Ask the Author: Tim Symonds

“I'll be answering questions about my new book 'Sherlock Holmes and The Sword of Osman.' ” Tim Symonds

Answered Questions (11)

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If you could travel to any fictional book world, where would you go and what would you do there?

Tim Symonds Right now I'm back in 1907, in the swirl and danger of life in The Forbidden City when the terrifying Empress Dowager Cixi was in full command. I'm keen to interest a Chinese publisher about my latest novel, 'Sherlock Holmes And The Nine-Dragon Sigil' which is set in Peking just as the mighty Ch'ing Empire totters to its grisly end. I've always hankered after the experience of being in at the volcanic end of great Empires, so Rome at the moment Julius Caesar was murdered by his former friend Brutus, would be an extraordinary (and dangerous) time, ditto St Petersburg when the Russian Empire came crashing down in 1917, the setting for a short story I'm writing for a new MX Anthology of new Sherlock Holmes stories out next year.

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What books are on your summer reading list this year?

Tim Symonds I'm already strongly into my Summer and probably Autumn reading. After my 'Sherlock Holmes And The Nine-Dragon Sigil' came out last November I've begun to try my hand at a TV drama series set in World War One. The period brings me forward several years from the Edwardian era in which my five 'sherlocks' are set, to 1916. What's more, the subject involves a great amount of knowledge on horses as well as the 4 upper-class girls who form the core of the drama. I'm much better with Land Rovers. The first and last time I was on a horse it bolted and I still don't know how I managed to hang on until it ran itself out. In my rucksack for reading this afternoon in the woods around my place in England's High Weald is 'Horses For The War', the story of the World War 1 Remount depot at Lathom Park. The Remount depots were where horses were trained for work on the terrible Western Front, or rehabilitated if they survived and returned to Britain. While the horses form the backdrop, it's the events centred on the four young women which dominate the plot, including whether one of them has started spying for the Kaiser's Germany.
What I need in addition to the half-dozen books on heavy horses, light draught horses, hunters/chargers, mules and mustangs is how to get the speech patterns right for the upper-class girl of the time.

Also, how to write for television when my recent 6 or 7 years have been spent writing novels...

Best wishes and many thanks for the question.

Tim

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What mystery in your own life could be a plot for a book?

Tim Symonds A mystery to me is how do the plots I developed in writing my five Sherlock Holmes novels come to me? In Questions to Authors I get asked, 'Take 'Sherlock Holmes And The Nine-Dragon Sigil', how did you come up with the idea of sending Holmes and Watson to the terrifying Forbidden City in Peking in 1906, as the mighty Ch'ing Dynasty tottered to its grisly end? Answer - beats me! Ditto 'Sherlock Holmes And The Sword of Osman', set in old 'Stamboul in Ottoman times. The one novel where I can offer an answer is 'Sherlock Holmes And The Mystery of Einstein's Daughter'. An article I read in Time Magazine some years ago told the story of a bundle of yellowing letters being discovered in an attic in California. They were an exchange of correspondence between the famous Albert Einstein (deceased) and his first wife, the Serbian mathematician Mileva Maric (deceased). To their descendants' astonishment, the letters indicated Albert and Mileva had had a daughter while Albert was a student in Switzerland. No-one had ever known this, the child was never mentioned after 1903 - never ever. To this day, no-one knows what happened to her. Of course, in my novel, Holmes provides the answer.

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Who is your favorite fictional couple, and why?

Tim Symonds A reader kindly asks, ‘who is my favourite fictional couple’ and as the author of five Sherlock Holmes novels I ought to say ‘Why, Holmes and Watson, of course!’. But there’s that adjective ‘favourite’ which makes all the difference. I could definitely say dear old Dr. John H. Watson is a most likable fictional character, not only for me but umpteen thousands of others worldwide. A real English country gentleman. Well-mannered. A skilful surgeon. A member of several reputable London Clubs. But Sherlock Holmes? I am not sure I can call him my favourite fictional character. Brilliant detective. Admirable in his sense of justice, definitely. A pioneering chemist, yes. Astonishing in his range of talents – as a linguist, for example, even quite a violinist – no doubt whatsoever. But likeable...?

So who is my favourite fictional pair? Well, no contest. Slam dunk. Charlie Allnut and Rose Sayer.
Who?
OK, in real life Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn in the 1951 Hollywood movie ‘The African Queen’. There they were, Charlie Allnut and Rose Sayer, in a most un-Hollywood location: the sweltering jungle around the Ruki River, in the Belgian Congo (today known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo). They spent seven weeks filming the World War One romantic-comedy-adventure film. Bogie was a hard-drinking riverboat captain. Reluctantly he falls in love affair with a prim Christian missionary. The Belgian Congo wasn’t easy on Hepburn or much of the crew. One by one they fell ill. Bogart and the Director John Huston remained healthy throughout the shoot — probably because they drank far more booze than water. Hepburn received a Best Actress Oscar nomination — her fifth — while Bogart's engaging performance as the cynical drunkard with a heart of gold earned him the only Academy Award of his storied career. Much deserved.

I should add a personal footnote. First, I spent some of the most dramatic years of my life aged 16-19 in East Africa, among elephants and rhino and snakes and the same diseases which threatened Hepburn and Bogart in Central Africa. Second, my partner Lesley Abdela is the descendant of Isaac Abdela whose shipyards in Britain are said to be where the river-boat, the ‘African Queen’ (a.k.a. S/L Livingstone), was constructed. See http://www.thisisgloucestershire.co.u...

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When is your next Sherlock Holmes novel appearing, and where is it set this time?

Tim Symonds You're right to ask - it has amazed me, even as the author myself, how a new setting somehow comes to the mind. I started in 2012 with 'Sherlock Holmes And The Dead Boer At Scotney Castle' which was conveniently set in the southeastern English counties of Kent and Sussex, where I live and which were very familiar territory to Arthur Conan Doyle.

I then sent Holmes and Watson hurrying off to a country hardly known to Britain in Edwardian times - Bulgaria - in 'Sherlock Holmes And The Case of the Bulgarian Codex' in the reign of the ambitious and unpredictable Prince Regnant. I gave the pair a short rest and hurled them back into the fray in 'Sherlock Holmes And The Mystery of Einstein's Daughter' based on the incredibly strange real-life story of the disappearance of Albert Einstein's half-Serbian illegitimate daughter at the age of 21 months, never to be heard of again (until Holmes solves the mystery of her disappearance).

After that, still keeping Holmes and Watson in the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire they are sent by the famous British foreign secretary Sir Edward Grey to 'Stamboul' where the Sultan Abd-ul-Hamid fears for his life in 'Sherlock Holmes And The Sword of Osman'.

I have in the back of my mind an idea for further foreign escapades for Holmes and the ever-faithful Watson, namely sending them off to St Petersburg in 1917 when the Russian Revolution breaks out and England wants Russia to stay in the Great War against the Kaiser's Germany... but I may get sidetracked for a while, writing a set of short stories. One of my short stories titled 'A Most Diabolical Plot' appeared in 2015 in an Anthology titled The New MX Anthology of Sherlock Holmes Stories, Part 111.

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