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Solar Pons #2
The Memoirs of Solar Pons
#2 in the series of Solar Pons books. Pons is a successor to Sherlock Holmes and the books are part homage and part pastiche of the Great One.
229 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1951
27 people are currently reading
102 people want to read
About the author
August Derleth
883 books294 followersAugust William Derleth was an American writer and anthologist. Though best remembered as the first book publisher of the writings of H. P. Lovecraft, and for his own contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos and the Cosmic Horror genre, as well as his founding of the publisher Arkham House (which did much to bring supernatural fiction into print in hardcover in the US that had only been readily available in the UK), Derleth was a leading American regional writer of his day, as well as prolific in several other genres, including historical fiction, poetry, detective fiction, science fiction, and biography
A 1938 Guggenheim Fellow, Derleth considered his most serious work to be the ambitious Sac Prairie Saga, a series of fiction, historical fiction, poetry, and non-fiction naturalist works designed to memorialize life in the Wisconsin he knew. Derleth can also be considered a pioneering naturalist and conservationist in his writing
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augus...]
A 1938 Guggenheim Fellow, Derleth considered his most serious work to be the ambitious Sac Prairie Saga, a series of fiction, historical fiction, poetry, and non-fiction naturalist works designed to memorialize life in the Wisconsin he knew. Derleth can also be considered a pioneering naturalist and conservationist in his writing
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augus...]
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
August 12, 2019
Two things are to be told about this book, first and foremost.
One, the current edition has lovingly restored the Ponsian canon, with necessary introduction and other tidbits.
Two, for admirers of the Holmesian Canon these stories are treasures to be cherished. By facilitating their reemergence, David Marcum had done a singular service to all concerned.
Now, about the stories.
Eleven Stories have found their way to our shelves and heart through this book. They are cosy mysteries devoid of fantastic stuff adorning modern pastiches, while depicting the uniqueness of British society at that point of time. Every story reveals their mysteries quite early, but compels us to read on, by virtue of the atmosphere created therein.
If you like Sherlock Holmes of Praed Street, this book is not to be missed. If you aren't that enthusiastic about Solar Pons, but would like to read some Holmesian pastiches of a different time, then also this book is not to be missed.
Recommended.
One, the current edition has lovingly restored the Ponsian canon, with necessary introduction and other tidbits.
Two, for admirers of the Holmesian Canon these stories are treasures to be cherished. By facilitating their reemergence, David Marcum had done a singular service to all concerned.
Now, about the stories.
Eleven Stories have found their way to our shelves and heart through this book. They are cosy mysteries devoid of fantastic stuff adorning modern pastiches, while depicting the uniqueness of British society at that point of time. Every story reveals their mysteries quite early, but compels us to read on, by virtue of the atmosphere created therein.
If you like Sherlock Holmes of Praed Street, this book is not to be missed. If you aren't that enthusiastic about Solar Pons, but would like to read some Holmesian pastiches of a different time, then also this book is not to be missed.
Recommended.
May 25, 2022
A good collection of pulp tales featuring Solar Pons a disciple of Sherlock Holmes. All of the stories are readable, but none of them really rise to a higher level.
April 19, 2024
The second collection of Solar Pons stories. I didn't like the first one, but have always vaguely meant to read these stories, and plenty of authors mature, with age, so maybe ...? In: re the first collection, my complaints were:
1. Obvious mysteries
2. Uninteresting characters
3. Uninteresting scenarios
4. General sloppiness
These remain valid. So as not to repeat myself, let's change things up and talk about this volume story by story.
1. "The Adventure of the Circular Room" was seventeen pages on my e-reader. I figured out what was happening on the third page, if you want to try to beat my record. I did kind of like the central premise; very nasty.
2. "The Adventure of the Perfect Husband" is a sort of distant cousin to Arthur Conan Doyle's "Adventure of the Noble Bachelor" (sorry if that gives away the extremely obvious solution) but with a less gripping premise, and less interesting characters, and also it's kind of racist, and the detective doesn't do anything for most of the story, and then when he does do something it's entirely off-screen.
3. "The Adventure of the Broken Chessman" must be filed under "general sloppiness." It begins with a newspaper story. "Lodger Found Dead. Mrs. Otilla Baker ... discovered the body of a lodger dead in his room ... [she] identified the lodger as Landon Hall." But ... Lodger Wasn't Found Dead. It later emerges that Landon Hall has vanished, and the dead man was someone else. What's more, the corpse was physically distinctive (being morbidly obese) and its face wasn't damaged, so how could he have been misidentified?. This is not a plot point, and is literally never brought up. I know what happened, or think I do. Derleth was trying to be cute, because the story opens with Pons reading the newspaper account and dismissing it as prosaic, when it turns out not to be. But if the newspaper described the case correctly, Pons wouldn't think it was prosaic. Therefore, the newspaper describes the case incorrectly. But because Derleth didn't want to write a story about mistaken identities, he then has to spend the rest of the story pretending the first paragraph never happened. This is not how competent mystery writers operate.
4. "The Adventure of the Dog In the Manger" took me three pages to guess the solution. This was dispiriting, because I figured out what was happening before Derleth introduced any of the suspects or provided any actual evidence. Just seeing the general premise of the story and going "Oh, I'll bet I know what the plot twist will be" and being right, because these stories really are that hackneyed.
5. Is "The Adventure of the Proper Comma" supposed to be a mystery? It's fine if it isn't, Doyle occasionally wrote straight adventure, too, but Doyle understood that if you're not writing a mystery, you've got to write something else. There's no mystery, although our idiot narrator spends the entire story not understanding what's going on. There's no drama, because it never seems like anything might go wrong, and nothing does go wrong. There's no pathos, in spite of the inherent horror of the situation, because Derleth can't write pathos. Since I brought up Doyle, it might be worthwhile to briefly compare this to "The Adventure of the Illustrious Client," where there's no mystery about who the bad guy is, but which is everything this isn't. Both protagonists are allowed to participate actively and meaningfully, and the story is dramatic because things go wrong--Holmes's first few efforts fail, leading to him being murderously attacked, Watson is caught out when he goes undercover to distract the bad guy, and the story culminates in a horrifyingly described acid attack by one of the villain's conquests. Writing fiction is hard, but how can you imitate Doyle and be bad in this specific way?
6. It's pretty obvious by now that this anthology is not going to turn me into a Derleth fan, but here to prove that I'm still going into these stories with an open mind, it's one I kind of liked, "The Adventure of Ricoletti of the Club Foot." The cluing is more competent than in previous stories, it manages to build some sort of atmosphere, and the emotional stakes seem a little realer than in most of these stories.
7. "The Adventure of the Silver Spider" is impossibly banal. The "Silver Spiders" in question are silver scarabs that each contain a miniature book. They're valueless curiosities, so why has someone stolen them from their various owners? If I add that they were created by a legendary forger whose missing plates have never been found, and are still being sought by the police, does that help? Did you guess that Of course you did. I said in another review that even the oldest chestnut can give pleasure, but that's only when the quality of writing is better than Derleth's.
8. The temptation would be to say that "The Adventure of the Lost Locomotive" is an interesting idea implemented in an incredibly dreary way, but since it's directly ripping off Doyle's (non-Holmes) story "The Story of the Lost Special," I think that's still giving Derleth too much credit.
9. "The Adventure of the Tottenham Werewolf" has a strong Gothic premise; John Dickson Carr could have turned it into one heck of a radio play. Sadly, it's written by August Derleth, and so is fairly limp, with weak characters and a stunning lack of atmosphere given the central premise.
I haven't been dwelling on Derleth's writing, or we'd be here all night, but what is this?
"There will certainly be a fourth victim--possibly even a fifth," he said enigmatically.
"You sound very positive."
"Ah, Parker--how it used to annoy you! But it is not so. The speculation takes its rise in a logical deduction."
What isn't so? Pons isn't being positive? I think in an earlier draft Parker must have said something about guesswork, and Derleth changed that but not the next paragraph.
10. "The Adventure of the Five Royal Coachmen" is blandly inoffensive, or maybe I'm just beaten down by garbage and clutching at straws. Derleth likes his espionage stories, and they always feel kind of weird to me, I think because he always provides too much detail. Like, we're supposed to be treating naval disarmament ratios as really important in this story, but the world is barrelling towards a war that will see over 70 million people dead, in a large part because England won't act to stop Hitler in the war's early stages, and ... do these ratios actually mean anything, in that context? Factually, whatever advantage England got from this story did not stop Japan from being a major power in the upcoming war. I think Doyle's vagueness (a treaty being revealed will gave “very grave results indeed,” and that's all you get) works better than Derleth's specificity.
11. Screw it, spoilers. Every prolific author repeats themselves, but "The Adventure of the Paralyzed Mendicant" is the second story in two volumes where Solar Pons finds glass shards at the crime scene, and it turns out that ?
Derleth sucks. I keep giving him the benefit of the doubt: maybe this Mythos story will be better than the rest, maybe these Pons stories will be better than the first collection? But no; he's brutally, relentlessly bad.
1. Obvious mysteries
2. Uninteresting characters
3. Uninteresting scenarios
4. General sloppiness
These remain valid. So as not to repeat myself, let's change things up and talk about this volume story by story.
1. "The Adventure of the Circular Room" was seventeen pages on my e-reader. I figured out what was happening on the third page, if you want to try to beat my record. I did kind of like the central premise; very nasty.
2. "The Adventure of the Perfect Husband" is a sort of distant cousin to Arthur Conan Doyle's "Adventure of the Noble Bachelor" (sorry if that gives away the extremely obvious solution) but with a less gripping premise, and less interesting characters, and also it's kind of racist, and the detective doesn't do anything for most of the story, and then when he does do something it's entirely off-screen.
3. "The Adventure of the Broken Chessman" must be filed under "general sloppiness." It begins with a newspaper story. "Lodger Found Dead. Mrs. Otilla Baker ... discovered the body of a lodger dead in his room ... [she] identified the lodger as Landon Hall." But ... Lodger Wasn't Found Dead. It later emerges that Landon Hall has vanished, and the dead man was someone else. What's more, the corpse was physically distinctive (being morbidly obese) and its face wasn't damaged, so how could he have been misidentified?. This is not a plot point, and is literally never brought up. I know what happened, or think I do. Derleth was trying to be cute, because the story opens with Pons reading the newspaper account and dismissing it as prosaic, when it turns out not to be. But if the newspaper described the case correctly, Pons wouldn't think it was prosaic. Therefore, the newspaper describes the case incorrectly. But because Derleth didn't want to write a story about mistaken identities, he then has to spend the rest of the story pretending the first paragraph never happened. This is not how competent mystery writers operate.
4. "The Adventure of the Dog In the Manger" took me three pages to guess the solution. This was dispiriting, because I figured out what was happening before Derleth introduced any of the suspects or provided any actual evidence. Just seeing the general premise of the story and going "Oh, I'll bet I know what the plot twist will be" and being right, because these stories really are that hackneyed.
5. Is "The Adventure of the Proper Comma" supposed to be a mystery? It's fine if it isn't, Doyle occasionally wrote straight adventure, too, but Doyle understood that if you're not writing a mystery, you've got to write something else. There's no mystery, although our idiot narrator spends the entire story not understanding what's going on. There's no drama, because it never seems like anything might go wrong, and nothing does go wrong. There's no pathos, in spite of the inherent horror of the situation, because Derleth can't write pathos. Since I brought up Doyle, it might be worthwhile to briefly compare this to "The Adventure of the Illustrious Client," where there's no mystery about who the bad guy is, but which is everything this isn't. Both protagonists are allowed to participate actively and meaningfully, and the story is dramatic because things go wrong--Holmes's first few efforts fail, leading to him being murderously attacked, Watson is caught out when he goes undercover to distract the bad guy, and the story culminates in a horrifyingly described acid attack by one of the villain's conquests. Writing fiction is hard, but how can you imitate Doyle and be bad in this specific way?
6. It's pretty obvious by now that this anthology is not going to turn me into a Derleth fan, but here to prove that I'm still going into these stories with an open mind, it's one I kind of liked, "The Adventure of Ricoletti of the Club Foot." The cluing is more competent than in previous stories, it manages to build some sort of atmosphere, and the emotional stakes seem a little realer than in most of these stories.
7. "The Adventure of the Silver Spider" is impossibly banal. The "Silver Spiders" in question are silver scarabs that each contain a miniature book. They're valueless curiosities, so why has someone stolen them from their various owners? If I add that they were created by a legendary forger whose missing plates have never been found, and are still being sought by the police, does that help? Did you guess that Of course you did. I said in another review that even the oldest chestnut can give pleasure, but that's only when the quality of writing is better than Derleth's.
8. The temptation would be to say that "The Adventure of the Lost Locomotive" is an interesting idea implemented in an incredibly dreary way, but since it's directly ripping off Doyle's (non-Holmes) story "The Story of the Lost Special," I think that's still giving Derleth too much credit.
9. "The Adventure of the Tottenham Werewolf" has a strong Gothic premise; John Dickson Carr could have turned it into one heck of a radio play. Sadly, it's written by August Derleth, and so is fairly limp, with weak characters and a stunning lack of atmosphere given the central premise.
I haven't been dwelling on Derleth's writing, or we'd be here all night, but what is this?
"There will certainly be a fourth victim--possibly even a fifth," he said enigmatically.
"You sound very positive."
"Ah, Parker--how it used to annoy you! But it is not so. The speculation takes its rise in a logical deduction."
What isn't so? Pons isn't being positive? I think in an earlier draft Parker must have said something about guesswork, and Derleth changed that but not the next paragraph.
10. "The Adventure of the Five Royal Coachmen" is blandly inoffensive, or maybe I'm just beaten down by garbage and clutching at straws. Derleth likes his espionage stories, and they always feel kind of weird to me, I think because he always provides too much detail. Like, we're supposed to be treating naval disarmament ratios as really important in this story, but the world is barrelling towards a war that will see over 70 million people dead, in a large part because England won't act to stop Hitler in the war's early stages, and ... do these ratios actually mean anything, in that context? Factually, whatever advantage England got from this story did not stop Japan from being a major power in the upcoming war. I think Doyle's vagueness (a treaty being revealed will gave “very grave results indeed,” and that's all you get) works better than Derleth's specificity.
11. Screw it, spoilers. Every prolific author repeats themselves, but "The Adventure of the Paralyzed Mendicant" is the second story in two volumes where Solar Pons finds glass shards at the crime scene, and it turns out that ?
Derleth sucks. I keep giving him the benefit of the doubt: maybe this Mythos story will be better than the rest, maybe these Pons stories will be better than the first collection? But no; he's brutally, relentlessly bad.
October 16, 2025
Continuing my re-visit of Derleth’s Solar Pons pastiches which my mystery book club is now looking into. I have chosen to explore the “Original Text Solar Pons Omnibus Edition, Vol 1” release of Derleth’s stories. While of course, as with any collection like this, some stories are better than others, in general I found myself liking this set of stories more than the first volume (The Adventures of Solar Pons). Derleth’s pacing and plotting both seem to have improved a bit since his initial set of stories.
July 13, 2020
When Solar Pons says for the umpteenth time to his Watsonian partner Dr. Parker, "You know my methods," or he dons his dearstalker hat, you know you are enjoying a cover band rather that the original. However, Derleth's crime riddles are generally well thought out, and if their resolution is somewhat mechanical, his Sherlock Holmes pastiches recreate an appropriate atmosphere and are as good as anyone's. Three and half stars, if I may.
January 7, 2024
Most of the stories in this collection were predictable. The culprit could be figured out halfway through the story.
Pons seemed a bit more harsh toward Parker in these stories, calling out his ‘mental failures’ and giving less praise.
One story was just plane boring and I kept counting how many pages I had left to read.
It’s a must to have in the collection, but the stories in this book were not as strong as in the others.
Pons seemed a bit more harsh toward Parker in these stories, calling out his ‘mental failures’ and giving less praise.
One story was just plane boring and I kept counting how many pages I had left to read.
It’s a must to have in the collection, but the stories in this book were not as strong as in the others.
October 9, 2019
Second book of Pons stories
If you liked the first collection then you'll want to jump into these ... All these are solid tales that will hold your interest as you enjoy their unraveling by our heroes ...
If you liked the first collection then you'll want to jump into these ... All these are solid tales that will hold your interest as you enjoy their unraveling by our heroes ...
May 11, 2020
In Memoirs the characters are less shallow, although Parker is now snarky. Also dense. Bonus!! there's a story about Mycroft, here Bancoft, who isn't infantilized, ie no tantrums, no sucking toffee, just....Bancroft. Only one outing for the big B, but one can hope.
December 5, 2017
I've read very little Holmes (!), so this was a wake-up call. Come summer, I'll get into my grandfather's set.
February 28, 2019
Given the reissue of the Solar Pons catalogue I figured it would be a good time to do a complete re-read. If you’re a Holmes fan and are unfamiliar with Pons, these are well worth your time.
November 28, 2019
Enjoyable
July 6, 2020
Very good short story collection.
August 31, 2024
Although fun in their own right, it left me with a hankering for yet another reread of the original according to Doyle ( A. Conan that is).
January 29, 2025
This collection is even better than the first. August Derleth seems to have found his stride with Solar Pons by this point. Good stuff.
December 27, 2022
There are lots of literary detectives, but Sherlock Holmes is one of the most famous and copied. Solar Pons is a new version of Holmes moved into the 1920s including the accompanying doctor, mannerisms and approach to cases.
In spite of this, Solar Pons is fun detective reading. The cases are different, not always murder. The deductions are elementary, if you can follow Pons' lead. The clues are so obvious once explained.
Even when the solution seems obvious, the case remains intriguing enough to hold a reader's interest. And the obvious may not be correct.
The tales are easy, fast paced, set in New York area. An enjoyable evening read for relaxing.
In spite of this, Solar Pons is fun detective reading. The cases are different, not always murder. The deductions are elementary, if you can follow Pons' lead. The clues are so obvious once explained.
Even when the solution seems obvious, the case remains intriguing enough to hold a reader's interest. And the obvious may not be correct.
The tales are easy, fast paced, set in New York area. An enjoyable evening read for relaxing.
December 24, 2024
In the yet fog-shrouded streets of 1920's London, a worthy successor to Sherlock Holmes is on the job, solving the mysteries of desperate clients and baffled Scotland Yarders alike. His name is Solar Pons. This collection of 11 short stories includes "The Adventure of the Dog in the Manger", "The Adventure of the Proper Comma", and "The Adventure of the Tottenham Werewolf" (which I saved for last and was not disappointed).
If the account I read years ago is true, August Derleth [1909-1971] wrote to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle sometime in the 1920's asking him if he was going to write anymore Sherlock Holmes stories. Either Derleth received a negative or no reply at all; in any case he decided to write his own. Thus the birth of Solar Pons.
If the account I read years ago is true, August Derleth [1909-1971] wrote to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle sometime in the 1920's asking him if he was going to write anymore Sherlock Holmes stories. Either Derleth received a negative or no reply at all; in any case he decided to write his own. Thus the birth of Solar Pons.
April 16, 2017
August Derleth apparently never met a literary icon he didn't want to pastiche. Though more famous for his devotions to H. P. Lovecraft (and his somewhat misguided efforts to establish a Cthulhu Mythos not actually in keeping with the author's original intent), he also spent a fair amount a time aping Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's great consulting detective. Solar Pons is hardly the only Holmes knock-off wandering the pages of literature, but his existence - taken in tandem with the aforementioned efforts at cloning the Elder Gods - does make me think that it's an utter shame that Derleth didn't live long enough to launch his own fanfic site. He'd have killed.
Leaving aside Lovecraft for the moment, Derleth's adventures in detectiving go well enough. He hits all his marks (intriguing story titles, tantalizing references to unrecorded cases, pompous pronouncements and massive leaps of logic), but the scaffolding on which he mounts his mysteries isn't as carefully concealed as Doyle's, and the reader is usually easily able to see how everything fits together. Worse, he's missed capturing the Holmes/Watson (known here as Dr. Lyndon Parker) relationship. Watson, for all his second-fiddle status, provides Holmes with valuable back up on several occasions during their adventures, and frequently manages to spark the Great Detective's genius with a passing remark. Parker functions as little more than an amanuensis. The impression I was very strongly left with was that Derleth was unable to write a truly brilliant character, so he had to dumb down the sidekick to make Pons look smarter.
None of this ruins the stories, though if you've read your Doyle lately they'll probably feel a bit like weak-tea in comparison. Still, Derleth can be entertaining, and the edition I read included an unexpected bonus in the form of an introduction by Ellery Queen in which they give an extensive list of Sherlock Holmes pastiches (several of whom I'll probably hunt down).
Leaving aside Lovecraft for the moment, Derleth's adventures in detectiving go well enough. He hits all his marks (intriguing story titles, tantalizing references to unrecorded cases, pompous pronouncements and massive leaps of logic), but the scaffolding on which he mounts his mysteries isn't as carefully concealed as Doyle's, and the reader is usually easily able to see how everything fits together. Worse, he's missed capturing the Holmes/Watson (known here as Dr. Lyndon Parker) relationship. Watson, for all his second-fiddle status, provides Holmes with valuable back up on several occasions during their adventures, and frequently manages to spark the Great Detective's genius with a passing remark. Parker functions as little more than an amanuensis. The impression I was very strongly left with was that Derleth was unable to write a truly brilliant character, so he had to dumb down the sidekick to make Pons look smarter.
None of this ruins the stories, though if you've read your Doyle lately they'll probably feel a bit like weak-tea in comparison. Still, Derleth can be entertaining, and the edition I read included an unexpected bonus in the form of an introduction by Ellery Queen in which they give an extensive list of Sherlock Holmes pastiches (several of whom I'll probably hunt down).
April 20, 2019
Well executed pastiche of the Homes stories. Some fun references to Lovcraftian themes.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews