(2 of 2)
Most of the stories feature a fine disposition of Doyleish corpses. In "The Adventure of Foulkes Rath," "the whole top of Squire Addleton's skull was cleft like a rotten apple" ("Indeed," says Inspector Lestrade with some understatement, "it was a miracle that he regained consciousness even for a moment"). In "The Red Widow," there is a "chilled silence" when Holmes and Watson hear that "Lord Jocelyn Cope was put to death in his own ancestral guillotine"—and certainly the corpse makes what Watson calls "a grim spectacle"—"clad in a velvet smoking jacket" but with only a "white cloth . . . where his head had been." In "The Black Baronet," a nifty, throat-slitting device, built into a drinking cup, ends the career of a blackmailer.
Pale Womanhood. No Holmes story is complete, of course, without the agonized presence of an "imperious and beautiful woman," preferably bending her "pale, perfectly chiseled face" over the pale remains of her perfectly chiseled husband, or submitting to her blackmailer's demands with a low bend of her diamond tiara. "She is informed," says Holmes briskly of the Duchess of Carringford, "that [her husband's] first wife is alive . . . that her own marriage is bigamous, her position spurious, and the status of her child illegitimate." "What! After thirty-eight years?" cries Watson. "This is monstrous, Holmes."
By sticking strictly to the original ingredients and prose style, Authors Cart and Doyle handle the job very well — even down to introducing the original "Baker Street irregulars," "the grubby little boys" Holmes employed on odd occasions. It is the present-day descendants of these urchins who will have the most fun with the new tales, and there will be much whimsical nattering over such points as whether Holmes, a sensitive connoisseur of Italian music, should be allowed to fiddle Auld Lang Syne on his Stradivarius, or stoop to such an expression as "upped and died." But only Sir Arthur's ghost is likely to be really critical of this loving attempt to relight the master's dottles.