Audiobook: The Papers of Sherlock Holmes: Volume 1 By David Marcum

I really wish the publishers had used some of
the voice actor budget towards graphic design.

This is my third foray in Holmesian pastiche. I went into some detail on generalisms about both Sherlock Holmes and pastiches in this post, so lets be specific.

David Marcum is a pretty big figure in the Holmesian world. He has written dozens of pastiches himself, as well as editing the comprehensive MX Books of Sherlock Holmes stories, some 52 volumes, comprising (I believe) over a 1000 short stories. Best selling thriller author Lee Child has gone on record as saying "Marcum could be today's greatest Sherlockian writer."

There is little to be found about Marcum on the 'net, except that he is a civil engineer from Eastern Tennessee and became enthralled in Sherlock Holmes at the age of ten. His writing output, though prodigious, especially considering it is not his day job, is limited to Sherlock Holmes and Solar Pons, the latter being himself a ripoff of Holmes, presented in the grand pulp vein. There is apparently a manuscript for a cold war thriller under Marcum's bed.

Much of Marcum's life seems to revolve around
Holmes, and this deep knowledge shines though.

As this is an audio book we have to consider, not only the writing, but also the narration. On Papers this is carried out by Simon Shepherd, a British small screen actor who was worked on such programmes as Peak Practice and Casualty. To call Shepherd's narration awful would probably be a slight exaggeration, but only slight. His general tone and timbre suggests he would be better employed on the audiobook version of Hayes Repair and Workshop Manual of the Mark IV Ford Cortina (1976–1979). Conan Doyle described Holme's voice as high, quick, and somewhat strident. Shepherd seems to have taken this to mean nasal, with a stilted intonation that suggests the onset of dementia. After a few hours of listening though, I must admit, I became inured to the narration, much the same way that once you've been in Australia for a few weeks, the flies crawling all over your face don't bother you as much.

And so to the writing. Happily this is of a far high quality than the narration. Of the Holmes pastiches I have read'listened to, certainly of the three I have thus far graced this blog with, The Papers of Sherlock Holmes comes the closest to Conan Doyle's originals. The mysteries are not quite as neatly tied up, but they are intriguing and contain the right mix of Victorian atmosphere and gothic trappings. Holmes is taken to Tennessee (Marcum's own stomping ground) but this still feels true to the character. Conan Doyle had an obvious fascination with the States, and they feature tangentially several times, and more explicitly in the third person sections of Valley of Fear and A Study in Scarlet. 

Solar Pons even went to the
same milliner.

Where Marcum does wonder away from the originals is in the last story, which elaborates on Holmes' personal history, and brings in his family. At the end there is also a considerable section where it is established that Solar Pons is actually Siger Holmes, Sherlock's nephew. While this opening up of Holmes' world is not badly done, it feels very different from Conan Doyle's stories. Doyle consciously created an atmosphere linked to time and place, ie usually Victorian London, (this technique is a mainstay of pulp fiction, where the surroundings inform the emotion of the story, thick smog obscures unknown dangers, individuals from 'foreign' lands adding exoticism). Even as Doyle wrote stories into the 20th century they remained for the most part rooted in the high Victorian era. Holmes though was beyond time and place. He was alien, even to the exaggerated setting. Both where Holmes came from, and where he went, is surrounded in mystery. I think this is in part why he endures as a character to this day; he can be plucked from the streets full of horse drawn cabs, and landed in what ever setting we choose, be that WWII, 21st century London, or 22nd century New London. By rooting Holmes in a world that has a claim to him, rather than allowing him to descend, do his thing, then leave, fundamentally changes the dynamics. 

Marcum portrays the characters exceptionally well, the characters are true to Doyle's creation, and even where he deviates slightly from what Doyle wrote, he does so knowingly, such as when Holmes states that all knowledge is useful and his original maxim about the mind being like an attic room that should not be overcrowded, was wrong. There are only a couple of Americanisms that have crept in.  

Overall, this is a very solid outing for Holmes, loosing points only for a digression into biography, and a subpar narration. ★★★★☆