Review of Three Madmen & more

Earlier this week, I read and reviewed Titan Books' reissue of Philip Jose Farmer's short novel THE PEERLESS PEER, in which Sherlock Holmes and John Watson encounter John Clayton, Lord Greystoke, a.k.a. Tarzan, Lord of the Apes.  That led me to reading a small group of related stories written by diverse authors over a long span of time.  Starting with:


89. His Last Bow by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, from the Sherlock Holmes collection His Last Bow.  I've been trying to read the Holmes stories in order, so who knows when I would have actually hit this story in the proper sequence (2013, anyone?) but the lead protagonist of Farmer's novel is the bad-guy from this story in which Holmes "finally" "officially" retires. The story is notable as one of the few that Watson does not narrate. I actually found that this built the tension surrounding WW1 German super-spy Von Bork -- which of the people surrounding the spy is actually Holmes, that master of disguise? Is it the Ambassador? The housekeeper? The informant?  I felt like Doyle really kept me guessing and Holmes revealing himself was the high point of the story. Von Bork is no Moriarty in the minds of Holmes fans, but he's still portrayed as an effective foil for Holmes. I'd like to see a real matching of wits between them.

90. The Adventure of the Three Madmen by Philip Jose Farmer, from The Grand Adventure.  When Farmer initially wrote The Adventure of the Peerless Peer, it was a limited edition hardcover, and the Burroughs estate approved of the use of Tarzan. But when Dell released a mass market paperback version a short time later, the Burroughs estate rescinded their approval and told Farmer the story could not be reprinted until the Tarzan copyright expired in 1999... which also precluded Farmer including the story in his "best of" anthology The Grand Adventure in 1984. Rather than write a brand-new novella, Farmer simply reworked "Peer" into "Madmen," replacing Tarzan with another "jungle lord" -- Mowgli, now all grown up and a member of the British peerage himself.  The rework works surprisingly well. Most of the text is the same down to key bits of dialogue, but there are differences (Tarzan arrow-skewers a cobra about to attack Holmes; Mowgli talks the snake into  leaving Holmes alone, to name one example). Regardless of which Jungle Lord features, the story still moves along at that brisk pulp-adventure pace Farmer loves. One thing I did notice here even more so than in the Tarzan version: Holmes' behavior is quite erractic, and his transition from "I believe the man is a fraud" to "I believe he is entitled to his title" is a bit too abrupt. Those tend to be my only complaints in this fun story.

91. Jungle Brothers, or Secrets of the Jungle Lords by Dennis E. Power, from Myths for the Modern Age: Philip Jose Farmer's Wold-Newton Universe.  Reading "Peer" and "Madmen" back to back reminded me of this excellent essay reconciling the two versions and giving valid logic for how both could have happened simultaneously.  Power picks out the hints in both manuscripts and puts the pieces together: Watson, at the behest of Tarzan and Mowgli, wrote two versions of the story in order to muddy the waters for anyone trying to track down or connect them. I'm actually a bit surprised, knowing that Titan Books will soon be issuing new Holmes novels under the previously reprint-only "Further Adventures" banner, that they didn't ask Power and Win Scott Eckert to combine the narratives as Power suggests in this essay.  I also like Power's closing thoughts about the existence of a "southeast Asian Wold-Newton family" resulting from a different meteor strike.

92. After Kong Fell by Philip Jose Farmer, from The Grand Adventure.  While I was rereading "Three Madmen," I thought it was high time to reread Farmer's neat little tale about a grandfather reminiscing about the primal experience of his childhood: seeing Kong escape from the theater, rampage across Manhattan, and eventually fall from the Empire State Building. In typical Farmer/Wold-Newton fashion, there are cameos by The Shadow and the ESB's most famous resident, Doc Savage.  This is a wistful, nostalgic tale built out of watching reruns of the original  King Kong movie on local NY television in the 70s and 80s (back when Channels 5, 9 & 11 were WNEW, WWOR and WPIX and unaffiliated with any major national network. Yes, kids, this was before FOX and The CW!)


Bonus Content! Here's a photo of these interconnected books:

Review of The Peerless Peer

Book 40: The Peerless Peer (The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes #13) by Philip Jose Farmer, isbn 9780859681201, 139 pages, Titan Books, $9.99

(Original 1974 paperback publication: The Adventure of the Peerless Peer by Philip Jose Farmer, 128 pages, Dell, $1.25)

The Premise: (from the back cover): "Sherlock Holmes and Watson take to the skies in quest of the nefarious Von Bork and his weapon of dread... A night sky aerial engagement with the deadly Fokker nearly claims three brilliant lives... And an historic alliance is formed, whereby Baker Street's enigmatic mystery-solver and Greystoke, the noble savage, peer of the realm and jungle lord, team up to bring down the hellish hun!" The Titan Books edition also included an afterword on the "Wold-Newton" concept by Win Scott Eckert, and a preview of Kim Newman's Moriarty: The Hound of the D'Ubervilles.


My Rating: 4stars


My Thoughts:  From the beginning of Titan Books' series of reissues of classic Holmes pastiches and crossovers, I'd been wondering if they would manage to secure the rights to finally reprint Farmer's 1974 classic teaming Holmes and Tarzan.  Granted, the original story penned by Farmer is relatively slim at 128 pages. As compared to most of Titans' reissues it's more novella than novel. Still, it's good to see the story back in print in a widely-available format that doesn't require fans to scour used bookstores or pick up pricier limited edition anthologies from specialty presses.

For fans of Farmer and his "Wold Newton" concept, this book is pure gold. Any Wold-Newton-connected story, whether by Farmer or Win Eckert or anyone else, is a treasure-hunt: how many casual references to other fictional characters can you find? As expected from the man who built the original Wold-Newton Family Tree, Farmer drops plenty of names in these pages. He also carefully closes the connection between Holmes and Greystoke that he first outlined in his Tarzan Alive: that Holmes' "Adventure of the Priory School" involves the Greystokes, with Watson changing the family's name to Holdernesse in the published version to protect the family name and prevent public scandal.

For fans of fast-moving pulp fiction, the book is pure gold as well. Even when the main characters are completely at rest (for instance, during long hours of air travel), the book still zips along. There are no long drawn-out descriptive passages (except, curiously, when Watson is describing the aircraft they are riding in). Holmes' mission is to stop Von Bork; the encounter with Tarzan only helps move that mission along. There aren't any secondary stories or side-trips; the longest lull in the action is the short breather towards the end where the Holmes-Tarzan connection is spelled out by the Great Detective.

As far as the "extras" in this edition go: Win Scott Eckert is perhaps THE torch-bearer for the Wold-Newton concept now that Farmer has passed away; along with folks like Christopher Paul Carey, Eckert has been completing unfinished Farmer novels and writing stories that fill in "missing pieces" of the Wold-Newton family tree. Eckert's essay "puts the pieces together" for those who are not as well-versed in the published careers of Tarzan and Holmes, explaining most of Farmer's off-hand references to other characters and clarifying things like "the succession of ducal titles" that is so important to the Greystoke/"Holdernesse" line of succession. Eckert also explains the connection between PEER and "The Adventure of the Three Madmen," and nods to Dennis E. Powers' great essay reconciling the two stories. For anyone interested in knowing more about Wold-Newton scholarship, Eckert's Afterword to PEER is a great place to start.

My only regret is that Titan didn't include "Three Madmen" in this volume. Rounding out the book with Farmer's alternate take on the story, and Powers' essay, would really have made it a complete package.

So there you have it: a rollickin' good adventure that doesn't take very long to read, and a great essay to follow it up? What's not to love?

Advs of Holmes

Book 45: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, contained in The Complete Sherlock Holmes Volume 1, isbn 9781593080341, 265 pages, Barnes And Noble Classics, $7.95

I decided not long ago that I really needed to go back and read some (or all) of Doyle's original Holmes work, to be able to more capably judge how the stories by more recent writers stack up to those of Holmes' creator. Since there seem to be new Holmes short stories in every issue of The Strand magazine and in just about every period mystery anthology, I decided to skip rereading A Study In Scarlet and The Sign of the Four, the first two Holmes novels, and proceed to the first short story collection.

Of course, I've reviewed all of the individual stories over on the 365shortstories community. If you want my individual thoughts (with pretty much no spoilers), you can check that out.

Overall, the collection really brings out certain facets of Holmes' personality. Some of them are repeated in story after story: the penchant for closing his eyes and ducking his head when he's trying to think in public; the habit of having reached a conclusion from the barest set of clues even before the parties involved give him more details. That last part, of course, is what makes him The Great Detective. It's also a bit infuriating for someone brought up on "fair play mysteries." The most important details of most of these cases tend to get noticed by Holmes when he's off-screen rather than when Watson is with him to show how Holmes got to that detail.

The other facet of Holmes' personality that really shines through in these stories is his attitude towards women. Much is often made of how Holmes refers to Irene Adler as "The Woman," and how she is the only woman who ever earned his respect because she outsmarted him in one particular case. I've seen many a review talking about how misogynistic Holmes is, that he veritably hates women. But in story after story in this collection he goes out of his way to protect women, whether it be physically (by warning Violet Hunter to stay away from a situation Holmes would not let any sister of his get involved in) or emotionally (by helping men who have wronged women pay their dues without the women being further emotionally injured). I can't say I approve of Holmes' decisions in every case where a woman's feelings were in danger of being hurt, but I can say that I find it an interesting aspect of his character. (And speaking of Ms. Hunter -- at the end of the story in which she appears, she seems to have gained high respect from both Holmes and Watson, and this time for not outwitting Holmes but matching him detail-for-detail.)

There are a few classic tales in this particular collection: A Scandal in Bohemia introduces Irene Adler; The Red-Headed League is just a fun outing; The Adventure of the Speckled Band and The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb are the most gothic-feeling of the tales; and The Adventure of the Copper Beeches introduces Violet Hunter. The stories I enjoyed the least: The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet seemed forced and The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor felt like a retread of the much more interesting A Case of Identity.

Holmes in brief

254. The Adventure of the Speckled Band Holmes once again comes to the rescue of a pretty young damsel in distress. This one is concerned that her step-father and the gypsies in residence on his property are somehow complicit in the death of her sister, who was due to be wed. The action takes place in the town of Stokes Moran, and for some reason I expected a connection to Col. Sebastian Moran, aide-de-camp to the notorious Prof. Moriarity, Holmes' nemesis. But there is no connection (at least not in the story itself. I'd have to read back through various Wold-Newton sites to see if any later authors came up with a connection). The story moves quickly, and Holmes of course spots the key details everyone else has missed. Several early details are essentially red herrings.

255. The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb Doctor Watson is brought an intriguing patient: a young civil engineer who has somehow lost his thumb. Once he's patched up as best as Watson can manage, Watson brings Holmes on board to hear the man's story. How he lost his thumb is not the mystery Holmes needs to solve, but rather where the man lost his thumb and who the perpetrators really were. Another of those cases in which Holmes solves the crime but doesn't catch the criminals.

256. The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor Doyle seems to like these stories in which one member of a wedding party disappears before, during, or just after the nuptial ceremony. (Jim Butcher somewhat pays tribute to this trope in his Harry Dresden story Heorot.) This time, it is the newlywed husband who is left without a spouse when his new bride disappears during a post-wedding luncheon. The facts of the mystery itself are a good read, although I do wish more of them had been hinted at in the story itself.

257. The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet The implication at the start of the story is that the Important Person who hocks the royal beryl coronet to a banker for a loan is Prince Albert. In our modern day and age, it's almost impossible to imagine someone so well known being able to visit a major banker in full daylight business hours to hock a piece of jewelry that normally resides in a locked guarded case. The late 1800s were a simpler time, for sure. The main mystery is not why "Prince Albert" put the coronet up as collateral for a loan (that's never revealed by Doyle in the story), but rather how the coronet is almost stolen and definitely damaged by someone in the banker's household. Holmes believes the man arrested for the crime didn't do it and sets about to prove himself right. I felt like this was one of the fairer-play mysteries in this set. I could not only understand how Holmes got to his conclusion, I could actually go back and see the hints where they were dropped.

258. The Adventure of the Copper Beeches Much is made of the fact that Irene Adler, or "The Woman," is the only woman for whom Holmes ever showed actual respect as an equal. In this story, Holmes and Watson meet a young governess named Violet Hunter, and I humbly submit that Miss Hunter shows as much mental fortitude and attention to detail as Holmes himself. Adler may be the woman who outwitted Holmes, but Hunter is the one who essentially matches him stride for stride. She starts out a little demure and unsure of herself, but by the end she has gained Watson's respect and I suspect Holmes' as well.

And that wraps up the first Holmes short story collection. I'm going to hold off on starting Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes for a little bit so as to cleanse the palate a bit, so to speak.