Word: sherlockian
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Waxwork by Peter Lovesey (Pantheon; $7.95). Lovesey's mysteries are set in late 19th century London, which in too many other authors' hands now seems exclusively Sherlockian. He writes with accurate verbal and social perception about the upper and lower reaches of Victorian sanctimony and contrivance. Waxwork, 41-year-old Lovesey's eighth novel, is at once charming, chilling and as convincing as if his tale had unfolded in the "Police Intelligence" column of April...
...fantasy of every Sherlockian that Sherlock Holmes, with Dr. John H. Watson, did in fact pursue justice among the befogged and criminalled London streets of the late 19th century, and that Dr. A. Conan Doyle was merely the alter ego Watson annexed so as to fictionalize his accounts. Fantasy perhaps, but with the publication of The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, we have at last some substantiation that Watson, at least, actually lived--and died in 1940--and that Doyle was only the distracted doctor and inoffensive scribbler we'd like him to be. We owe these revelations to Nicholas Meyer...
...hound Toby, but the scent they are following is not the foul musk of creosote, that criminal excrescence from The Sign of the Four, but the rather innocuous odor of a man who is steeped to the ankles in vanilla extract. This may be a fine touch for the Sherlockian satirist--and there have been plenty of them--but it hardly befits the genius of Watson. Because of preposterous insertions, like this pun: "You've a real gift for telling a tale, Watson, and a flair for titles, too, I'll be bound," or the following canard: "On that previous...
...book depends on its originals, it also detaches itself from the concerns of the detective novel. The narrator appears to mock the readers or himself, to perform little changes in the Sherlockian from that betray his aloofness. For instance, in spite of his skillful story, the author endeavors to give the piot a fine little flaw (involving the two women of the adventure). In addition, some of his sentences are disjointed in a profoundly jarring way, as if they have been lifted straight from the canon and scrambled slightly to fit the story here...
...done, he demonstrated in minute, Sherlockian fashion, by an injection of the drug succinylcholine chloride, which hitherto had been thought to be undetectable in the human body...