"Doylean Holmes"

I make a point of stating, on my book's dust jacket, that I categorise my stories as "Doylean Holmes." I thought it might make a good topic to expand on that.

There is a lot of new Sherlock Holmes fiction out there and the only thing that is agreed about it is that nothing is agreed. Rather too much argument flies around about the legitimacy of one approach versus another.

Like most things, it is a matter of personal taste. In practice, all approaches are equally legitimate and we are free to ignore what we don't like. But it is about time we all stopped whittering on about it. Spend your time praising what you like rather than condemning what you don't.

That said, I do think writers of Sherlock Holmes material have a duty to do their best to make it clear what their approach to the topic is. That way people have a good idea what they are buying and are more likely to be positive about the experience. Think of it as providing the list of ingredients on a food product or ensuring you list potential allergens.

Confused? Let's go back a few years...

There was a time when there were two basic terms when it came to describing new Holmes works. They were either deemed "pastiche" or "homage." The former was generally understood to be an attempt to emulate Conan Doyle's approach and the latter covered everything else.

Unfortunately, some people arrived at the conclusion that "homage" was almost an insult, an insinuation that their effort was somehow lesser. "Pastiche" was perceived as a "top-drawer" effort. So, works that would ordinarily have been regarded as "homage" (not because they were inferior but because they departed from Conan Doyle's approach) began being labelled as "pastiche" as that was seen as more legitimate or respectable. "Homage" became tantamount to an outright attack on the quality of someone's work.

However, this reclassification did not appear to land with the wider reading public. You started to see negative reviews of books, that had presented themselves as "pastiche", for the above reasons, being criticised by readers who understood the terms the way they were historically understood. They had bought a book, expecting a Conan Doyle type experience, and got anything but.

We therefore found ourselves in an awkward place where writers who used the term "pastiche", because they disliked their perception of "homage", found themselves at odds with readers who were not willing to accept a redefinition of the terms.

When I began work on my Further Memoirs series, I was concerned about this. It was a desire to avoid said confusion that led to me coining the term "Doylean Holmes." It is an attempt to make it clear that I am endeavouring to work within Conan Doyle's parameters.

Some will argue, with justification, that Conan Doyle's own parameters changed, and this is fair. But, there were some things he did not deviate from. His stories were always contemporary to him (i.e. Victorian/Edwardian), no ghosts needed to apply, there was no "real" magic, there was no sex (except as a background motive), and he did not touch certain kinds of crime.

You can, of course, do what you want but I think we owe it to our readers and ourselves to be very clear about what we are writing. The term pastiche has no agreed definition anymore so using it on its own is unwise.