Laurie R. King - Laurie R. Kings Sherlock Holmes

An introduction to Laurie R.Kings

I was thirty-five years old before I came toknow Mr. Sherlock Holmes, and then only indirectly, through myongoing relationship with one Mary Russell. I admit that at first,I did not really take the man very seriously, and admired him moreas a noble counterpart for the young lady than as a character inhis own right.

As time went by, however, I becameincreasingly interested in the man and his times. I began toexplore more fully the ways in which a man like him (Could any manbe like Holmes?) would react to the stunning changes thattook place in British society during the first two decades of thetwentieth century. I began to suspect that Arthur Conan Doyle,brilliant though he was, had shortchanged his character by keepinghim safely in the past and denying him a post-War England.

From time to time, people have asked me tocomment on Sherlock Holmes, in ways other than the novels provide.The present collection finds eight of those documents, all of whichhave been published before, occasionally in slightly differentversions. Some of them are straight nonfiction; others participatewholeheartedly in "The Game," that wildly imaginative edifice ofSherlockian scholarship built upon the solemn declaration thatHolmes and Watson were absolutely real, that Conan Doyle was buttheir literary agent, and that the stories are absolutelyfactualif only we lesser mortals can figure out the apparent flawsand omissions. The Game requires a degree of mental contortion thatmakes a Chinese Gymnastics show look like a collection of dodderingarthritics. Many find The Game amusing, challenging, andcompetitive: others stare in bewilderment.

One piece of Sherlockiana not included hereis the actual Holmes pastiche that came about when my editorsuggested a story that combined my two series characters of KateMartinelli, modern cop, and Mary Russell, amateur sleuth of the1920s. That particular contortion was beyond me, but I did manageto discover (in The Art of Detection) a hitherto-unknownHolmes adventure that took place in San Francisco, which turned outto be suitably outrageous.

This collection includes the followingessays:

Dr. Watsons War Wound was deliveredas a guest lecture to the annual Baker Street Irregulars meeting inJanuary, 2007, two years before I was inducted into their augustranks. This annual lecture varies wildly with the speaker, from apsychiatric analysis of Holmes himself to gossip about televisionproductions of the stories.

I decided that, for the occasion, I shouldsolemnly play The Game, complete with footnotes. It is without adoubt the most formal paper I have delivered publically for manyyears, and I was incredibly relieved when the audience neither fellasleep nor stormed the podium in horror. A portion of the lectureappeared in The Grand Gamevol. 2, eds. Klinger andKing (New York: The Baker Street Irregulars, 2012). The lectureitself appeared in the Baker Street Journal, 57, no 1(Spring 2007).

Sabine Baring-Gould and SherlockHolmes came about when The Moor was published in the UKand the journal of the Sabine Baring-Gould Appreciation Society,politely amused at my effrontery, invited me to contribute anarticle. My essay turned out to be a touch rude towards Sabinesgrandson, W. S. Baring-Gould, author of Sherlock Holmes of BakerStreet: a life of the worlds first consulting detective, sinceI point out that W.S. largely plagiarized his grandfathersmemoirs. Still, compared to what I put old Sabine through in thenovel, I dont know that the grandson had reason to complain.

A Holmes Chronology is just that: anexplanation why my Sherlock Holmes isnt an aged geezer when MaryRussell walks over him on the Sussex Downs in 1915. It is anotherexample of The Game, and you will be pleased to know that myproposed chronology is not without controversy in Sherlockiancircles.

Sherlock Holmes on Beekeeping was agorgeous little booklet published by Heifer International as afund-raiser in conjunction with the publication of The Languageof Bees, a volume in the Russell memoirs that contains excerptsfrom the long-lost volume by Holmes on his research into bees.Beekeeping has long been a source of reflection and philosophicalinsight for the keepers, and Holmes remarks on apismellifera offer a window into his mindand into his attitudestowards homo sapiens as well.

Art in the Blood was commissioned byPenguin for their web site, an introduction to Arthur Conan Doyle.In it, my attempt to honor and explain the writer of the Holmesstories in the end becomes an extended admission that Conan Doylewas himself an enigma worthy of his character.

Textual, Higher, Radical, and MidrashicSherlockian Criticism: an introduction toThe Grand Game came about when Les Klinger and I wereasked to edit a collection of a hundred years of Holmesscholarship, and I made the mistake of pointing out that I was,oddly enough, singularly suited for the job: probably one of ahandful of BSI members for whom these references are not, so tospeak, utterly and completely Greek. Indeed, I fear that fewliving human beings will be able to appreciate the true genius ofthis introduction. Still, one makes jokes for oneself and for thefew who have ears to hear, and for the rest, it is a most readabledocument, if mildly incomprehensible. Ronald Knox would have gotit, and maybe Dorothy Sayers: if you dont, I really wouldnt worryabout it. Although if you have a friend who is both a New Testamenttheologian and a fan of Sherlock Holmes, you might hand thedocument over and watch his or her face.