The Sherlockian Canidate

When I was young and hanging out with all the popular kids in primary school-- I jest.

When I was alone and sitting in a reading chair in the library during lunch time, I would pick up a book that I could read in under an hour and that would be my book for the day. How awesomely sociable I was.  

As a result of this constant reading, I one day picked up a picture book. Not just any picture book but one with etchings that were watercoloured. This particular book was called 'The Empty House'. Yes, some wise genius had converted Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories to abridged picture books for the short of attention span (ie. children). I loved the artwork and was rather smitten by a particular etching/watercolour of Watson kneeling at the Reichenbach falls as he searched in vain for Sherlock Holmes at the end of 'The Final Problem'.

The Reichenbach Falls scene is what won me over.

Thus began my interest with crime/mystery/Vic Lit. I came to love Sherlock Holmes. Sure some of the stories were erroneous (snakes don't drink milk is one example) but I let that slide. I also like just about every incarnation of Sherlock Holmes since. There's early German Holmeses, Early silent films from America, Basil Rathbone, Jeremy Brett and the currently reigning Robert Downey Jr., Benedict Cumberbatch, and Nicholas Briggs on stage and in audios. I love it every time the character is reborn and introduced to a whole new generation.

Sindey Paget's original illustrations filled the picture books I read.

I feel the same about Bulldog Drummond, Philip Marlowe, The Green Hornet, Dick Tracy or The Spirit (Feel free to peruse the modern-day comics helmed by various artists such as Darwin Cooke et al.). Whenever an interest of mine that I've harboured for years suddenly explodes in the public light, I want to embrace it, talk about it and let the world know how awesome it is (except Frank Miller's The Spirit movie. That never happened...)

The Spirit, as drawn by creator Will Eisner. One of the masked crime fighters
I started reading following my dalliance with Sherlock Holmes.

Sherlock Holmes is Victorian England's Dick Tracy. Using bizarre talent or methods he captures amplified cartoonish underworld villains or rogues. He is mortal, putting his life on the line for others. Or to be perfectly honest, his obsessive need to solve the unknown and understand everything possible about it then brush aside any praise with a modest wave of a hand.

What is it about Sherlock Holmes? You can't explain Sherlock Holmes in one entire blog post. You could read every single thing written about Holmes but still barely scrape the surface of this fictional Titan. Very much like, say, a human being who has genuinely had 30 or 40 years of external and internal input into his character. We see him through Watson's eyes like we see our friends and family and loved ones. We think we know them, then they turn around and get a pet goat, buy a Ferrari or take up pot smoking.

Even if you haven't read a single Holmes story/book/comic/film/audio, you know of the man. Such is his popularity I would credit to his depth of character not many fictional creations enjoy.

I love my Dick Tracy but he is a predictable soul always doing right. When he isn't being challenged he is rather two-dimensional.

Dick Tracy in action is about as in-depth as he gets.

Bulldog Drummond is a bit more unpredictable. Beneath the surface of comic-like jollity, Drummond is a scarred soldier unable to adapt to life in peacetime. There's one chapter he physically brutalises a disabled man for killing a friend of his. The moral ambiguity of the scene gives one of the most challenging moments I've ever felt reading fiction. And this from a character who can't function without two beers in his hands and several jokes up his sleeve.

Drummond has at times a cartoonish
nature, but there is a darker side to him.

Sherlock Holmes is a whole different kettle of brine. He is, on paper, an entirely unlikeable soul but remains indescribably appealing as a character.

I'm using detail to show depth of character.
See? It's elementary!

Oddly enough though is the fact my favourite Sherlock Holmes story isn't written by Conan Doyle. I guess that makes me not a true Sherlockian or something. Jonathan Barnes takes the kudos for it as it's an audio drama he wrote. I really like it because of the relationship changes Holmes and Watson have undergone. Set during Holmes' retirement and beekeeping phase, it begins a few months after Watson has lost his wife. This story captures the most vulnerable Watson I've ever seen (take a bow Richard Earl) wherein I desperately wanted to hug the man two seconds into his first scene and for every scene thereafter (I really am a sucker for the sidekicks...).

They reunite for old times sake and the ending is more intense than Reichenbach Falls in any medium. Still, you get this heartbreaking feeling throughout that Holmes and Watson's friendship as it was is long gone, bridges have been burned, and what was once familiar will never be there again. It's like losing a loved one in a way. If you're interested at all it's called 'The Adventure of the Perfidious Mariner'. If you like the odd Titanic-sinking conspiracy thrown into your Edwardian drama, you're in luck!

Sherlock Holmes might not be someone I'd make easy friends with. In fact he's probably someone we'd see on a bus and politely move away from. I'd sooner talk shop with Watson any day.

But all that being said, Arthur Conan Doyle created a character who continues to fascinate us with every generation in every genre with such depth and complexities there's groups devoted to them.

May the Game forever be afoot.

My Name is Kate, I'm a Writer, and I Hate Formula.

Hello, Writers Anonymous. My name is Kate and I'm a writer.

Yeah, I know: I'm not good with blogs but I'm reasonably good at fiction.

I've been writing since I was five years old. I was writing when other kids were learning to ride a bike or how to tell the time on analogue clocks. Yep, I couldn't ride a bike or read the hands on a watch until I hit my 20's. I can do the latter better than the former, though, and I got the scars to prove it.

It's interesting being a solitary writer and observing other writers in their natural habitat - Facebook and Blogs. They are boisterous boasting about their latest spark etc. Every single detail of their attempts at getting noticed are shouted out to the world at large. They even share quotes people said about their work like living movie posters. I know it's a way of promoting their name but if I have to turn into a walking billboard for myself in order to make a living out of being creative, I'll write under a goddamn pseudonym and let my skills do the talking for me.

I'd rather keep my work secret until its ready to be seen - like any intelligent inventor talking within earshot of Thomas Edison. 

Only my friends know I have an audio drama online. Feel free to give it a listen.

Only my closest friends know I write Script-Fiction (a type of fan fiction written as scripts from the TV show/Film its based on).

Only my friends and family are aware I've won the odd award here and there for my writing, spread out from my very early Primary School days to my more sporadic adult endeavours.

Why yes, I am horrible at promoting myself!

I'm fairly prolific in my writing. At any one time if someone asks what I'm working on, my standard response would probably be 'Two audio dramas, a screenplay and a couple of one-act stage plays' thereabouts. Then my script-fiction but that's just a hobby to keep me from writer's block (never had it but it doesn't hurt to take preventative measures).

Talking to and observing other writers is incredibly interesting. They observe a film and write a script similar to it. They rave about the latest romance movie or abstract play and copy the formula. Maybe I'm uneducated about the approach to success. I see a film and write something unrelated to it. I look for gaps in people's experiences and do my best to fill them in. I see that there aren't many plays about this or that so I write them. I go see a really good action film (love me my action flicks btw) and go home and write a heart wrenching drama whose cast includes a fatherly ghost and a pet lizard. There are so many gaps in the range of human experiences and I feel too many people stick to formula and not enough take risks (see the current state of the gaming industry). I know risks rarely pay off big time but who's in the writing business to make millions and who's in this because they've been writing their whole life and it's their one creative outlet that allows them to release their heart and soul to an appreciative world?

I did a writing course once in which the objective was to study a film's structure and write our own script that follows it. So I chose 'The Dish' and wrote a First World War film following its methods. FYI, 'The Dish' is a film with no real antagonist, a happy marriage, a pleasant town, and a team of good mates working together. That's essentially what I used to model my war film on.

 A war film without an antagonist? It ended up placing in the top 20 in two International screenwriting contests so shut up.

The greatest film ever (in my opinion).

My main objective is to leave the audience with optimism. Even if the main character is left a broken mess, they're never beyond repair. I can't all-together make people lose their faith in humanity.

The Dish is a feel-good, enjoyable film (I hesitate to call it an all-out 'comedy') based on the people responsible for broadcasting the Moon Landing to the world in 1969. During the movie there's no breakdown of a marriage, no physical danger to overcome (except a very windy day that is soon forgotten in the moment), the odd disagreement that gets easily solved; but the reason we watch is the pay off. The film so perfectly captures the event that was man walking on the moon. The anticipation of it all throughout the film, the little problems they have to troubleshoot all leads to that moment.

And when it's over we all feel warm and fuzzy and the world is a much nicer place for it. The world - for a brief moment - became one.

Yeah, it's not a Hollywood Award-winning formula, but does it have to be?

I guess because I've been writing on my own for so long, when people tell me there is a formula, I can't agree with them. In music class the teacher told me there is a formula for music and I had to rebut him. Yes, there are sounds that we'd rather not hear, but there's nothing to stop composers from using them! And yes, maybe I don't write to a standard script format - but that doesn't mean the stories have any less reason to be enjoyed.

In fact it's the unpredictable stories, the ones with twists we don't see coming, the ones that have inner rather than external conflict, the ones that our curiosity guides, the ones that give us a hug at the end, the ones that build to a single glorious moment - they're the stories I enjoy the most.

Each one has a different formula of its own. Every script should be its own formula. The day we started labelling scripts and dissecting what made them good, we lost the plot. It's like giving rules to visual artists.

If visual art can be whatever it wants to be, why can't music or film?

If more writers raved as much as I do about 'The Dish', the world will be that much more beautiful.

Radio Drama (and Other Anomalies)

This will be a bit tangental, so I apologise for the cognitive disonance you may experience. Just buckle up and enjoy the ride. 

When I was in the middle of my childhood private eye/detective phase (which I haven't yet grown out of) I reached the end of my Raymond Chandler books and found myself hungry for more. Chandler used the English language in a way no one else ever has or ever could. He made words both blunt and sharp enough to cut deep.

"Fate stage-managed the whole thing"

"From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away."

"He snorted and hit me in the solar plexus. I bent over and took hold of the room with both hands and spun it. When I had it nicely spinning I gave it a full swing and hit myself on the back of the head with the floor."

"Alcohol is like love. The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl's clothes off."

It's one to thing to say "The blonde looked sexy", but it was Chandler who said "It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window."

First edition of Farewell My Lovely, the source of the famous 'bishop window' line.

Why my parents let me read his stuff in high school, I have no idea. The humour and wit of it was addictive.

These pages were oozing sexually promiscuous femme fatales and that unforgettable scene of Marlowe finding a nude woman in his bed. She enraged him. It sure as hell shocked me the way he reacted. If it was James Bond or any other male protagonist he would've bedded her. But not Marlowe - and I suppose that's one of the reasons I adore the character.

Chandler died in 1959, leaving behind a plethora of what could have been. As such I inevitably hit the end of the Marlowe novel and short stories series, which made me greatly depressed for some time. I resorted to rereading the series again and again.

A young Steven Fry. Just kidding! Raymond Chandler looking dapper as always.
(It was this or him with a pipe, really)

It was during my third or fourth rereading of The Big Sleep that my dad came in with a CD collection he had ordered online. This was back when online ordering was relatively new and Amazon.com was the promised land for books for us petty folk on that easily ignored island at the bottom of the globe beside that other easily ignored group of islands. I held this purple odd-sized CD case and thought 'Sweet! Black and White movies!' (I wasn't a normal teenager). As it turns out, it was a mass of audios that were produced in the 40's and 50's from the Golden Age of radio drama. It had The Shadow, Dragnet, Dick Tracy, Sherlock Holmes, but more importantly it had Philip Marlowe. Happy day!

I'll try and spare my gushing about Marlowe for another post and cut right to the chase. Turns out I loved the audios. The fact they were done half a century ago didn't phase me - that's actually a plus in my eyes. I was listening to history not just a Philip Marlowe story. I was putting the CDs in my portable CD player (remember those?) and listened to every single radio drama like an addict. I had just started driving at the time so I also listened in my car, much to my enjoyment and the dismay of my passengers. 

It was called an Old Time Forgotten Radio collection. I never thought of the stories as old, like I don't think of Casablanca as an old film - it's timeless! And these stories weren't forgotten, just being rediscovered.

Today, I listen to several different audio drama series. Some old, like Bulldog Drummond or The Navy Lark. Some new, like Quantum Door and Minister of Chance. And some constant, like The Archers or Doctor Who. 

A full house of Classic Doctors (Doctors in the house...?) continuing their adventures with Big Finish Productions

When listening to Big Finish's Doctor Who audios, it's a little difficult not to picture the already well-photographed and beloved incarnations of the Doctor rather than the grey-haired, more senior but no less beloved actors who play the Doctors. Yes, present tense due to the fact that although their tenure on TV has ended, the characters are still happening on audio. Yes, I am that fussy with my tenses. The advantage to having minimal exposure to the tremendously huge number of talented British actors out there is that I have no idea who previously starred in slapstick comedy and is currently trying to play a Bond Villainesque character with their finger on the 'Blow up the Universe' button. I couldn't point them out in a crowd of one, in other words. So it genuinely feels like the Doctor is encountering total strangers all the time rather than 'that bloke from Eastenders'.

While I'm rabbiting on about British audio drama it would be terribly remiss of me to not to rabbit on about the Minister of Chance. This is a spin-off from 'Death Comes to Time', a Doctor Who audio featuring the Seventh Doctor and Steven Fry as the aforementioned Chancy Minister. Now said Minister is in the talented and capable hands of Julian Wadham. Before I go on to sum up the general premise, let me give you a feel for it with this honest-to-goodness exchange I had with a friend while on lunch break. I had listened to a rather heated scene in the episode titled Paludin Fields, and for reasons that will become clear I had a rather broad grin on my face. It wasn't the first time that week I had been grinning from ear to ear during a rather stressful day and apparantly this baffled my friends  to no end:

FRIEND: What are you smiling about?

ME: Have you ever heard Paul McGann’s voice? It’s like the audible equivalent of crack cocaine.

FRIEND: I thought it was caffeine making you happy.

ME: Nope. Paul McGann’s voice.

Actually, there's a whole lot more to say about The Minister of Chance. The sound design is beautiful. It's audio art at its finest and I can't reccomend it enough. If an entirely empty art gallery only played the soundscape from this series it might be the greatest work of art anyone could experience. The entire cast seem like they're all born for their roles and it's hard to say who steals the show as they all have equally relevant parts with equally powerful dialogue. It's like someone sat down and wrote a mathematical formula for a highly addictive audible sensation and the answer was The Minister of Chance. It was then I discovered just how many people my age and younger enjoyed audio drama as much as I do. They might have skipped over the Golden Age but they embrace the new stuff. Like a Classic Whovian with New Whovians at a Sci-Fi convention. Same destination, different journey. Countless nerdy things to discuss!

Why am I talking so indepth about The Minister of Chance when I've rather breezed over everything else? Well, Minister of Chance is professionally produced, but it's produced almost entirely by its fans.  If you want to look into it a bit more, check out the website where you can download episodes entirely free of charge (thanks to donators). Enjoy the audible equivalent of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. If you like what you hear, perhaps spare what you can or aquire some awesome merch to help the series continue!

The audio equivalent of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

And now a disclaimer:

Before you think I'm an Anglophile of sorts, bear in mind I think William Shatner's voice is pretty damn good too. I could listen to him speak all day. And a wonderful Australian voice would be Anthony Warlow. If he isn't entrancing people with his warm operatic baritone on stage, he's making them melt with his wonderfully smooth honey-like voice. Fortunately he is at present gracing the boards on Broadway so more people can enjoy his dulcet tones. If I could get all three to do one audio drama, it may culminate in the greatest sound known to mankind - and the world might explode.

Long story short, yeah it's not million-dollar budget blockbusters, but neither are books. And like books they let the imagination go about as crazy as a Beatles video clip. Each experience is individual. Each time you hit 'repeat' you get a different feel for it. Audio drama provides the sound, you create your own blockbuster.

Bulldog Drummond's Many, Many Rounds

Stop me if you've heard this one before: An Englishman with inexhaustible income fights to stop terrorists and communists from invading British soil, drives a British-made car, occasionally travels to other countries and enjoys a drink or several on his days off.

A long time ago I was staying interstate in a hotel. I had come to compete in an athletics competition. My training partner had Uni assignments to address so she wasn't terribly sociable company, so I raided the small bookshelf in the room full of yellowed 2nd hand books. Out of the romance novel drivels and bible, I picked up a book that looked particularly hardboiled detective-ish called 'The Third Round' by a bloke called 'Sapper', which I took for a particularly witty pseudonym.

It wasn't Chandler but it pulled me in like an anchor dropped into the ocean. The language was so full of 1920's English slang I almost needed a dictionary, I had no idea who the characters were, and it read like I was catching the penultimate episode of a TV series but I didn't care. The action, but more importantly, the characters and the way it was written kept me turning the pages.

The story, for me, started half way through the series. I had to go back and fill in the gaps.

The creator of said characters, Herman Cyril McNeile (turns out it was a pseudonym) knew how to make novels read like a good movie. No wonder most of the books were turned into films shortly after publication. McNeile's friend Gerard Farlie would take over the stories after McNeile's death. While McNeile's books have recently seen a republication in the early 2000's, I'm still waiting for Farlie's novels (which includes one of my favourites: 'Bulldog Drummond on Dartmoor') to see a reprinting at some point.

The day after picking up 'The Third Round', I brought the book to the running track. I got a personal best time but didn't make the final of my event. For once I wasn't bummed out because it meant I could read more. And thus did I fall in love with Bulldog (Hugh) Drummond - Simon Templar’s dad and James Bond's grandfather - One of the most tangental problem solvers in the history of English literature (predating Doctor Who, mind).

Drummond is a de-listed soldier from The First World War who risked life and limb in the defence of Mother England. His bold actions in the service earned him followers during peacetime. Like a few distinguished veterans, he fails to adjust to a quiet routine of normality, so he dives headlong (or fist-first) into other people's problems in his continued quest to defend Great Britain from her enemies. The fact he has a disposable income helps him avoid a normal 9 to 5 job, and rather than file paperwork, he gets to do interesting stuff like diving through windows, kicking down doors and participating in gunfights. In the 1960's films they gave him a job and a modest income but he gets pulled into the fracas with only the occasional reminder of it.

I think there's a reason Drummond has graced everything from radio to film and comic books. He is probably more personable than James Bond, with moments of Wodehouse woven in. There's such a variety in each story you can honestly never tell what will happen next. There's something for everyone. If you like a clever chemist/inventor, there's several. If you like a monocled aristocrat getting in over his head, or the odd amount of female hostage-taking; even wincingly painful torture, car chases, phone tapping, poisoning, political intrigue and explosions. There's also a couple of first-person narratives thrown in as well if you get too cosy in third-person. Fun for the whole family! (Torture scenes aside...)

My favourite Drummond black & white, mostly because of the epic sword battle at the end.

"You priceless old bean, I gathered from the female bird punching the what-not outside that the great brain was heaving - but my dear old lad, I have come to report a crime..."

- Drummond to a police friend in 'The Black Gang' (1922) by H.C. McNeile

Like Sherlock Holmes before him, Drummond has a nemesis in Carl Peterson. Peterson is a master of disguise with power and political influence. His lady, Irma, replaces him later on as Drummond's main antithesis. Yes, folks, a strong female antagonist heading a crime syndicate pre-women's lib. You go girl! (She develops into my favourite fictional female in Female of the Species) Seriously, think about it: In 1928, in the same novel series that has a female getting kidnapped by brutes every other weekend, there was a beautiful and intelligent (albeit vengeful) woman the main character (a man mountain) and his gang of ex-servicemen struggle to defeat.

As Rudyard Kipling put it: 'the female of the species is more deadly than the male'.

Reprints of the 'Sapper' books like this are easy enough to find online or in bookstores.

Unlike Sherlock Holmes, Drummond is a sociable fellow with a large group of friends who vary through the stories. A core pair is Algy Longworth and Peter Darrell. Unlike James Bond, Drummond approaches life with levity. He saves the world with a smile, a fist like a wrecking ball and with a tankard of beer in his free hand. He is laid back right up to the climax and then snaps into action; get on the wrong side of his temper, and you may end up rather broken. As an ex-soldier he knows how to move silently, shoot accurately and, rather exotically, he employs a form of martial art that breaks a fellow's neck on the odd occasion.

Dive into Bulldog Drummond for action, adventure, pub-crawling, devious enemies, nonchalant smoking (almost constantly) and ribald humour topped off with patriotism so British it drinks Twinings, salutes the Union Jack even on napkins, and believes 'God Save the Queen' is the greatest poetic achievement to mankind.

A recent comic book adaption of Bulldog Drummond that finished with an interesting twist.

Don't dive into Bulldog Drummond if you expect current day political correctness. Bear in mind it was the 1920's and 30's so don't take any of the gender stereotypes, racial insensitivity or antisemitism personally. I embrace the books as a light-hearted blokish romp into the past rather than a manifesto for a glorious British master race.

You don't have to be British to appreciate the elements that make McNeile's/Farlie's stories great. There were times I had to reread a couple of sentences because I naturally read with a South Australian accent, which doesn't suit sentences ending in 'what' (they continue to baffle me no end), or every sentence uttered by a cockney.

The things that set Bulldog Drummond apart from most literary heroes are why I like him and his menagerie to bits.

• Their approach to problem-solving always includes beer.
• Their main method of communication is slang banter much akin to a locker room prior to a rugby match.
• Drummond drives a Bentley. It would only be cooler if it was a Frazer Nash. (He did have a brand new Rolls-Royce, but that didn't end well...)

What I really enjoy about the series is the evil guys are often two-faced. They help people with one hand while plotting the destruction of the British Empire with the other. Some even start off sympathising with the good guys and you don't realise they're evil until the final chapter or two at the inevitable finale fisticuffs.To me that seems far more believable than 'let's plonk this non-English person here and make them evil for no greater purpose than this story needs a baddie'. Hell, even over time I found myself starting to sympathise with this intentionally hideously described hunchback who murders a friend of Drummond's. Drummond retaliates by rather brutally assaulting the fellow. These caricatures of nastiness aren't really caricatures. Carl Peterson comes close, being the type to truss up his enemy then recite his entire plan for world domination, but he does it because his ego requires it. Besides, his dry wit and intelligence sets him apart from the more melodramatic of his cohort.

Carl Peterson in full colour in the 60's film 'Deadlier Than the Male'.

 "Why, I remember once, that I was so incredibly foolish as to replace the cork in a bottle of prussic acid after I had - er - compelled a gentleman to drink the contents. He was in bed at the time, and everything pointed to suicide, except that confounded cork. I mean, would any man, after he's drunk sufficient prussic acid to poison a regiment, go and cork up the empty bottle?"

- Carl Peterson to a paralysed Drummond in 'The Black Gang' (1922) by H.C. McNeile

I guess what I'm trying to say is the characters in these books make the stories come alive. The enjoyment of the adventure becomes more than just beating the nasties and saving the girl, but following two parallel stories and watching them slug it out at the end. Sometimes you even spend most of the plot following the bads around. Will Eisner went on to do this a fair bit in his 'The Spirit' comics and I love those as well (READ THEM!! - no pressure...)

In 1941, Bulldog Drummond moved to the United States and settled in on the radio waves there for more than 20 adventures.

Bulldog Drummond's influence on current British literature is shown with a thinly disguised appearance as a thug (along with thinly disguised Emma Peel and James Bond) in the popular graphic novel series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Despite making him an elderly racist grumpy thug, props to Alan Moore for embracing the character; but until Moore cuts his hair and beard and looks less like Rasputin, I remain terrified for my life should I ever see him in person.

It has been said in forewords that Drummond inspired a great deal of British and American literary heroes, much like John Carter of Mars spurring essentially the entire superhero genre when he was first published in 1912.

I always seem to be attracted to where a literary craze begins - rather unintentionally. But I wouldn't want it any other way. Give me my Martians, my trench coat-suited masked vigilantes and beer-swigging ex-soldiers any day!