Be Excellent To Each Other

Oooh, this is good. I've read a couple of early Holmes short stories before from Doyle, but never the full blown novel. Well now I'm reading Sherlock Holmes & The Valley of Fear, and strike me down with a hammer if it's not both gripping and brilliant. The first half of the book is the superbly written but standard chin-stroker of a mystery as Sherlock is called to a manor house to investigate the death of a chap who's had his head blown off by a sawn-off shotgun. The second half kicks into high gear with an astonishingly tense, pulpy and gritty tale about a sinister huge Masonic lodge in a coal mining valley in America, which carries out murders with impunity and is seemingly run by DRINK-MY-MILKSHAKE-Man. There's lots more in there but I have to say that rarely have I come across a bunch of worse ne'er-do-wells in a book, they come across almost as rotten as Garth Ennis baddies. They're the kind of bad guys that have you daydreaming of riding into town and with implausible skills kicking their collective arses.

Only in actuality, they're so scary that you shudder at the thought.

Beyond this, you get the usual dry and occassionally cruel humour of the Holmes books, evocative atmosphere and the perfect pacing of plot developments. If you've not read a Holmes book before then I suggest you grab one, they make perfect fast-paced reading and this one has more than a little of the Elmore Leonard/Chandler grit as it develops. Can't wait to finish it and see what happens, though I can't imagine it ending happily for anyone.

So any of you guys Sherlock fans? I'm quite looking forward to the Downey Jnr one, as it looks highly entertaining if wildly inaccurate and completely at odds with the tone of the books. It's a shame though that no one out there in the TV and film world has tried to nail the books down for the sense of oppressive tension that they, on the basis of the 2/3rds of this book I'm engrossed in, can deliver.

Verdict thus far: Five out of Five Watson Ejaculations.

Gah. Now I want to find my complete set of Holmes which is... somewhere.

I left mine at home, because it was Too Damn Heavy.

The books are absolutely superb. Plus if you pick the right films and TV adaptations, they are awesome too.

I really, really hate Guy Ritchie and his film will be an unutterable travesty but having seen the trailer... he can't actually have made it work, can he?

I liked the trailer. It could be horrific, but Robert Downey Jr will hopefully have enough charm to swing the more ridiculous parts of it.

I am fairly obsessed with Sherlock Holmes and have been for years. Read about 80% of the books and just adore Jeremy Brett on TV (still get very sad that he's no longer with us).

I hate the new film since it's directed by Ritchie (twat) and stars Downey Jr (twat + 1), and never intend to go anywhere near it.

i have the books and always have one of the books in my laptop bag. Brent is the best Holmes ever. I am not sure about the film and might wait for it on dvd.

I have a cinema card so I'll probably go and see it. I'm not a fan of Guy Ritchie, though I do like Downey Jnr (sorry Starling) and as long as it doesn't have too many cockneys in it, I'm sure I'll get something out of it. Beside, if I hate it I can always write a review.

Lord Rixondale has the Complete Sherlock Holmes, I believe I shall grab it off him at some point.

I've never seen the Jeremy Brett version, though I've heard the sad story of his life. Apparently the first series is a work of supreme genius, with Brett utterly mesmeric, though the show does goes off the boil a little thereafter I've heard. I'd really like to catch some, likewise Basil Rathbone's effort.

Sherlock Holmes is proper good. I bought the complete canon some years ago and basically devoured it cover to cover of the course of a couple of weeks. Amazing stuff. The Brett Holmes was the definitive portrayal, I believe. I do still have a soft spot for bumbling Watson of the Nigel Bruce/Basil Rathbone incarnation.

Of Brett (Wikipedia)


Cripes, that's harsh.

Yeah, please try to catch some Brett if you can. I've got the boxset of the entire series and, as you'd expect with any long running telly series, you have some superb episodes, some good ones, and a few bobbins ones. When you see some superb ones though, it's just flawless and completely authentic as you picture it from the books - the setting, Brett's portrayal, etc. The two actors who played Watson were excellent too (David Burke then Edward Hardwicke), and I know Brett always spoke highly of them both.

The DVD boxset is quite pricey, but I believe the episodes are often repeated on ITV4 or whatever.

Re his illness, in some episodes towards the end you can clearly see Brett was very ill at the time, and it's quite painful to watch some of them, though not to suggest the episodes themselves were bad, but to see Brett all bloated and pale, compared to the youthful looking man literally bounding around in the early series, is sad. From things I've read in various books about him though, despite concerns over his health at the time, he insisted he wanted to carry on with filming and it was always his hope to film the entire canon, but obviously this never happened.

For what it's worth, I also have the Rathbone films and while I think they're jolly good fun with some genuinely good stories, most of them are only loosely based on the actual stories from the books, and also most are set in the 1940s, at the time they were filmed (indeed some are essentially WWII propaganda films). That said, I especially think that Rathbone's Hound of The Baskervilles is one of the best versions of this story.

Peter Cushing also made a lovely Holmes in the BBC series from the late 60s (this is now quite cheap on DVD at under a tenner for the boxset).

Finally... As a one-off film, Murder By Decree (Christopher Plummer as Holmes) is a brilliant film with Holmes trying to solve the Jack The Ripper murders. I've only ever watched this a couple of times as I find it too chilling.