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.

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!

Lt. Columbo or: How I Learned to Stop Judging & Love Peter Falk

When I was in high school, my parents decided to get Foxtel, which is a kind of Pay TV available in Australia. What I remember Foxtel giving us was about 30 channels of crap, 3 channels of occasionally interesting movies, and Columbo.

It all started late one school night in winter. I had done my homework like the good little angel I am (I can hear my parents laughing five suburbs away) and for a treat, mum flicked over to a part-way through episode of something. Mum and Dad both reacted favourably to whatever was on. As far as I was concerned, I was watching a rumpled old man with a squinty eye questioning another old man with grey hair and a moustache about his dot-matrix printer.

Columbo was different to other murder/mystery shows. You see the murderer commit his crime, then after the commercial break, you watch this questionably awake policeman work out who did it. He didn’t always know how, but he got who right. I actually liked this new method of mystery story, officially called 'the inverted detective format'. It didn't make me feel stupid. In fact, you knew more than the detective - which is probably where the appeal lies.

Don't judge a book by its cover, or a 1959 Peugeot 403 convertible by its oxidation.

Peter Falk wasn’t the first person to play the character of Columbo on TV - Bert Freed was the first. No offence to Freed, but when people think of the police detective, very few think of the villain in the TV series 'Shane'. To give the man credit, though, he originated the character and one must always pay homage to the originals. On that note, the man who took Columbo to the live stage, Thomas Mitchell, also deserves a mention.

So when Falk stepped up to the role, it was a second-hand gig. He wasn't even the writers' first or second choice. Despite that, he made the character his own, and made him an immortal legend of television. I read somewhere that Falk pretty much played himself. As for the squinty eye, I soon found out the actor had a glass eye. Columbo's costume was the actor's own wardrobe and I don't recall anyone styling Columbo's hair (except for one episode with a hairdresser).

There was something about Lieutenant Columbo. So long as you weren't a murderer he'd wave hello and wish you a nice day. Even if you were a murderer, he'd share a glass of wine with you and shake your hand just before the squad car comes to take you away. Sometimes there'd be a sadness in his eyes when a cold-blooded but rather likeable killer is taken away in cuffs. Nice people, poor choices.

"Lt. Columbo. Homicide."

Columbo is an everyman police homicide detective. He drove a car you needed a tetanus shot just to look at, he had a rumpled appearance and reveals more than once how little he earns. The show constantly dealt with wealthy killers, so having this dishevelled working-class question mark roaming about huge Hollywood mansions was a regular entertainment. This is a show about murder, mind you.

Well, it is but it isn't. The thing I like is it doesn't dwell too much on the hard stuff. A corrupt woman or an innocent guy get killed in premeditation or fury and that's it. You never sit through the trauma of a victim's impact statement or see a husband break apart at the morgue.

The thing I'm trying to say is it isn't about the murder. It's about following Columbo, watching his reactions, listening to his words. Over time I got good enough to pick the precise moment he suspects a killer. It could be right at the beginning or moments to the end. Either way, he gets his man - or woman.

Sometimes it could be cleverly psychological, like one episode when we see the murderer plan how to cover up his crime through the reflection on his glasses (probably makes sense in context...) or a woman plans to kill her brother and we hear the voices of police offers after the fact. One killer sinks into an alter ego, a confident seductress she dresses up as to top off her unfaithful boyfriend, going so far as to send taunting messages to Columbo along the way.

She planned it well...

But Columbo saw the newspaper left on the nightstand.

Every long-running series has better episodes than others. It spanned from the late 1960’s right to the early 2000’s. While regular episodes stopped around 1989, they were still produced right up until 2003. I won't list off my best and worst Columbo episodes because, like a large family, I am compelled to love them all. Some simply stand out as more extroverted than others. I enjoy the ones with music, colour and movement. The one on the cruise ship, in London, in a restaurant surrounded by food, in a film studio etc.

Columbo dining in style.

Like Poirot or Marple to British actors, Columbo was the American Murder/Mystery box to be ticked. I recall Leslie Nielson in two appearances, William Shatner twice being a murderer, Ricardo Montalbán as a man-killing matador, Leonard Nimoy playing a conniving Doctor who kills a nurse. Even Johnny Cash appeared in one as a gospel/country singer. I won't go into the full list of special guests, seeing as you can peruse it at your leisure.

If you're ever curious to learn more about the man, I have to say Peter Falk's autobiography is an entertaining read. I got it a few years ago, just before news broke of his Alzheimer's. I really enjoyed the way it was written. Imagine yourself sitting in an armchair with a cup of tea one sunny Sunday arvo. Sitting opposite you is Peter Falk, smiling jovially and also holding a cup of tea. Turns out he's put the kettle on and invited you around to his place for a chat. He's spread out an array of old and new photographs on the coffee table and begins to tell you stories about them. Not necessarily in chronological order, but stories about his life, career and all the stuff you want to know about. That's how it's written and I love it.

Peter Falk invites the reader around to his place for a cup of tea and a chat.

Columbo rarely relied on DNA, fingerprints or all that sort of microscopic data modern shows are compelled to use for verisimilitude. Anything, like a piece of flint from a lighter, an answering machine message, a word document on a computer - those sorts of things were the alibi breakers in Columbo stories.

I guess this is the part where I head to a conclusion somewhere before your eyes glaze over. Even if a show is from the 60's or 70's and the clothes look disgusting, don't judge a book by its cover. Shows don't need glossy props or flashy sets to be enjoyable - they need endearing characters and good writing. Promise me, if you ever see this dishevelled character on your TV in future, give him a chance to win you over.