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Ruth Rendell (1930–2015), meanwhile, created a unique role for herself as an inventor of psychological crime narratives, also publishing under the name Barbara Vine. Her principal series of novels

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Humphrey Bogart famously played Chandler’s Philip Marlowe in the first film version of The Big Sleep in 1946. Lauren Bacall played Vivian Rutledge.

involve the carefully analytical Chief Inspector Wexford; this series began in 1964 with From Doon with Death and stretched over the course of 12 novels until 1983.

Colin Dexter (1930–) created the irascible Inspector Morse and his Watson-like companion, Lewis. Indeed, Dexter’s format is similar to Conan Doyle’s, as Lewis often carries out the legwork, while Morse solves the mystery. Beginning with Last Bus to Woodstock (1975) the series extended to 13 novels until 1999.

Ian Rankin (1960–) never thought of his books as genre fiction, yet his Detective Inspector Rebus series, which began with Knots and Crosses (1987) and has continued through a further 18 titles to date, has established him as one of the leading modern crime writers. Rebus is a likeably unlikeable character, who follows his instinct using a combination of Holmesian logic and Philip Marlowe’s strong-arm blundering.

Hinted at in Poe’s crime fiction, and made explicit with Holmes— from his bouts of depression to his reliance on drugs—many of these latter-day sleuths are also damaged by romantic or family issues, alcohol dependency, and secrets or ghosts from their past, among other things.

Contemporary crime fiction

The legacy of Holmes continues with crime fiction writers throughout the world, but particularly in the US.

The US crime writer John D. Macdonald (1916–1986) invented Travis McGee—a Florida boat-owning freelancer who takes on cases by which he is intrigued or outraged. The reader is placed in the role of the observer and forced to interpret what McGee is up to as he unravels cases. McGee collects evidence and thinks the problems through carefully, gradually drawing together the clues and, like Holmes, using them to trap his villains.

The American-Canadian Ross Macdonald (the pseudonym of Kenneth Millar, 1915–1983) wrote a series of adventures about the Californian private detective Lew Archer. Although he may employ some violent tactics, Archer nevertheless manages to perform some excellent detective work.

Swedish writer Stieg Larsson (1954– 2004) planned this book as the first of ten, but only three were completed. The books were made into successful films.

Much like Holmes was a pioneer of using science as a detective, the US author Patricia Cornwell (1956–) has excelled in describing modern forensics in stomach-churning detail. Her heroine Kay Scarpetta uses her mouth-watering cookery skills to examine mortal remains and confront evil criminals in novels such as The Body Farm (1994). Another American, Karin Slaughter (1971–), who debuted with her novel Blindsighted in 2001, also describes forensic investigations in gory detail.

Crime fiction is now a well-established genre, particularly in France, Spain, Russia, Japan, and Scandinavia, and numerous non-English-speaking authors like Stieg Larsson and Pierre Lemaitre are proving to be enormously popular worldwide. Whatever the authors’ origins or individual styles, there is no doubt that they have all gained from the legacy of Conan Doyle’s indomitable Sherlock Holmes. ■

WHAT ONE MAN CAN

INVENT

ANOTHER

CAN DISCOVER

THE FANS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES

S

herlock Holmes mania began to emerge during 1891, with the publication of the first short stories in The Strand Magazine. The Great Detective soon became famous all over the world, and has remained an international phenomenon ever since.

A best-seller is born

The two novels in which Holmes first appeared, A Study in Scarlet (pp.36–45) and The Sign of Four (pp.46–55), had been moderately popular, but it was the short stories in the Strand that propelled the detective to new heights of fame. The stories carried illustrations by Sidney Paget on each page and, with their quick bursts of adventure and satisfying resolutions, proved perfect for the monthly format. Readers went Holmes—mad and the Strand quickly became Britain’s best-selling magazine.

The dreadful event

The level of fans’ enthusiasm, however, would not become clear—to Conan Doyle, at least— until, bored with his creation, he killed Holmes off in “The Final Problem” (pp.142–47) in 1893. The reaction to Holmes’s death showed just how popular the ace detective had become. Readers were outraged; more than 20,000 of them canceled their subscriptions. Both the magazine and Conan Doyle received letters of anguished protests—just as Dickens did when he killed off Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop. People even wore black armbands in mourning and accosted Conan Doyle in the street. The author was completely taken aback. Holmes was merely a fiction, a figment of his imagination. The staff at The Strand Magazine, ever after, referred to Holmes’s death as “the dreadful event.”

Nearly a decade later, Conan Doyle brought Holmes back from the dead, going on to write another 32 Holmes stories. In the meantime, he accepted that Holmes was out

113 Sherlock Holmes fans gathered at University College, London in 2014, in an attempt to set a world record for the greatest number of people dressed as the famous sleuth.

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Such is the worldwide appeal

of Sherlock Holmes that five statues of the great detective have been erected across the globe from Scotland to Japan. Since 2014, the statue of Sherlock Holmes in London has become particularly lifelike: as part of the “Talking Statues” initiative, passers-by can swipe a nearby code with their smartphone to hear it deliver a monologue written by Anthony Horowitz and voiced by Ed Stoppard.

In 1999 Baker Street finally received a statue of its most famous resident. Sculpted by John Doubleday, it is located outside the tube station.

A statue of Holmes

was erected in 1991, in Picardy Place in Edinburgh, Scotland, to mark the birthplace of Conan Doyle.

John Doubleday also sculpted the first statue of Holmes to be erected, in the town of Meiringen, Switzerland, near the Reichenbach Falls.

Moscow’s statue

of Holmes and Watson was unveiled in 2007, as a tribute to their popularity in the Russian Federation.

In 1988 Japanese Sherlockians were granted permission to erect a life-size statue of Holmes in the town of Karuizawa.

there in the world, and he never attempted to stop other people from trying their hand at writing about him, as they very quickly did.

Parodies of Holmes

The first authors to adapt Holmes parodied him, often with amusing variations of his name. In 1892, The Idler magazine published “The Adventures of Sherlaw Kombs,” and in 1893 Punch magazine featured “The Adventures of Picklock Holes.” Even famous authors created spoofs: in 1903 P. G. Wodehouse wrote “Dudley Jones, Bore-Hunter” for Punch, while Mark Twain produced a novelette called A Double-Barrelled Detective Story, in which Sherlock Holmes goes to California, only to make a complete fool of himself.

Holmes mania spread into mainland Europe too. A German magazine of 1908 described the Holmes craze as “a literary disease similar to Werther-mania and romantic Byronism.” When two sensational murders occurred in Paris, newspapers ran imaginary interviews with Holmes to try to get to the bottom of the cases.

The Canon

In 1911, Ronald Knox, a young Oxford academic theologian, wrote an analysis of the Holmes stories,

You may marry him, murder him, or do anything you like to him.

Arthur Conan Doyle

To playwright William Gillette (1896)

Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes. Intended as a spoof of detailed, scholarly textual analyses of the Bible, it used biblical terms— such as “the Canon” or the “Sacred Writings”—to refer to the stories of Holmes. Thereafter the complete collection of Conan Doyle’s Holmes stories came to be called the canon, and the countless stories written by others are thus known as non-canonical works. Scholarly fans in North America came to call themselves Sherlockians, while in Britain they are more often known as Holmesians.

Non-canonical works

Holmes fans’ appetite for the great detective was insatiable—they even began producing their own Holmes stories while Conan Doyle was still alive. For instance, in 1927, the year of the final Conan Doyle story, American teenager August Derleth began to write short ❯❯

326 THE WORLD OF SHERLOCK HOLMES

August Derleth began to write the Solar Pons stories—the cover of the first British edition is shown here— when Conan Doyle politely declined his offer of continuing the Holmes tales.

stories about a detective called Solar Pons, “the Sherlock Holmes of Praed Street.” Over the next decade, Derleth produced more than 70 stories, which were widely admired. Since then, countless other writers have tried to recreate Holmes, Conan Doyle’s own son Adrian being among them.

Some of the stories are in the same vein as Conan Doyle’s, but others import Holmes into other worlds, or even bring him into the present day. Some take aspects of Holmes’s character and exaggerate them—his drug habit, for instance— while more radical stories transform him into a superhero who fights anything from vampires to Nazis (pp.340–43).

Holmes has also made numerous cameo appearances in other works. He was called in to solve The Case of Emily V (Keith Oatley, 1993), and teamed up with fictional detective Erast Fandorin in Boris Akunin’s Jade Rosary Beads (2006). On film and television, the recreations of Holmes have been even more varied and imaginative (pp.328–35).

Sherlock Holmes societies

Today there are at least 400 groups devoted to Holmes worldwide. The most illustrious of these is probably the Baker Street Irregulars (BSI), founded in New York in 1934 by Christopher Morley, and named after Holmes’s helpful band of little street urchins. Members have included such important figures as Isaac Asimov and Franklin D Roosevelt. The BSI is an invitation only group but oversees a host of Holmes “scion societies” across North America—ranging from the Red Circle of Washington to the Dancing Men of Providence. Each of these has its own obscure rituals, but in general, members meet to talk about the great detective, watch movies, dress up, and exchange views about details of the adventures. Another major

The Grand Game

More than 300 groups around the world are devoted to piecing together the “true” events of the lives of Holmes and Watson. Called the Grand Game after Holmes’s famous exclamation, “the game is afoot”, but also known as the Great Game or simply the Game, it relies on the tongue-in-cheek assumption that Holmes and Watson are real historical figures and the canon a record of true events. Arthur Conan Doyle’s role is explained as that of literary agent.

[The Game] must be played as solemnly as a county cricket match at Lord’s; the slightest touch of extravagance... ruins the atmosphere.

Dorothy L Sayers

Unpopular Opinions (1951)

Holmes group is The Sherlock Holmes Society of London, which, since 1952, has published The Sherlock Holmes Journal, featuring Holmesian news, reviews, essays, and criticism.

Japan is home to more than 30 Holmes societies, among them the Japan Sherlock Holmes Club, which boasts 1,200 members. The country also has a statue of Holmes in Karuizawa by Japanese sculptor Satoh Yoshinori. Portugal has the Norah Creina Castaways of Lisbon, named after the ship

Any discrepancies within the stories are taken as deliberate obfuscation or forgetfulness on Watson’s part, rather than the inevitable mistakes of a fast-working author, and provide numerous inconsistencies for Grand Gamers to examine. Gamers might, for example, try to uncover the reason behind Watson’s inconsistent mentions of his wife. They are particularly intrigued by the so-called “Great Hiatus”—the period between Holmes’s death at Reichenbach and his reappearance in “The Empty House” (pp.162–67).

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that went down off the Portuguese coast in “The Resident Patient” (pp.134–35), and there are also numerous Holmes societies in India, Russia, Germany, and around the world.

Holmesian London

Countless letters have been written by fans to Holmes at 221B Baker Street—from the 1930s, the actual occupants were the Abbey National Building Society, who had to take on a secretary to deal with the deluge of Holmes-related mail. When The Sherlock Holmes Museum opened, in 1990, at 239 Baker Street, it was eventually renumbered 221 by the Royal Mail, even though it sits between 237 and

241. In 1999, a bronze Holmes statue by John Doubleday (also creator of the Holmes statue in Meiringen, Switzerland) was unveiled outside Baker Street Underground station, in which there is also a mosaic

This 1987 Japanese edition of Allen Eyles’s Sherlock Holmes: A Centenary Celebration was translated for the Japan Sherlock Holmes Club and is one of a number of publications by them.

wall-tile silhouette of Holmes. The detective has also left his mark in other parts of London. A plaque in the glamorous Criterion restaurant on Piccadilly Circus commemorates the spot where Watson is said to have first heard Holmes’s name, and a faithful recreation of the detective’s 221B study (originally created for the 1951 Festival of Britain) can be found in the appropriately named Sherlock Holmes pub, close to Trafalgar Square.

Popularity continues

Holmes mania looks set to continue well into the 21st century, over 100 years since the first story was penned. The popular BBC television series Sherlock, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, has spawned a host of new fans around the world. In 2014, devotees dressed in deerstalkers and capes gathered near University College, London in an attempt to create a world record for the largest group of people dressed as Sherlock Holmes. Other incarnations of the great detective include being cast in a Bollywood musical; an appearance as an African American in modern-day Harlem, New York; starring in Japanese manga; teaming up with other fictional characters, such as Batman and Dracula in numerous comics; and even a role as the muppet Gonzo in The Muppet Show comic book.

More serious Sherlockians and Holmesians enjoy regular Sherlock Holmes debates that bring together the world’s experts at London’s University College, as well as numerous meetings of the various Sherlock Holmes societies.

From the original Strand magazines to Sherlock Holmes stamps, patches, posters, and beer coasters, Holmes memorabilia is big business. Fans still can’t get enough of him, and it could be said that in his popularity lie the roots of fandom as we know it today. Sherlock Holmes’s adaptability, and the public’s enthusiasm, appear to be truly endless. ■