Sherlock, son of Sigerson?

      

Firstly I suppose I should say that the following is mere conjecture, though pretty thoroughly researched as far as it goes. But I don't actually believe a large part of it myself, having even more outlandish theories up my sleeve. I just can't resist starting a few hares.

I suppose the first question we should ask is this: why does Sherlock Holmes never mentions his parents, not even if they are alive or dead? It seems strange, doesn’t it? Here are a few more questions which follow:

1.       Why is Sherlock so distant from his brother Mycroft?
2.       Why are the brothers separated in age by seven years?
3.       Why did neither of the brothers inherit their  father's estate?
4.       Why did he choose the name Sigerson as his alias?

Well, then, what do we know about Holmes’s parents? Very little. We know from The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter that: “My ancestors were country squires, who appear to have led much the same life as is natural to their class." 

Let’s assume for the moment that his father was one such squire (although it’s interesting the way he phrases it, skirting actual mention of his father). Let’s call him Squire Holmes. Perhaps he is a Sussex landowner, since Holmes elects to retire in Sussex. We’ll come back to him.

We know a little more of Sherlock’s mother, however, since he goes on to mention “my grandmother, who was the sister of Vernet, the French artist.” Vernet, the French artist was a very real person, or rather very real people, a family of artists who mainly married into other artistic families, all quite successful. Let’s take a look at the generations:

• Jean Vernet, d. 1753
• Claude Vernet, d. 1789
• Carle Vernet, d. 1836
•  Horace Vernet, d. 1863

While two of his forebears had sisters (Jean had five, but they lived early enough that Holmes would have referred to them as great or even great-great grandmothers.  Carle's sister Emilie, was guillotined during the Terror. Her daughter Louise-Josephe, was married twice, but neither of her husbands were named Holmes, according to the genealogies. Claude had only brothers.

So it’s almost certainly Horace Vernet that Holmes was referring to. And while the fame of Vernet has been swept away by Manet, Monet, and the rest of the Impressionists, it’s worth noting that he was in his time the most famous of French painters, fabulously successful.

Only Horace’s sister, Camille (b. 1788 d. 1858) therefore, could be his grandmother. Camille wed Hippolyte LeComte, another successful painter, and had three children: Emil (another painter), Fanny (another painter), and Louise. Genealogical records are silent on whether Louise was also a painter (and silent on everything about her other than her name and birthdate), but there can be little doubt she knew her way around an easel. 

Fanny was born in 1809, Louise in 1815. Since Sherlock was born (according to most chronologists) in 1854, that would mean Louise would have had him at the age of 39—a dangerous age to give birth, especially in the Victorian era. Indeed, her first child, Mycroft, would have been born when she was 32. We can eliminate Fanny from our calculations. At 45, she almost certainly would have been too old for childbirth. Even at Louse’s age, childbirth would have been a dangerous proposition.

Perhaps the reason no other siblings are mentioned is that Mrs. Holmes had a number of miscarriages? This would certainly explain the age gap between the two brothers.

But how would this tame English squire and the bohemian French lady ever have met? And why marry? I’m afraid it was not for love, although Louise Vernet-LeComte was probably a fascinating woman, even though, in the parlance, an “old maid.”

KRL review of the Pharaoh's Heart

"The Strange Case of the Pharaoh’s Heart is a paranormal romp with Holmes and Watson, and a time warp to the well-researched 1920s, from glittering haunts of the rich to the tombs of the Valley of the Kings."

Read the entire review at KRL News and Reviews.

Age Limit

The Strange Case of the Pharaoh's Heart.

                                      Recommended for ages 6 to 600.

Q&A with Fresh Fiction

 

How did you decide where your book was going to take place?

Luxor and London were pretty much de rigeur for a story about Sherlock Holmes and the pharaoh’s curse. Monte Carlo was just for fun, and the Reichenbach Falls seemed like a good place to kill off Holmes. 

Wait! Did I say that? 

Did I do that?

A little bit about Holmes, a little bit about Tut, a little bit about me. Catch the whole piece at Fresh Fiction.

Behind the book with Crimespree Mag

 

Where I blame it all on Doyle:

"There wasn’t supposed to be a third book. I mean, a second Sherlock Holmes book made sense, because I had already written it, lo these many years ago, as a screenplay. So my second book actually inspired my first one. that was alright. That was cool."

Read it all at Crimespree Mag.

Launch Day

 

Step inside ...if you dare

The tomb is now open.

Sherlock Holmes comes face to face with the boy king Tutankhamun and his curse in

The Strange Case of the Pharaoh's Heart.

Available today on Amazon and wherever books are sold.

Cover Reveal: The Strange Case of the Pharaoh's Heart

 

     Okay…here it is, the cover reveal for The Strange Case of the Pharaoh’s Heart. 

Sherlock Holmes travels to Egypt to take on the curse of Tutankhamun, along with the indefatigable Dr. Watson and the mysterious medium Estelle Roberts. 

Releasing March 19th from Seventh Street Books. Available for pre-order Amazon and a host of other places now.

Cover by the inimitable Jennifer Do.

Oh, and that’s an Egyptian scarab on the cover, not a flying cockroach.

That’s my story anyway. 

Ta Da!

 

It’s officially official

I would have posted it sooner, buy I didn’t know where to find it.

Euphemisms

  

 

Right now The Strange Case of the Pharaoh’s Heart is with my editor. Normally I don’t change anything in a draft while my editor is going through it. But lately I’ve been waking up at three in the morning with urgent, miniscule changes to this one. For instance the other night I immediately had to change the word “syphilis” to “the French complaint.”

Why did the question of syphilis even come up in a Sherlock Holmes tale? Oh, that’s simple. It explains Watson’s familiarity with sunglasses in 1924.

A century ago

One hundred years ago today King Tut's tomb was discovered. In celebration here's
a nibble from my next Sherlock Holmes tale, 

The Strange Case of the Pharaoh's Heart. 

"I have read since that Carter describes it as having a 'sad but tranquil expression.' True enough, but it’s also unnerving, those large eyes staring up at you from centuries past, the oddly delicate, almost feminine features. I will never be quit of that unyielding goldeface, nor the unasked question that seems to hang upon his lips."

One hundred years ago

 

"

"

From bad to wurst

 

Roulette Salon, Monte Carlo

 

The truth is, I do a hideous amount of research. This is mainly because my plots are fairly wild, and I use historical facts, from events of worldwide importance to what kind of socks men were wearing that year to anchor my stories in reality.

     Am I methodical? Not in the least. Basically I have one text file, into which all my historical facts are thrown like a meat grinder to be turned into sausage later. Some of it's meat, some of it's spice. Would you like a glimpse at some of the ingredients that go into my bratwurst? I thought you might. 

    Here's a small sampling of my notes (in no particular order) for my present project, 

The Strange Case of the Pharaoh's Heart:

Gould married Sinclair on May 1, 1922.

November 9, 1922 — Tomb opened

They were married in December 1922 Ali Famy

On March 14, 1923, they legally remarried— Rudolph Valentino, divorced in 1925.

Cartouche by Terry Ward

The nearby tomb of King Seti II, with 

cluttered trestle tables and Thonet bentwood chairs pressed tight against the ancient relief

“Well, sir, if it isn’t too great a liberty, I am a neighbour of yours, for you’ll find my little bookshop at the corner of Church Street, and very happy to see you, I am sure. Maybe you collect yourself, sir. Here’s British Birds, and Catullus, and The Holy War—a bargain, every one of them."

There was a sensational shooting affair at Leeds Tuesday sequel to the death Miss Helen Mary Nind, the music teacher, wha found poisoned in a Leeds hotel during the week-end. 

Dr. Scott's results in the examination of the brown marks upon the walls of the tomb are interesting - his examination proves them to be of the nature of mould from infection of some kind.

Arthur Mace never returned to the tomb. He contracted pleurisy which led to pneumonia. He nursed his health assiduoudly, but died in 1928.

1922 BUGATTI TYPE 23 TORPEDO SPORT

Top Speed:

London taxi, 1920s

62 mph,

Beginning in February 1924, she accompanied Valentino on a trip abroad that was profiled in 26 installments published Movie Weekly over the course of six months`.

State - How much fuel you've got. Mother requests, "Say your state". Responded to in the form of hours and minutes of fuel onboard til you "splash". You respond"State one plus two zero to splash" = 1 hours and 20 minutes of flying time remaining.

Flying in the 1920s was also an uncomfortable experience for passengers because it was loud and cold, as planes were made of uninsulated sheets of metal that shook loudly in the wind.

Junker aircraft interior

The average journey time by train between Paris Gare de Lyon and Meiringen is 6 hours and 53 minutes, with around 20 trains per day.

              ********

The pictures are, of course, research as well, and I download a lot of them. These I treat with so little method that I usually have to wind up seeking them out again on the internet when I need to consult them. It may seem like chaos, but that's an accurate reflection of my writing method. In the end, it's wurst.

Golden State Gabfest

Up for more talk about 

The Strange Case of the Dutch Painter, as well as a peek at my nearly-completed next next Holmes epic, The Strange Case of the Pharaoh's Heart, and even a whisper of what's to come after that?

Then tune into:

Golden State Media Concepts Podcast

for all the lowdown.

 

No 'Rithmetic Involved

 Miss my dulcet tones?

Want to get the lowdown on my latest novel The Strange Case of the Dutch Painter, and my upcoming novel,
The Strange Case of the Pharaoh's Heart?

Then hie thee to: 

 Readers and Writers Podcast (by request, no arithmetic was involved in the making of this podcast)for the double scoop treatment.

King Tut: Fact or Fiction?

       Historical fiction thrives in the space between fact and rumor. I'll give you an example from the next Sherlock Holmes novel I'n working on, The Strange Case of the Pharaoh's Heart. There were a number of deaths attributed in the years after Tutankhamun's tomb was opened which were attributed by believers (of whom Conan Doyle was a prominent and vocal member) to "the curse of King Tut."

Hugh Evelyn White

     One of the more violent deaths, in 1924, was that of Hugh Evelyn White, a scholar and translator of ancient Greek, and a popular lecturer at the University of Leeds. He was also an Egyptologist, and among the first to visit the newly opened tomb in 1923. 

     His story is quite a gruesome one, and it can be found all over the internet: he wrote a suicide note in his own blood on the wall of his office, blaming the curse for his action, then hung himself above his desk. A terrible realization of the curse.

     Except it didn't happen that way. If you take the trouble to read the newspaper obituaries from the time, you find that he stepped out of his house, hailed a taxi, and asked to be taken to the house of a physician, Dr. Maxwell Telling. He would never arrive there.

     The driver heard the gun blast (how could he not?) and turned to see White falling forward. He sped to the nearest hospital, but White was pronounced dead an hour later.

     He had left a suicide note. Though not in blood, and not mentioning King Tut, it was certainly problematic. Here's how it read:

“I knew there was a curse on me, though I have leave to take those manuscripts to Cairo. The monks told me the curse would work all the same, Now it has done so.”

No one knew what papers he referred to, or who the monks were.

     But here's the rest of the story: 

White was about to appear at the inquest for another suicide, one Mary Helen Ninds, a music teacher, who was desperately in love with Mr. White, and had threatened in a letter to take her own life if he did not return her affections. He had written her back, threatening to go to the police if she threatened suicide again.

     Did he feel guilt over the girl's death? Had there been a love affair, or even any relationship at all between the two? Could she have been carrying his child? We can only speculate, and speculation becomes fertile field for a historical novelist. We can let our imaginations run away, stitching together fact with whole cloth.

     And where did the story of the bloody suicide note and the hanging surface from? Again we can speculate. First, one must realize that Lord Carnarvon, who paid for the expedition, had sold exclusive rights to coverage of the excavation to the London Times--which meant that every other paper in the world was boxed out of the biggest story in the world, and when journalists don't have a story they will sometimes... make up a story. The whole "curse of King Tut" story was catnip to them, and anything and anyone involved tended to get twisted, exaggerated, aggrandized.

     Now how prevalent this wild story might have been at the time is also impossible to say. When I say that you can find the story all over the internet, we all know that the internet loves nothing better than a good story and will spread it like Nutella on a spoon. Ubiquity on the net has nothing to do with authenticity.

     But it does have everything to do with fiction. Seeing the kind of wild rumors that were floating around at the time points the way for one's own wild rumors to plant in the story--as long as they are labeled as rumors, not as fact. We have to play fair with the reader.

     And the truth is, there are always wild rumors and wild surmises associated with any historical event. Misinformation is not a modern invention. And while we should do our best to separate fact from rumor, our characters are under no such edict. Let them mix it up.

     (Don't forget the monks and the papers.)

 

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King Tut and the Bugatti

 And then again, some facts in historical mystery are simply a matter of grinding it out. For instance, when you need a car to get your heroes from Luxor to Cairo as quickly as possible. The train simply won't do. This happens in The Strange Case of the Pharaoh's Heart.

First of all, you should realize that without the car, Tutankhamun might never have been discovered. Lord Carnarvon, the sponsor of the dig, was mad for cars early on. The faster the better.

And in 1903, he had the dubious distinction of being in the world's first car crash. 

Lord Carnrvon

A bad crash, with a crushed skull and a broken jaw, and lacerated lungs, which left him prone to severe lung infections. Doctors recommended he spend his winters in a dry climate--say, Egypt? He fell in love with the place, fell in love with Egyptology, and finally decided to get into the tomb-digging business. He hired a fellow named Howard Carter, and the rest as they say, is history.

But back to my problem. Where to get a car? Our heroes came to Luxor aboard a dahabeah (another whole story). Well, it's true, I could make up any car owned by anybody. I wouldn't even have to name the kind of car. But historical fiction is made up of these thousand details which anchor our stories in reality, and create a bond of trust between writer and reader.

So I decided to make the car Lord Carnarvon's car, left garaged in a tomb (which is where they did keep them) when he went to Cairo and died. So what kind of car would Lord Carnarvon have driven?

This was actually easy to uncover, since Carnarvon was so well known for his love of cars (and horses and yachts). Of course, I could have gone with a Ford, since he had provided one for the dig, but I, wanted a fast car. Before the end of his life, Carnarvon was into Bugattis (although he had just purchased a Bentley, which he never got the chance to take home.)

Bugatti. That's just brimming with sexy. (Although to tell you the truth, I know zero about cars and couldn't tell a Bugatti from a VW Bug.) A Bugatti would do.

But now I needed a Bugatti made before 1923, when Carnarvon died,

And I needed a four-seater, which could carry five in a pinch.

And fast. Faster than a train, which I already knew made the trip from Luxor to Cairo in about ten hours.

Which is about how long it took me to find my Bugatti. (And I get down on my knees and praise the internet every day.) I looked at a lot of Bugattis. Most were two-seaters. Some, for racing purposes held only one. I found a few that might be four-seaters, but I couldn't be sure from the pictures. And while the specs told me what horsepower they were and how many cylinders they had, not a single one mentioned the number of seats.

So as the sun was rising, I found it. The 1923 Bugatti Type 23 Torpedo. Lots of pictures, including one of the back seat.

Sold. That is, if I could just find out--yes! Top speed 62mph. And since my driver is a professional racer, I'm going to posit that she can make it to Cairo in under seven hours.

Now I just have to decide whether it gets them all the way there or breaks down in the desert. Which would mean I'd have to get under the hood of the thing. 

Um... I'm thinking they make it.

Moriarty's Ghost

 

"I am not a fanciful person, but I give you my word that I seemed to hear Moriarty’s voice screaming at me out of the abyss." 

In all the annals of Sherlock Holmes, there is only one recorded instance of him personally taking another life...Moriarty, mano a mano, at the Reichenbach Falls. This is well l known.

What isn't known is how Holmes felt about causing that death?  (I know, the unfeeling Mr. Holmes. Hogwash.) Certainly it was self-defense. But certainly it was premeditated. And he watched the man plunge to his death. Never to face justice. How did that make him feel?

I think it shocked him to his core. I think he felt insupportable guilt and shame. So much that he could not face his beloved London for three whole years. What else could explain his decision to abandon his beloved London to the predations of the criminal underworld? Fear for his life? Please. Does that sound like Sherlock Holmes, who had always faced danger head on? And with the trials of Moriarty's confederates ongoing? Would he not be needed as a material witness?

No. Holmes was undergoing a crisis of the soul. Where did he go? The first name he mentions is Florence; no doubt he continued on to Rome. Then he treks to Lhasa, to meet with the Dalai Lama. From there he goes on to Mecca, no easy task for a city forbidden to unbelievers. If he followed in the path of Sir Richard Burton. he must have spoken at least passable Arabic. Then he pays "a short but interesting visit to the Khalifa at Khartoum." This would have been Abdullahi ibn Muhammad, the Sudanese ruler who had taken up the mantle of Mahdi, the Islamic messiah, upon the death of the original Mahdi, Muhammad Ahnad.

Can there be any doubt that Holmes was seeking solace in a variety of what were (to him) a series of exotic religions? 

As for his "several months "studying coal-tar derivatives" in Montpellier, I think Holmes was withholding the truth, that he in fact had unfinished business in Montpellier with a French cousin. (For more about this cousin and the reason he mentions coal-tar derivatives, you'll have to wait for my next novel, The Strange Case of the Dutch Painter.)

But none of these ploys offer the peace he seeks, and he finally decides, as he counsels Watson, that "work is the best antidote for sorrow." and turns his face toward home. Yet he has not given up on his spiritual quest entirely. What book does he drop in front of Watson? The Origins of Tree Worship-- seeking answers in his native British Druidism? This, for a man who'd espoused his admiration for the writings of William Winwoode Reade, an avowed atheist, was quite a journey.

But would he have been able to reveal himself to Watson, if not for his accidental meeting with his associate that morning at Park Lane? Perhaps not--not because his affection for Watson had lessened, but because of Watson's role as his public chronicler. He no longer wants the public's eye upon him. He forbids Watson from publishing any new reports, and lays this injunction upon him for a full ten years before he relents.

Did Holmes ever come to terms with the death of Moriarty? In The Strange Case of Eliza Doolittle, I introduce a pet raven to Holmes's retirement--a raven named Moriarty.

But you'll have to wait for my third book (in the works now) The Strange Case of the Pharaoh's Heart, to see whether Holmes at last comes to terms with the blood of Moriarty on his hands. 

Until then.

Not Spirits in the Ordinary Sense

 "It is neither decent nor safe to take from their resting places the bodies of old kings. The Egyptians knew much more about the occult than we do today. This must have been a peculiar element of an Egyptian curse.

The ancient Egyptians were very anxious to guard the tombs of their Kings, there is reason to believe that they placed elementals on guard, and such may have caused Lord Carnarvon’s death.

An evil elemental may have caused Lord Carnarvon’s fatal illness. One does not know what elementals existed in those days, nor what the form might be. 

These elementals are not spirits in the ordinary sense, in that they have no souls. 

An elemental is a built-up, artificial thing, an imbued force which may be brought into being by spirit means or by nature."

                     –Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on the strange death of Lord Carnarvon