The Silver Key by H.P. Lovecraft

Okay, so we all know a little about Lovecraft, the guy who invented ‘cosmic horror’: he feared that mankind was adrift in an endless and uncaring universe, he created a Parthenon of god-creatures that are unspeakably terrifying (if occasionally plush and cuddly), and he liked using the word ‘eldritch’. A lot. And let us not forget his contribution to later generations of teenage mealheads (curse Metallica’s spelling of ‘Ktulu’- I always thought it was some kind of bird).

But today’s topic is a sometimes less-noted facet of his works- the ‘dream-works.’ See, when he wasn’t scaring the bejesus out of readers with his madness-inducing monsters and his turgid prose, he wrote stuff that was, well, a bit different. A bit airy-fairy. The ‘dream-works’ refer to a bunch of his stories that are more overtly-than-usual influenced by one Lord Dunsany, an Anglo-Irish writer (woop woop!) who wrote fantasy fiction around the turn of the century. Dunsany’s stuff is extremely whimsical, a little like slightly twisted children’s fairy tales. There’s been a lot of speculation about exactly how to classify some of these writers who were churning out fantasy and science fiction-type stories before those terms had really solidified (Lovecraft is usually thought to feature elements of both), but be sure that the dream-works fiction would register as extremely soft on the hard/soft sci-fi scale.

These tales generally take place in regions of a dream-world that’s as well mapped as Lovecraft’s fictional New England. It’s a place full of ‘strange and ancient cities’ and ‘elephant caravans tramping through the perfumed jungles of Kled.’ A place of wonders rivalled only by the Arabian Nights themselves, and limited only by the imagination of a dreaming artist. The stories feature real people who discover ways to enter the dream-realm, and once there they have fantastic adventures. They’re mostly enjoyable for their sheer whimsy and lack of logic, though they’re probably not my favourite of his works. When they start to include roving bands of intelligent cats (HPL bloody loved cats) as main characters, that’s when I check out.

But there is one Dream-cycle story that has a special meaning to me.

The story starts with a tale called The Statement of Randolph Carter. Carter is a young man who acquires a strange Southern friend with an interest in the occult. As usual, they go messing with Things Man Was Not Meant To Know, and Carter’s associate comes to a messy (if vague) end in an eldritch tomb in a graveyard. It’s a short, throwaway tale, standard for Lovecraft, and Carter is just another of HPL’s author-stand-in protagonists. There’s no evidence that Lovecraft had any particular plans for the character.

Carter next shows up in a tale called The Silver Key, and suddenly he’s become a much more interesting character. The first line is unforgettable-

When Randolph Carter was thirty he lost the key to the gate of dreams.

The story is about how Carter, who once was imaginative and unsullied by convention, made nightly trips to fabulous dream-worlds. As he grew older, however, experience and friends caused him to adopt a more prosaic, world-weary attitude, and he becomes unable to enter the dream world. Achingly conscious of what he has lost and yet unable to abandon the logical, scientific approach to life, Carter desperately searches for the key to the dream-world by adopting and then abandoning various world-views. It’s a fantastic tale that challenges the reader. Lovecraft weighs up the merits of religion, atheism, rationalism and finds them each lacking in wonder. Essentially it’s a poignant ode to the innocence of childhood. It’s especially interesting knowing Lovecraft’s own real-life views; he believed that science was an inarguable truth that freed man from superstition as much as it killed wonder. He often noted that his own need to write weird fiction stemmed from his belief that the world was decidedly not mysterious or mystical- he was in effect, a hardline rationalist who mourned for the death of romanticism.

Eventually, Carter returns to his childhood home, the place where he first learnt to dream. Exactly how the story ends depends on the reader’s interpretation, as well as the reader’s attitude towards the real life vs fantasy theme. Relatives find his car and some of his clothes near the house, but Carter himself has vanished. Has he finally escaped for good into the dream world, or was he just a silly dreamer who earned nothing but sordid oblivion? It’s a great open ending.

EXCEPT that there’s a sequel, Through The Gates of The Silver Key. Supposedly Lovecraft was reluctant to write this, and was persuaded to do it by another writer, E. Hoffman Price. It’s a slightly ridiculous tale sci-fi that destroys the mystery and ignores the timeless fantasy and commentary of the original. During a will reading to divide up the missing Carter’s stuff, a well-wrapped-up stranger appears (wonder who that is?!). Turns out that Carter travelled through the cosmos, ending up trapped in the body of a stupid-looking alien on some faraway planet. Eventually, he figured out how to build a spaceship, locate Earth, and return just in time for the will reading. Ridiculous.

When I first read The Silver Key it had an enormous impact on me. I had spent several years at college training to be a scientist (which I had enjoyed), and without really noticing it, going through an extended creative dry period. The story shocked me- I recalled my former love for writing, for books and stories and movies, and I identified with Carter. I too, had lost the key! Fortunately, I had not left it as late as Carter did to realise this! I still enjoy science, but it’s only a part of what I do. Immediately after reading this story I began a slow change in career trajectory. I began writing reviews, articles and fiction once again. For a story to have such an effect 90 years after it was published sure means that the old guy was surely doing something right.

The Diamond Lens by Fitz-James O'Brien

It is my privilege to rescue from obscurity an unfairly-forgotten writer from the annuls of history, and a man from my own county at that- the great Fitz-James O'Brien. Born Michael O'Brien in County Cork, very little seems to be known today about him (I reckon there's a decent English thesis in there somewhere, as the chap definitely deserves a revival).

What we do know about him is that he moved to America in the 1850's, changed his name and whittled away a sizable inheritance living the lavish lifestyle of a dandy. By all accounts (not that there are many), he was a raucous, rollicking man to have at a party, and he supposedly entertained and palled with many of the famous writers of the day. Like many an Irishman, he fought with the Yankees in the US Civil War, and died after being wounded

Fortunately for my own purposes, he also dabbled with ink himself. One of my favourite of his compositions is The Demon of the Gibbet, a rattlingly good Poe-esque tale of a late-night horseride past the Gallows Tree, where a demon is said to haunt. In every alternate verse, the demon speaks to the protagonist, telling him that he's going to steal his cloak, his wine, and eventually his woman as well! The existence of various locations around Cork city named for being former sites of gallows and hangings (Gallows Green, for example) makes me wonder if he had the Cork landscape in mind when he wrote this. The nature of this poem seemed to be crying out for a melody, so I did once put it to a tune, and played it many times with my group, The Thirsty Scholars, in our haunting ground, An Spaipin Fanach. Perhaps it will end up on Youtube someday!

Anyway, O'Brien also frequently wrote proto-sci fi stories for the American Victorian magazines almost thirty years before Wells was on the scene, which is pretty remarkable, especially seeing as how well he fares against the Grand Old Man of Victorian fiction. His tale What Was It?, though not one of my favourites, is thought to be possibly the earliest use of invisibility in fiction, predating The Damned Thing by Ambrose Bierce, The Horla by Maupassant and Predator. True to my own heart, he was massively influenced by the Arabian Nights (moreso even than Lovecraft, perhaps), and liked to inject his speculative fiction with a jolt of Orientalism, setting tales in Arab or far Eastern countries.

But for today's selection, I've chosen a tale that could have slipped easily into the Wells canon, except for one twist. The Diamond Lens at first appears as if it's going to be a classic Victorian sci-fi yarn- a a story of new science gone wrong. Here's the plot: Linley is a boy who grows up obsessed with microscopy. He loves it so much that as a child, he tears the eyes out of fish and animals in order to use the lenses within. Eventually his family buys him a real microscope, but this only fuels his obsession.

In order to live his life without interference from his family (who expect him to become a doctor), Linley enrolls in a medical course in a New York university and gets himself an apartment. He never turns up for lectures and spends his parents' money on more microscope equipment. But it's never enough! He wants to see more, he wants to see deeper. He curses the limitations of physics.

On the advice of his shady Jewish roomate (Wells would have approved), Linley does what any mid-Victorian gentleman would do when he had a problem- he goes to see a spiritualist. In a rather loopy twist, she puts him in touch with the father of microscopy, the eighteenth-century Dutchman Antonie Van Leeuwenhoek. The spirit of Leeuwenhoek tells Linley that to gain the clarity he craves, he must use a certain type of diamond to make the lens.

And what do you know? Upon returning home, the Jewish roomate (he's also French, just to add insult to injury) reveals to Linley that, through shady means, he's come into possession of just such a diamond! So what's a guy to do? Linley immediately decides to kill him and steal the diamond. After all, he reasons with himself, the Jew must have killed someone himself to get it (it's implied that the Jew had some background in South-American slave-trading). And thus, a perfectly good evening of wine and tipsy indiscretion ends in murder.

Linley carves the diamond into a lens, and finally gets the view he has always dreamed of. In a single drop of water, he discovers worlds that seem like fantastic gardens of colour and splendour. But then he spies something else in this world- a creature that looks like an exquisite, miniature girl. Linley is smitten. For days he cannot leave his microscope- even seeing the drop of water she inhabits depresses him, as it reminds him of the uncrossable gulf between them. I won't spoil the ending, but if you're thinking that this unnatural love will eventually destroy Linley, then have yourself a drink.

Man, I do love this story. It's simple, creepy and effective. It's also wonderfully old-fashioned and harsh in its themes of obsession and karma. From youth, Linley's obsession is depicted as driving him to unnatural acts, viz. the mutilation of animals. And the fact the he receives the information on how to make his breakthrough by supernatural means wonderfully foreshadows its later effects on him. Via consulting with spirits, theft and murder, Linley has achieved his goal. He has broken the natural order, and what he discovers will ruin him in the most personal way possible- through love (a touch that Wells would never use).

The writing is solid and far less annoying than even much later Victorian prose (Stoker, I'm looking at you!). The descriptions of the new world that the hero discovers are stirring, and the sense of wonder-turning-to-horror is masterfully handled. Who else but a Corkman could do as well?

Read the story here, if you would.

The Magician by Somerset Maugham

When Alan Moore decided to source all the fictional representations of famous occultist Alesteir Crowley for his League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century, he soon found that he had his work cut out for him. It seems that the Wickedest Man in the World made quite an impression on any number of writers during his life, many of whom decided to pay him the questionable compliment of including a facsimile of him in their works.
Somerset Maugham famously disliked Crowley upon meeting him, thinking him an outrageous humbug, but clearly found the man interesting enough to base The Magician on him.

Arthur and Margaret are English lovers hanging out with the artsy crowd in Paris during the late belle epoque. Their friends are dandies, bohemians and Impressionists and their lives are the stuff of Renoir paintings. That is, until, one Oliver Haddo comes into their lives. Haddo is an obese and boastful man who is rude and crude, yet not without some wit and charm. Though nobody seems to actually like him, he fascinates all who know him with his tales of travels in the East, and his hunting prowess. His absurd boasts invariably turn out to be true, so people afford him a grudging respect. And his favourite subject of all, and one on which he can converse endlessly, is the occult.

At first Margaret can't stand the man. But after Haddo is humiliated and physically abused by Arthur in their studio home, Haddo begins to use his strange powers to affect a change in her attitude towards him. Her perfect (chaste- and this does become a plot point later on, as well as being an example of prudery) relationship with her fiance Arthur comes to an abrupt end as she embarks on an unthinkable affair with the repulsive Haddo. But what does the magician really want with the beautiful, virginal Margaret?

This is my first Maugham book, so I didn't really know what to expect. He almost disowns it in the introduction, claiming that he doesn't even remember writing it, and that he seems to have been trying out a flowery continental style that he later regretted. His prose is readable but a little stilted. He draws his characters somewhat naively, they're flat characters who are either good or bad. We are constantly told how lovely and beautiful and innocent Margaret is, and this is supposed to make her fall even more tragic. Instead, it's kinda of annoying- it's 'tell- don't- show' storytelling, and there's kind of a lot of it in this book.

It's pretty obvious that Maugham has little real interest in the occult. He sticks in just enough information about magical matters to make the plot work, and in the introduction he muses that he must have spent at least a few days researching it in the British Museum. A few pages of this slim volume are given over to the works of Paracelsus and his ilk. Compare the later work of Dennis Wheatley, another writer who claimed that he had no particular interest in the occult prior to using it as a plot device in his fiction. Someone's been telling porkies, because even the casual reader of The Devil Rides Out can tell that Wheatley must have become an enthusiast at some stage- why else would he have included such a tremendous amount of research?

In any case, the magic that Oliver Haddo concerns himself with is not Satanism nor Spiritualism, but alchemy. In particular, he's interested in creating a homunculus. Unfortunately, not much time is given over to the mechanics of how he intends to achieve this, nor to what end. His motives remain decidedly nebulous.

Instead, much of this slim novel is taken up with the foibles of Arthur and Margaret's friend Susie as they ponder how to combat Haddo, though 'combat' might be too strong a word. There's a lot of crying, a lot of broken hearts, and a lot of cups of tea in the studio, and a lot of inaction. The only character who seems likely to do something is Dr. Porhoet, a kind of Van Helsing character who has lived his life in Alexandria, and so is knowledgable about the occult. Unfortunately, even he's so cowardly that Arthur has to force him to use his knowledge to help out Margaret.

SPOILERS

By the time this group has stopped sniveling and decided to take action, it's too late and Margaret is already dead. They have a poke about Haddo's English mansion, and find a laboratory full of occult paraphernalia. Then, hidden in his attic, they find the most interesting thing in the whole book: Haddo's attempt to re-create that scene from Alien Resurrection, eighty-nine years before it will be released to an uncaring public:

'...but what immediately attracted their attention was a row of those large glass vessels... each was covered with a white cloth. For here too, was a strange mass of flesh, almost as large as a new-born child, but there was in it the beginnings of something ghastly human. It was shaped vaguely like an infant, but the legs were joined together so that it looked like a mummy rolled up in its coverings. There was something that resembled a human head, covered with long golden hair, but it was horrible; it was an uncouth mass, without eyes or nose or mouth. The colour was a sickly pink, and it was almost transparent...'

Arthur removes the coverings from the other jars, and they see

'...abominations so awful that Susie had to clench her fists not to scream. There was one monstrous thing in which the limbs approached nearly to the human. It was extraordinarily heaped up, with fat, tiny arms, little bloated legs, and an absurd squat body...in another the trunk was almost like like that of a human child, except that it was patched strangely with red and grey. But the terror of it was that at the neck it branched hideously, and there were two distinct heads, monstrously large, but duly provided with all their features...'

Well, I can tell you that I woke up a bit after reading that. Unfortunately, Maugham does nothing with this great set-piece. It explains nothing about Haddo's magic, or how he killed Margaret, or what he needed from her.

So is there anything else worth noting about The Magician? The orientalism factor is extremely high. Once again, any character who has been to 'the East' has experienced impossible things and knows that the supernatural is real. Dr. Porhoet speaks to Arthur about his childhood in the 'Arabian Nights' world of Alexandria. When Haddo seduces Margaret, he talks of

'...strange Eastern places where no infidel had been. He spoke of the dawn upon sleeping desolate cities, and the moonlit nights of the desert, of the sunsets with their splendour, and of the crowded streets at noon. He told her of the many-coloured webs and of silken carpets, the glittering steel of armour, and of barbaric, priceless gems. The splendour of the East blinded her eyes. He spoke of frankincense and myrrh, of heavy perfumes of the scent-merchants, and drowsy odours of the Syrian gardens. The fragrance of the East filled her nostrils... it seemed to her that a comparison was drawn for her attention between the narrow round which awaited her as Arthur's wife, and this fair, full existence.'

Yep, once agin those mysterious Easterners are decadent and wondrous, barbaric and yet knowledgable about ancient powers. If only there had been a bit more of this stuff in the book and less of Arthur and his chums faffing about like an far less effective parody of Dr Quincy Morris and co from Dracula, there might have been a happy ending. As it stands, The Magician seems to be a book that Maugham wrote about a subject that he wasn't particularly interested in, and he didn't even put much magic into it anyway.

Fighting Fantasy: Book Outline

I've written before about the Fighting Fantasy series. As limited and childish as the format seems to be, there's something about this stuff that remains fascinating to me. It's something that involves writing, games, world-creating and, usually, horrible creatures and monsters. The possibilities ought to be endless! But in practice, things usually tend to go down the same old route of sub-Tolkien stories involving medieval towns with inns, boring old orcs and dragons, and zero character development.

Lost Games: Body Harvest

I haven't cared too much about gaming since my beloved N64 died many years ago. Being an N64 fan back then was like choosing to support the underdog in a a cup final. It was like hiding members of the Rebel Alliance in your basement while living on a planet where everyone wore stormtrooper helmets. Allright, maybe that's stretching it somewhat. What I'm saying is that public opinion, by and large, held that Playstation was bigger, badder and cooler. These things matter when you're 13. The PS did have rubbish loading times, but that wasn't enough of a handicap, and we knew it. The N64 itself was undeniably childish, awkward to programme for, couldn't do FMV, and had graphics fuzzier than Obama's plan for Iraq.

From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell

I first encountered Jack the Ripper one of those big ol' potboiler book of unexplained mysteries that every kid should have. It had an introduction by Colin Wilson and an article on Nostradamus that scared seven shades of hell out of me by claiming that the world was going to end-

In 1999 and seven months

From the sky shall come the great king of terror

Brr. Those words haunt me still. Thankfully, old Michel's prophecy was off (by at least two years anyway!) and I'm still around, sharing reminisces about childhood trauma. Anyway, the book also featured a terrific article on Jack the Ripper. Ok, the writing was poor, but all the elements were in there- spooky, fog-shrouded Victorian London (which I already knew about because of Dracula and H. G Wells), a mysterious killer who was left-handed and had expert SURGICAL KNOWLEDGE, and sent taunting letters and half-eaten kidneys to the police. What a character!

I think the fact that the Ripper was literate and consciously stoked his fame (vis-a-vis the letters, though I didn't find out till years later that he probably didn't write any of them) made him more interesting to me than boring, sordid, ordinary crime stories (still hate 'em, actually); it made him a character. More Springheel Jack than Jack Jones. And add to this that he was probably a doctor, and an upper-class one at that: I pictured Jack as a flamboyant, skilled and charming madman who wanted to give the world something that would shock and awe them- something the world would never, ever forget.

I still feel that some of this is valid. Look, if you've already decided to be crazy and commit some terrible and motiveless crime (and obviously the best option is not to do that at all), than at least you could do it in a way that's creative and memorable, instead of just seedy and depressing. It's a fact that people are obsessed with war and murder. A guy once cut up five prostitutes, and one hundred years later we're still talking about it. We're fascinated by it. We use it as a window into his time and place, we use it as a jumping-off point to learn about the society he came from. Look at Hitler, to invoke Godwin's law. However terrible he was (in fact, because of how terrible he was), he will always be a million times more fascinating than the good people who struggled against him. We may admire them, but we don't buy books about them and we don't make movies about them.

How many books or movies have you seen about Detective Abberline?

Have you even heard of him?

Ok, I'm going to step down from the soapbox now. The other feature of note about the Unexplained Mysteries book that needs mentioning is the imagery that it used- all taken

from Punch and the Illustrated Police News. The former was a Victorian magazine that is still famous for its satirical cartoons such as dropping the pilot and the Rhodes Colossus. The latter is probably best looked upon as an ancestor of Britain's loathsome tabloid culture. Both featured great line-drawing art that solidified Victorian London in my mind as a dark, sordid place full of horror and mystery.

Around every monochrome corner in this imaginary London, it seemed that serious-faced men in mutton chops found the shattered corpses of fallen women. Elsewhere, mesmerists, mediums and even a few hapless bobbies did their best to track down those responsible. See for yourself:

Little did I know it, but out there waiting for me was From Hell: not only is it probably the most detailed fictionalization of the Whitechapel murders in any medium, but it's also one of the most immersive trips into Victorian London it's possible to take nowadays. This is due in no small part to the art of Eddie Campbell, who clearly based his vision of this period on the kind of lurid art featured above. Alan Moore's extensive research and all-round geniusness don't hurt either. Calling From Hell a comic book is a bit like calling the Sistine Chapel a wallpaper replacement. It's a many-layered piece that manages to comment on much more than just the Ripper murders.

But first thing's first: a little bit of plot. The story kicks off when heir to the British throne Pronce Albert has an affair with a Catholic sweet-shop girl that results in a pregnancy. This alerts us that Moore is using as his base the outlandish theories of one Stephen Knight, writer of Jack The Ripper: The Final Solution. It's an ingeniously complex conspiracy theory that even Moore admits is nonsense. Long story short, in order to avert scandal Queen Victoria herself orders that a small group of prostitutes who have attempted to blackmail certain parties with this information. Unlike much Jack the Ripper fiction (including the movie version), From Hell is decidedly not a whodunnit, as we learn early on who the killer is: Sir William Whitey Gull, physician-in-ordinary to the Queen (it's not a secret, he's on the front of the book for feck's sake).

Soon, Detective Fred Abberline in brought in to deal with the case. He's not happy- after years working in Whitechapel, he thought he'd finally left it behind after being promoted. Now he's back amid the poverty and prostitutes of London's East End. But it seems as if many on in the police force don't particularly want him to track down the killer...

From Hell is a huge book, and using the Ripper murders as a focus, it manages to comment on a great many subjects. Moore gives us one a feeling of what it must have been like 'on the ground' in Victorian London, and many aspects of that society are addressed: the social system, racism, political activism, art and history. A multitude of historical cameos occur- including from Irishmen W. B. Yeats and Oscar Wilde. And if you've ever heard the story about the cursed mummy case in the British Museum, well, there's a little something for you, too.

There's a lot of talk about the occult, too. The narrative kind of stops dead in chapter four as Sir William Gull gives his uncomprehending coachman an occult tour of London. It goes on a bit long, and contains perhaps just a bit too much information for the casual reader (restraint was never one of Moore's strengths), but to those who are interested, it's a masterful piece of work. Using entirely real places and working from photographs, Moore and Campbell provide a wealth of history, both real and imagined, about the various pagan activities that have existed around the British capitol. Even the more outlandish theories have some basis in history, as Moore proves in his wonderful appendix.

Moore seems to have it in for the Masons. Like in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, they live up to their legendary status as secret string-pullers in From Hell. Here, Moore provides a fascinatingly thorough look at how such an organization might actually function. Again, he claims that most of the information has been claimed as fact at some time or another, though he was not afraid to bend the facts to fit his story. The Masons are portrayed as an important group to get involved with if one wishes to advance themselves in Victorian London.

All this fanciful stuff aside, From Hell remains an excellent way to begin learning the facts of the true case. The appendix makes clear what is fact and what is fiction, and Moore has attempted to cleave as close to fact as he can (within the boundaries of Knight's outrageous plot). Having faces and characters to attack to the various persons involved with the case is helpful too, and spurs one on to read about the truth (Charles Warren, for example, was a far more interesting character in real life than the book hints at).

There's a whole lot of other great stuff chucked in as well. As Gull descends deeper and deeper into madness during the book, he has hallucinations that link his murders to others committed at different times throughout history. At first it seems like just an oddity, but Moore is working towards some tremendous ideas about the nature of history, paranormal experiences, and murder. Stick with it. And the final appendix is a self-contained comic quite unlike anything you'll ever read. It's a brilliant take-down on the notion that we'll ever really know what happened in Whitechapel in 1888. All the major suspects and theories are looked at in some detail, but the take-home message is that the mentality of those fascinated by the murders is as interesting as the original happenings.

The Ripper murders will obviously continue to fuel books and movies. But I can't see any of them improving on what Moore and Campbell have done.

And to mix and mash influences, I'd like to note that the reason I can still name all five of the 'canonical' victims is not any book, but in fact this.

The Seven-Per-Cent Solution by Nicholas Meyer

Writers seem to love mash-ups set in the Victorian age above all others. Maybe it's because there was such a wealth of crazy characters about just then- both real and fictional. I mean, I can understand the temptation to pit Jack the Ripper, probably the world's most famous criminal villain who never got caught, against his fictional contemporary, Sherlock Homes. But some of the pairings out there are less obvious.
In the ranks of professional fan-fiction, Holmes alone has battled H. G. Well's Martians at least as many times as he has the Whitechapel fiend. Nicholas Meyer is no stranger to the concept- after writing the Seven-Per-Cent Solution in 1976, he wrote the batty movie Time After Time, in which (hold your breath) Jack the Ripper steals H. G. Wells' time machine, and travels to 1970's San Francisco. Well, dammit if there isn't something about this same bunch of characters that makes people want to use them, over and over again, in different combinations.

The Seven-Per-Cent Solution has the potential to address some interesting aspects of the Holmes world that Doyle, writing when he did, could not. It takes as its theme a very serious issue which, to us, Doyle merely skips over- Holmes' cocaine habit. Watson, narrating a previously undiscovered memoir, decides that the time has come to correct some of the fictions his previous volumes created as a smokescreen, and reveal the awful truth: Holmes was a serious cocaine addict, at times being lost to dementia and unable to look after himself.

Watson, Mycroft and even Moriarty (!) conspire to bring Holmes, against his will, to Vienna, where he will meet the famous Dr Sigmund Freud, who alone has encountered success in curing cocaine addicts. Various hijinks ensue, resulting in a somewhat boring, tacked-on royal crisis that the group must solve.

There's lots to like about the book. 'Watson' recreates the world of Doyle's characters convincingly well- though he cannily admits in the opening that because he is writing in the evening of his life, we should not expect his style to be exactly as we remembered it. Most of your favourite Holmes characters show up at some point, and Watson really goes out of his way to tie lots of background information from the canon into the story.

However, the book does have an irritating Nannyish feel to it that Doyle never had. Having introducing the heavy topic of drug addiction, Nicholson doesn't seem to know what to do with it, and rarely goes into the horrors overly deeply. Maybe it's just me, but Holmes' withdrawal seems awfully quick, and within no time he's off again, following a new case. It seems to me to be kind of a cheat. I know Watson is a Victorian, but it still feels that this, his shocking 'tell-all', has had a strong dose of not-before-the-children. Holmes, fascinating because he has almost completely surrendered his humanity and emotions to pure deduction, begs lots of questions, but Meyer posits them only to ignore them, as if he doesn't trust the audience to handle a real look into the weaknesses of their hero as a human being instead of an ideal. Certainly, an opportunity to do something new with the character has been lost. Instead, Meyer churns out another serviceable piece of fan-fiction.

Freud too is disappointing. We learn pretty much nothing new about the guy that any average person could tell you- he's Austrian, bearded, and has some funny ideas about psychology. That's about as much depth as the plot goes into. What a waste of such a divisive figure; a man who's ideas shaped how we thought about the mind for a century, only to be debunked and scorned. Instead, Freud is treated as a magic 'get-well' figure who can cure Holmes without clogging up the narrative with little details like how.

Before long, the GreatDetective is back to battling Martians, Dracula Whitechapel murderers and whoever else contemporary writer decide to pair him with.