Martin Greenberg: Sherlock Holmes In America

Copyright © 2009 by Martin H. Greenberg, Jon L. Lellenberg, and Daniel Stashower

Introduction: “‘American, as you perceive,’” copyright © 2009 by Jon Lellenberg and Daniel Stashower

“The Case of Colonel Warburton’s Madness,” copyright © 2009 by Lyndsay Faye

“Ghosts and the Machine,” copyright © 2009 by Lloyd Rose

“Excerpts from an Unpublished Memoir Found in the Basement of the Home for Retired Actors,”

copyright © 2009 by Steve Hockensmith

“The Flowers of Utah,” copyright © 2009 by Robert Pohle

“The Adventure of the Coughing Dentist,” copyright © 2009 by Loren D. Estleman

“The Minister’s Missing Daughter,” copyright © 2009 by Victoria Thompson

“The Case of Colonel Crockett’s Violin,” copyright © 2009 by Gillian Linscott

“The Adventure of the White City,” copyright © 2009 by Bill Crider

“Recalled to Life,” copyright © 2009 by Paula Cohen

“The Seven Walnuts,” copyright © 2009 by Daniel Stashower

“The Adventure of the Boston Dromio,” copyright © 2009 by Matthew Pearl

“The Case of the Rival Queens,” copyright © 2009 by Carolyn Wheat

“The Adventure of the Missing Three Quarters,” copyright © 2009 by Jon L. Breen

“The Song at Twilight,” copyright © 2009 by Michéal Breathnach

“Moriarty, Moran, and More: Anti-Hibernian Sentiment in the Canon,” copyright © 2009 by

Michael Walsh

“How the Creator of Sherlock Holmes Brought Him to America,” copyright © 2009 by

Christopher Redmond

“ It is always a joy to meet an American,” declares Sherlock Holmes in “The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor,” “for I am one of those who believe that the folly of a monarch and the blundering of a minister in far-gone years will not prevent our children from being some day citizens of the same worldwide country under a flag which shall be a quartering of the Union Jack with the Stars and Stripes.”

It should not come as a surprise, then, to find that the Sherlock Holmes stories are fairly bursting with Americans. The Great Detective’s very first outing, A Study in Scarlet , features a lengthy flashback set in the Mormon community of Utah, while the novel The Valley of Fear turns on an account of nefarious doings in the coal-mining communities of Pennsylvania. Americans feature prominently in several of the most popular Holmes adventures, including The Five Orange Pips and The Adventure of the Dancing Men, and no less a figure than the woman, the legendary Irene Adler “of dubious and questionable memory” who bested Sherlock Holmes, hailed from New Jersey. If further evidence is required, one need only recall that Holmes himself posed as an Irish-American spy named Altamont to outwit the German spymaster Von Bork in His Last Bow .

Like his famous detective, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was an enthusiastic admirer of the United States. In boyhood he was fascinated by the frontier tales of James Fenimore Cooper and Mayne Reid, and as a young writer he drew inspiration from Edgar Allan Poe, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Mark Twain, and Bret Harte. Over the course of his lifetime, Conan Doyle made four visits to the United States, and called for the creation of an Anglo-American society to promote understanding and friendship between the two nations. The dedication of his novel The White Company reads: “To the Hope of the Future, the Reunion of the English Speaking Races, This Little Chronicle of Our Common Ancestry Is Inscribed.”

In that spirit, the present volume brings together a collection of new stories written by some of today’s best mystery writers, in which Holmes and Watson strike out for the United States. “That’s paying for brains, you see,” as Holmes remarks in The Valley of Fear, “the American business principle.” Some readers may balk at finding the Great Detective uprooted from his familiar Baker Street digs, but we believe we are playing the game according to Doyle.

“It air strange, it air,” he once wrote, in a story called The American’s Tale , “but I could tell you queerer things than that ’ere-almighty queer things. You can’t learn everything out of books, sirs, no how. You see it ain’t the men as can string English together and as has had good eddications as finds themselves in the queer places I’ve been in. They’re mostly rough men, sirs, as can scarce speak aright, far less tell with pen and ink the things they’ve seen; but if they could they’d make some of your European’s har riz with astonishment.”

Indeed, as Sherlock Holmes once observed, “American slang is very expressive sometimes.”

Lyndsay Faye is the author of the historical thriller Dust and Shadow: An Account of the Ripper Killings by Dr. John H. Watson , in which the Great Detective must trace the infamous serial killer in a pre-Freudian world, amidst the hostile censure of the gutter press, and at the risk of his own life. She spent many years in the San Francisco Bay Area, working as a professional actress. Lyndsay and her husband, Gabriel Lehner, now live in Manhattan with their cat, Grendel; she is a proud member of Actor’s Equity Association and the Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes. Visit her Web site at www.lyndsayfaye.com.

My friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes, while possessed of one of the most vigorous minds of our generation, and while capable of displaying tremendous feats of physical activity when the situation required it, could nevertheless remain in his armchair perfectly motionless longer than any human being I have ever encountered. This skill passed wholly unrecognized by its owner. I do not believe he held any intentions to impress me so, nor do I think the exercise was, for him, a strenuous one. Still I maintain the belief that when a man has held the same pose for a period exceeding three hours, and when that man is undoubtedly awake, that same man has accomplished an unnatural feat.

I turned away from my task of organizing a set of old journals that lead-grey afternoon to observe Holmes perched with one leg curled beneath him, firelight burnishing the edges of his dressing gown as he sat with his head in his hand, a long-abandoned book upon the carpet. The familiar sight had grown increasingly unnerving as the hours progressed. It was with a view to ascertain that my friend was still alive that I went so far against my habits as to interrupt his reverie.

“My dear chap, would you care to take a turn with me? I’ve an errand with the bootmaker down the road, and the weather has cleared somewhat.”

I do not know if it was the still-ominous dark canopy that deterred him or his own pensive mood, but Holmes merely replied, “I require better distraction just now than an errand which is not my own and the capricious designs of a March rainstorm.”