matters of the heart,” who could give me wise advice in my current predicament. Some five months ago, whilst walking in the park with friends, I made the acquaintance of a young solicitor, who was also there with several companions. We soon found ourselves in deep conversation and made arrangements to meet again. At first, I met him with friends or my maid, but eventually, I began to visit the park alone, and I have since been to his flat on three or four occasions, always on the pretext that I was visiting a friend. The last time, I was caught coming in the servants’ entrance by my father, who had come up to see me in my room and found it empty. I cannot lie to my father, and so told him all about “Jack”. As you might expect, he was furious, and forbade me to see him again. He says that at sixteen I am too young to know my own mind, and that a man who will take a woman to his flat with no thought to her safety and reputation is not a man he wishes to meet. In fact, he says he will have “Jack” horsewhipped if he shows his face at our house. He made me write and tell “Jack” that I do not wish to see him anymore, and after a while, I came to accept that he might be right. But now I have seen a message in the Standard that I know was meant for me. In it, “Jack” tells me how much he adores me, and how he fears I have “changed” and become “cruel”. All of my feelings of love for him have come rushing back, and I know not what to do! Should I respond to his message? Could I intercede between my love and my father? We have not done anything untoward, only kissing, but I do not think my father will believe me. If this is my chance at true love, I do not want to lose it!

—Heartsick in Mayfair

* * * *

My dear, dear Heartsick,

You must listen to your father. Not only does he have your best interests in mind, but he is also more aware than you know of the games men play with the tender hearts of inexperienced young ladies. And believe me, darling girl, you do not wish to learn all the lessons “experienced” women have had to write upon the scarred slates of their hearts. I have taken the liberty of showing your letter to Mr Holmes and Dr Watson, and they agree with your father that no man of morals, solicitor or not, would take a sixteen-year-old girl to his rooms, and that, even as he protested that, as a gentleman, he wants no more than a chaste kiss, he would soon be persuading you for more. At the risk of being indelicate, my dear, let me say that more women have been ruined by a “gentleman” than a rogue. Dr Watson also wishes you to know that a man who charges a woman with having “changed” or being “cruel” is only trying to manipulate her into thinking that she must prove herself nice and kind by giving him what he wants—and what he wants is never what is best for the woman he professes to love.

And lest you disbelieve me, I must tell you that Mr Holmes took it upon himself to look up your “Jack”. He is not a solicitor, my dear. Those law books belong to his cousin, at whose flat he is staying whilst trying to find work in London—and most of his “work” has consisted of meeting young ladies in parks, many of whom have also been to his flat—some in a professional capacity, if you get my meaning. Mr Holmes suggests that you burn the notice you clipped from the paper and cancel the appointment you made to meet “Jack” in Regent’s Park tomorrow. Instead, have a nice supper with your father. Your chance at true love is yet to come!

* * * *

Will she listen, dear readers? Mr Holmes says the odds are about fifty-fifty, and as he is not a gambling man, he and Dr Watson plan to be at the Griffin Tazza in Regent’s Park at 4:00 sharp, tomorrow afternoon.

And to show that foolishness in love is not limited to ladies, or the young….

* * * *

Dear Mrs Hudson,

I should like your opinion of the following situation. My mother, God rest her, died early last year, leaving my father utterly lost. While my brother and I try to visit him frequently, and he does enjoy spending time with our families, we are not able to be with him as much as he would wish. He has tried to fill his time with painting and other past-times, but his housekeeper confided to us that he had begun to spend most of his time at the local, and often was only able to make his way home with the help of friends or the constable.

Well, my husband and I went down to visit him, and suggested he go to church with us that Sunday. They have a new vicar there whom Father (who is quite particular about clergy) decided he quite liked, so he began attending services and church events. Mrs Goodwin reported that he was sober again, and that some of his pub evenings had turned into a visit with the vicar and a single glass of sherry. We were quite pleased and felt that the danger point of his grief had passed. When we went to visit and found him keeping company with the vicar’s sister, “Mrs Black,” we even dared to hope for more.

But Mrs Hudson, I find myself having doubts. The vicar’s sister seems nice enough. She is a widow like my father—three times over—and is independently wealthy, thanks in some degree to inheritances. I know what you are thinking, and I did, too, but each of her husbands died in a different way: one in a shipwreck, one of illness, and the other in a fall whilst out on a hunting party, and she was only present for the middle one. She has no children of her own and does not seem to have kept contact with those of her previous husbands, which is only natural, I suppose. But that has not stopped one of them from writing to me and telling me that I should be careful, and under no circumstances allow her to marry my father. When I showed the letter to my husband, he pooh-poohed it as the product of a bitter woman and told me that my father should find happiness where he could. I accepted this—but now my father has telegraphed and told us he intends to marry this woman in three weeks’ time. I can no longer dismiss that letter and I feel sick every time I imagine my father placing his heart (and more) in the hands of “Mrs Black”.

What can I do?

Mrs Paul Rivers

Honeybriar Cottage

Bingham, Rushcliffe

Nottinghamshire

* * * *

Do not fret, Mrs Rivers! There is hope yet! After he sees to the Regent’s Park affair, Mr Holmes will be on the next train to Bingham. If you would be so kind as to telegraph the names of the Vicar and his sister, he is certain he will be able to find information which will prove useful to your case—for a case it surely is—and you will be in good hands!

*

Well, reader! As you can tell, Mr Holmes and Dr Watson will be quite busy for the next few weeks! It can be a challenge to prepare meals for them when they have so many cases on hand, so I often resort to sandwiches. Dr Watson has rather dismissively referred to them as a “rude meal,” but I promise you there is an art to creating a good, nourishing sandwich. Here are a few you might like to try:

Tartines roulées

Pound your sandwich meat (pork, chicken, or tongue) with a mortar until smooth, then add butter and paprika. Rub filling through a fine sieve; you should then have a nice purée. Combine this with one or two tablespoons of mayonnaise, as you like. Cut a loaf of brown bread into thin slices, trim the crusts and spread each slice with butter. Add the sandwich filling and roll each slice up firmly. Chill for one or two hours and serve garnished with parsley.

Sandwiches à la Bernhardt

(For the sophisticated palate)

Take one half pound of cold meat—veal, mutton, or beef—and cut into small pieces. Using a mortar, pound with an ounce of butter until you have a smooth mixture. Add one tsp mustard, one tbs American tomato chutney, and one tsp mango chutney. Peel two small shallots, chop finely, then sauté in butter until pale. Combine with your sandwich filling mixture and season with salt and pepper to taste. Rub the mixture through a wire sieve to remove any gristle or other bits. Slice bread thinly and spread lightly with butter. Spread with sandwich filling and add mustard and cress. Top with plain bread slices. Cut and press as desired.

*

Fruit Sandwiches

(Dr Watson’s Favorite!)

Use a nice leftover plain cake, at least one day old, and cut into slices. Cut fruit into thin slices—pineapple, peaches, apricots, strawberries—or use a fruit preserve. Whip cream with vanilla or castor sugar (Dr Watson prefers that I use both, but that makes it very sweet!). Spread mixture on one cake slice, add fruit, then top with another slice of cake. Serve with more fruit or preserves if you wish, or even ice cream!

Until next time!

—Mrs Martha Hudson

__________

Note: Recipes taken and adapted from Charles Herman Senn’s New Century Cookery Book: Practical Gastronomy and Recherché Cookery, Food and Cookery Publishing Agency, London, 1909.

SCREEN OF THE CRIME,by Kim Newman

Enola Holmes 2 (2022)

This follow-up to Netflix’s adaptation of Nancy Springer’s Enola Holmes Mysteries series opts not to take its story from any of the books but to doodle around the margins of a) a real and interesting bit of Victorian labour history and b) the broad outlines of Conan Doyle’s original Holmes stories.

It’s lightly entertaining for the most part, but collapses under the weight of its many contradictions. Writer Jack Thorne, director Harry Bradbeer and star/co-producer Millie Bobbie Brown set the piece in that currently fashionable version of the past which allows for colour-blind casting of well-established literary and historical characters as if the 1880s were a utopia of multi-racial harmony (but still occasionally want to make points about the routine oppressions of the pre-equality era). Fair enough: decades’ worth of Westerns ignored the fact that half the cowboys in the old west were African-American to present all-white cattle drives and posses, and the blimps who grumble online about the “wokeness” of Inspector Lestrade (Adeel Akhtar) being of Kenyan/Pakistani heritage didn’t complain about that. For a fun romp, it’s okay if Moriarty is a black woman (Sharon Duncan-Brewster) and Watson is South-Asian (Himesh Patel)—both are rather good in admittedly limited roles. But this doesn’t gel with a reasonably sincere account of the conditions which led to the Match Girls’ Strike of 1888 (the use of cheaper white phosphorus in the process of making matches led to disfigurement and death amongst the predominantly female workforce). We can’t help but wonder whether Netflix greenlit this particular story as a dig at rival Amazon Prime and its parent company’s notoriously anti-union practices.

The film opens with Sherlock’s younger sister Enola (Brown) on the run from a couple of London bobbies and addressing the audience directly. Then, we flash back to the aftermath of the first film as Enola sets up her detective agency but can’t get clients because no one takes her seriously. Her sometime love interest, Lord Tewkesbury (Louis Partridge), is still around, arguing for radical causes in the House of Lords but getting bogged down in politicking and looking a tad miffed at having to be shoe-horned into this storyline. Bessie (Serrana Su-Ling Bliss), a match girl, engages Enola to find her missing adoptive sister Sarah Chapman (Hannah Dodd)—a real historical person with a wikipedia page—who has been asking questions about a supposed typhus epidemic among the workers at the Lyon Match Factory (though the still-extant Bryant & May Company don’t get named). The case takes Enola to low dives, a music hall (we get a rousing rendition of “Where Did You Get That Hat?”, reviving the tradition that Holmes movies should feature musical interludes), the grim factory floor, a society ball, and locations where corpses of people we don’t care much about are found. People who seem to be baddies turn out to be decent and vice versa and Enola’s bomb-making activist mother (Helena Bonham Carter) and her judo-proficient suffragette friend Edith (Susan Wokoma) show up to help with escapes and chases. David Thewlis is vastly overqualified for the role of “evil policeman who gets kicked in the balls too many times,” but at least brings some real menace to a film which too often lets its heroine breeze through all perils without effort. It’s busy and crowded, and Thorne rather forgets to show Enola working out solutions to anything—only Brown’s perpetual bright spark performance fills out the character.

In Enola Holmes, Mycroft (absent here) was the disapproving fuddy-duddy and Sherlock (Henry Cavill) more sympathetic to their sister’s ambitions. Cavill is back as the broadest-shouldered Holmes on record but he’s now in the Downey Jr./Cumberbatch line of Sherlockian screwups who need to be put right. At one point, Enola finds her brother drunk and being thrown out of an East End pub, feebly claiming to be undercover on a case but in need of assistance to get home. Presumably, the drunkenness is because the family-friendly show wants to avoid mention of cocaine or opium, though it’s one of several instances where Cavill’s Holmes is so off-model that his character fails to register as even a stand-in for Doyle’s detective. Noticing the mess of 221B, Enola muses that this Sherlock needs a flatmate to keep him on the rails—and duly sidesteps all that Stamford/Criterion stuff from A Study in Scarlet to advertise for one behind her brother’s back. Patel shows up and we get a clunky exchange (“Mr…?” “Dr.…John Watson”) that turns off Holmes’ deductive abilities (he’d be able to tell if a stranger was a doctor from the stethoscope bulge in his hat) and obviously can’t go with “you have been in Afghanistan, I perceive” because a Watson played by a Patel might be from there. The writing is perfunctory, but given better material a Cavill/Patel Holmes and Watson team might potentially work.

As a sequel which would like to be a step to a franchise, Enola Holmes 2 wobbles a little too often. If her practice is to prosper, next time maybe the heroine should work alone and solve a mystery.

SobakaBaskerviley (1971)

The impressive 1979-81 Russian Holmes and Watson series with Vasily Livanov and Vitaly Solomin is relatively well-known internationally. Less remembered is this earlier two-part television adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles, with Nikolay Volkov as “Sherlok Kholms” and Lev Krugly as Dr. Watson—though it can be found on YouTube. The adaptation of the novel is so close that it’s relatively easy to follow even for non-Russian speakers, but tweaking the settings auto-generates approximate, sometimes surreal English subtitles. Volkov, who looks a little like Ross Martin or Peter Arne, is a dark, glowering Holmes with a fringe. Krugly’s thin, moustached, slightly bland Watson assures us in a long to-camera introduction that the detective only pretends to be unemotional—deep down, he’s a softie with a stalwart commitment to justice and decency and doing the right thing.

Apart from a few snatches of night-time moorland exterior shot on film, including a snippet with a phosphor-faced hound, it’s an entirely studio-bound drama, with the feel of US or UK TV in the mid-1950s. Director Antonina Zinoveva—the first woman to direct a long-form Holmes project?—presumably sat in a control room while cast and crew performed as live. Nina German’s script takes almost all its dialogue from the novel, but tweaks things so that almost all the action—and it’s very much a question of talk rather than action—takes place on very few locations represented by large, stylised, sparsely-furnished sets. 221B is tidier than usual—and Volkov struggles with the jack-knife required to pin correspondence to a beam above the fireplace—but Baskerville Hall is impressive, with acres of uneven tiles on the floor and ominous armour stuck to the walls. We even spend a lot of time in the paleolithic hut on Dartmoor—dialogue changes the moor into a swamp (as in “if you value your life, stay away from the swamp”)—where Holmes updates Watson on what he’s been doing in the wilds while the plot has been grinding on.

Like many adaptors, German gives up on the mystery early. Holmes flat out says that entomologist Stapleton (Aleksandr Kaydanovsky) is the killer, but that a trap will have to be set to prove his guilt. As ever, this involves the client Sir Henry (Oleg Shklovsky) nearly getting killed—which Sir Henrys never seem to complain about in Baskervilles movies—and then the villain running off to a vague offscreen fate. Beryl (Ekaterina Gradova) delivers a lengthy explanation of how the plot has worked, just as Dr. Mortimer (Anatoliy Adoskin) in Part One literally read aloud the manuscript with the legend. In both cases, it’s a dry way of presenting material usually spiced up with flashbacks. Laura Lyons (Valentina Smelkova) gets to witter on at length as Watson interrogates her too.

The production features no London street scenes, hansom cab chase, train journeys or other expensive-to-stage business, and aside from one soldier on the moor searching for escaped convict Selden (Kiril Glazunov) there are no extras, giving the whole thing a stagey, charade-like feel. At two eighty-minute episodes, it’s among the longest adaptations of the novel, but still prunes material while dwelling on some irrelevancies. Baker Street irregular Cartwright (Antonio Pina-Gomez) is ordered to go to all the hotels in London and sort through the rubbish for a front page of the Times with words cut out for the warning note, but even Holmes admits this is probably a waste of time. There’s no Mrs. Hudson, but Lestrade (Viktor Kamaev)—dumped into this story as always—shows up at the end, vowing that whenever he’s wearing trousers he has a revolver in his pocket ready to assist Holmes (the sentiment may lose something in auto-translation).

In the 1939 Hollywood Hound, Barrymore the butler is renamed Barryman and played by John Carradine—because any mention of the name would evoke the famous acting family. Here, that’s obviously not a concern and—despite the story having a John and a Jack already—the butler is bluntly called John Barrymore (Grigory Lyampe). Like later Holmes adaptations from this region, this is an interesting, sincere expression of Russian Anglophilia—the only hint of Soviet-era politics is that the late Sir Charles was an active member of the Liberal Party and it’s suggested that the self-serving villain’s murder of the old man has derailed his local efforts at reforming social conditions.

The Return of the World’s Greatest Detective (1976)

A TV movie knock-off of They Might Be Giants, clearly tailored as pilot for a show which didn’t fly.

Sherman Holmes (Larry Hagman), a dedicated but inept Los Angeles cop, is bonked on the head when his motorcycle falls on him as he’s reading Conan Doyle. He wakes up under the impression that he’s Sherlock Holmes and his psychiatric social worker is fortuitously named Watson (Jenny O’Hara). An interesting angle, unexplored, is that Sherman’s original personality was a mess but he becomes highly functional when deluded. Watson’s boss asks her what she’d do if he ever came to question whether or not he was Sherlock, but the issue never comes up. The pathos of TMBG is absent since the head-knocked hero becomes for all purposes the genuine article and is instantly set up on his disability pension as a super-sleuth with a flat at 211B Baker St (and a landlady, Helen Verbit, willing to be Mrs. Hudson) and an in to the befuddled top cop (Nicholas Colasanto) at his old station.

The actual case is a loose, acknowledged rerun of “The Red-Headed League”—a couple of automotive deaths pass as accidents until Holmes notes that they were both murders of recent parolees and that the first victim has stashed half a million in embezzled funds. The owner of a failing coin-operated laundry is duped with a fake market research job to get him off the premises while a minion (Sid Haig) tunnels into a building site where the money is hidden. The ultimate culprit turns out to be the grim judge (Charles Macaulay—Dracula in Blacula) who has heard all the cases.

Hagman isn’t especially suited physically to the Holmes role, though he makes a fist of an effete English accent. Sub-plots like Watson’s supervisor nagging her about getting emotionally involved are raised but not pursued—the final scene, very Doylean in dialogue as Holmes promises Watson a violin concert and a steak and kidney pie inevitably has a romantic angle when played by a mixed-sex couple, but this also isn’t played up since O’Hara mothers Hagman rather than suggest any sexual interest in him. With Ron Silver as a shrink and talk of “Moriarity”. Directed by Matlock creator Dean Hargrove, who co-wrote with Roland Kibbee.

Sherlock Holmes

(Sherlock Holmes: The Strange Case of Miss Alice Faulkner) (1981)

A live performance of William Gillette’s 1901 play, staged by the Williamstown Theatre Festival and recorded by HBO for broadcast in a series of taped music and theatre productions called “Standing Room Only.” Following Broadway success as Dracula, Frank Langella takes another Victorian leading role; Christopher Lee, Jeremy Brett (who took over from Langella on tour with Dracula) and Richard Roxburgh have also pulled off this double, incarnating the great good and evil Supermen of the 1890s as mirror images.

Though he might have been too louche and romantic for Conan Doyle’s Holmes, Langella is well-cast as Gillette’s…the actor-writer, fashioning the sleuth as a star part for himself, blended elements of “A Scandal in Bohemia,” “The Final Problem” and other stories but shifted emphases to play up the witty banter and have the cerebral hero eventually discover his own emotions. At the end, Holmes does not sacrifice his life to rid the world of the evil Professor Moriarty (George Morforgen) but follows his triumph over his arch-enemy by abandoning his career for a new-found love interest.

In the 1922 John Barrymore silent version of the play, this seems ludicrous, but Gillette writes Holmes’s realisation of the loneliness and coldness of his life with some subtlety. In the coda, Holmes trades on the gratitude heroine Alice Faulkner (Laurie Kennedy) feels to him for saving her life to manipulate her into handing over love letters that might wreck a Royal Engagement (written to her late sister, not her: Gillette couldn’t have got away with making an immoral adventuress like Doyle’s Irene Adler a heroine). Instantly, the detective is ashamed of his own brilliance and resolves to be a better man in a way that means giving up his profession. With audience reaction audible on the soundtrack (the throwaway “elementary, my dear Watson” gets a round of applause) and performances pitched to the back stalls, the thriller aspect doesn’t really translate to television, but the back-and-forth exchanges of pointed insults are amusing and Langella expresses a delight in his own cleverness that’s quite appealing.

Morforgen rolls his eyes and leers evilly as the Napoleon of Crime and Richard Woods blusters in the Nigel Bruce manner as a Dr. Watson who has married and settled down, which means he has less to do but also serves as an example to his friend. Tom Atkins of The Fog and Halloween III