My first blog ("One Step into the Light") offered a review of A.S. Croyle's new novel, The Bird and the Buddha (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...). Sherry Croyle has taken the daring step of introducing a love interest for young Sherlock Holmes--in the person of a budding female physician, Poppy Stamford--at the dawn of his deductive career. As can be seen in my review of her first "Before Watson" novel, I was quite blown away by both Poppy and the author's whole idea:

When the Song of the Angels is Stilled by A.S. Croyle

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


It would be faint praise to call this novel merely a fine Sherlock Holmes pastiche. What A.S. Croyle has written is a complex, moving novel with memorable characters of her own creation (including the most appealing heroine since Irene Adler), besides a fascinating portrait of young Sherlock Holmes. Here is a callow, more vulnerable Sherlock than we are used to seeing, yet unmistakably the youth who will become the man. The case that he and Poppy Stamford undertake to solve incorporates the oldest Canon mystery, “The Gloria Scott,” and centers on an “Angel Maker.” Rooted in historical events, it reminds those who would romanticize Victorian London that its underworld was, in fact, a truly awful place. The novel’s most important revelation is that Sherlock Holmes was being less than honest when he told Dr. Watson: “I have never loved.” Disproving that claim may seem like heresy to some Sherlockians, but our lovelorn young hero loses Poppy Stamford precisely because he is already trapped inside the man that Conan Doyle created. We mourn their fate, even though it was inevitable, for love might have made the great detective (if nothing else) a far less lonely man. Happily, the author devises an ending that reconciles us to his loss. After finishing When the Song of the Angels is Stilled, I felt I fully understood, for the first time, why Sherlock Holmes became the man he was. That is the measure of Ms. Croyle’s achievement, and it took a fine novelist—not merely a fine writer of pastiches—to accomplish it.

When the Song of the Angels is Stilled: A Before Watson Novel is available from all good bookstores including Amazon USAhere, Barnes and Noble USAhere, Amazon UKhere, Waterstones UKhere, and for free shipping worldwide Book Depositoryhere. In e-book format it is in Kindlehere, Kobohere, Nookhere<, and Apple Books (iPad/iPhone)here.

While purists may balk at the idea of Holmes falling in love when "barely out of adolescence" (the age Ms. Croyle assigns him at the beginning of her saga), surely there would be more cause for concern if he had not. Young men have always possessed hormones, even if Victorian writers did not acknowledge them. Our young man's eventual decision to set aside romantic love, in pursuit of his vocation, shows a far more impressive mental discipline (or attempt at it, at least) than would a similar choice by a eunuch or ascetic. They, after all, have little to lose.

Young Sherlock, on the other hand, knew quite well what he was giving up. In Poppy Stamford, Ms. Croyle has created a love interest fully worthy of our hero: an intelligent, spirited, and progressive young woman who goes about as far toward feminism as plausible in an 1870's milieu. Nor does their author ever place the lovers in unlikely or unworthy situations. To be sure, there is one actual sex scene, but both its context and its consequences are appropriate to its time and place. I found nothing in the novel inconsistent with Conan Doyle's depiction of Holmes' character. Indeed, he ultimately loses Poppy because he is determined to become that very man.

The "Before Watson" novels, therefore, meet the standards set in my last blog for a non-traditional pastiche: treating the original Canon with deference and affection, placing Doyle’s characters in new or unexpected situations that are neither offensive nor preposterous, and succeeding on its own terms as a story. Ms. Croyle does these things very well. It was not for nothing that I called Poppy Stamford "the most appealing [Holmes] heroine since Irene Adler."

Speaking of Irene Adler, let's talk about her for awhile. . . .

I must admit, in doing so, that I have not yet read Amy Thomas's well-received series of Irene Adler novels, beginning with The Detective and the Woman (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...). However, I intend to remedy that oversight, and her book is on its way. Meanwhile, what about Irene Adler as depicted by Conan Doyle and some of his other successors?

The most mossbacked of Sherlockian purists would acknowledge, i believe, that Doyle's Irene Adler would have made a worthy mate for Holmes. Dr. Watson, of course, denied that the detective ever "felt any emotion akin to love" for the Woman who had beaten him; but (as I and others have theorized) he may have had good reason to be less than truthful. W.S. Baring-Gould--whose "biography" Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street is, if not Gospel, at least Apocrypha--revealed an affair between Holmes and Irene Adler during "The Great Hiatus," the result of which was another great detective: Nero Wolfe.

Is the idea really so far-fetched, even for a mature Holmes who had never encountered Poppy Stamford? In my own forthcoming story, "A Scandal in Serbia," Watson (after admitting to misleading his readers about Holmes and Adler's true relationship) puts the matter this way:

Surely it is no wonder that two people who had shared so strong an intellectual attraction should fall in love under the charged circumstances that attended their reunion. Fleeing the horror at the Reichenbach Falls, pursued by the most formidable of Moriarty’s minions, robbed of his very identity while disguised as Sigerson, my friend was in as vulnerable a state as any man who affects to disdain all emotion can be. In Irene Adler, he discovered—besides a companion of surpassing beauty, charm, and sympathy—a mind that matched his own as well. It was truly a mating of equals. . . .

Even David Marcum, the dean of modern traditionalists, accepts Baring-Gould's startling revelation. Moreover, in "The Adventure of the Other Brother" from Holmes' collected papers (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...) he posits that Holmes maintained contact with Irene and their son even after her marriage to Vukčić, a Montenegrin gentleman. I, in turn (with Mr. Marcum's kind permission), am borrowing Vukčić and the Montenegrin setting for my Crowned Heads story, which will record Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler's last meeting before her death and his retirement.

With this solid heritage of Holmesian hanky-panky to draw upon, I feel on fairly solid ground with my Serbian tale. Although running long (which should come as no surprise to readers of this blog), it has been great fun to write. If it comes out half as well as the works I have cited, I will have done my bit for the "novel" idea of "Holmes in Love."