Sherlock Holmes Re-Imagined

Friday, 15 November 2019

Animals in the Sherlock Holmes canon

‘The Adventure of the Speckled Band' Re-Imagined

A distraught young woman named Helen Stoner arrives at Baker Street early one morning to ask Sherlock Holmes for help as she fears that her life is being threatened by her stepfather, Dr Grimesby Roylott. At Stoke Moran, the estate where Miss Stoner and her stepfather live, Holmes carefully inspects the recent, but unnecessary, repairs to the manor-house and in doing so exposes a murderous plot.

“She raised her veil.”

Creatures in the Sherlock Holmes Canon

Several different animals are mentioned in ‘The Adventure of the Speckled Band’, including a baboon, cheetah and the titular ‘speckled band’. Since the publication of this story in 1892, Sherlockian scholars have debated the true identification of the snake as its description and name (“Indian swamp adder”) does not appear to match any known species. Nonetheless, the story remains a favourite among fans. Other animals that feature prominently in the canon include several dogs (‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’, ‘The Sign of Four’ and ‘The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire’), a venomous jellyfish (‘The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane), and a race horse (‘The Adventure of Silver Blaze’). And of course, horses appear in a large number of stories as a means of transport, such as with the ubiquitous hansom cab and other horse-drawn vehicles of the late Victorian period.

“We got off, paid our fare.”

LEGO® produces a number of animals to accompany minifigure sets, including dogs, cats, birds and various farm animals. Some of these creatures, including assorted horses as in the picture above, are roughly to scale of LEGO® minifigures; however, many animals are much too large. The latter is the case for the three types of snakes made by LEGO®, which are nearly as long as minifigures themselves, and therefore not very realistic. As a result, for the current story, I had to design the titular ‘speckled band’, and what is more the snake needed to wrap around the head of a minifigure, which is impossible to do with a moulded plastic snake. I ‘solved’ this issue, to my satisfaction, by using a yellow elastic (or rubber) band which came with a hand-full of sets produced between 1998 and 2011 (see photo below).

“He made neither sound nor motion.”

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All 12 books in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Re-Imagined book series, as well as a complete collector’s edition incorporating all of the stories, are available for purchase on Amazon UK, the Book Depository (with free worldwide delivery), and the MX Publishing website.

LEGO® is a trademark of the LEGO Group of Companies. The LEGO Group has not been involved in nor has it in any other way licensed or authorized the publication of this book series.

Friday, 8 November 2019

The observation of trifles

‘The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle’ Re-Imagined

Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson investigate the curious discovery of a blue carbuncle in the crop of a Christmas goose abandoned by a man during a scuffle with some street ruffians. Holmes makes a series of deductions concerning the owner of a tattered old hat recovered along with the goose and thus sets out on the trail of the audacious thief who stole the precious stone five days previously.

“See what my wife found in its crop!”

The smallest point may be the most essential

In ‘The Boscombe Valley Mystery’, Sherlock Holmes says to Dr Watson: “You know my method. It is founded upon the observation of trifles”. A similar sentiment is recorded in ‘The Man with the Twisted Lip’, in which Holmes declares: “It is, of course, a trifle, but there is nothing so important as trifles”. This practice is clearly demonstrated in ‘The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle’, where Holmes famously deduces a number of facts about an unknown man based on observations of his hat and its condition, such as the man’s age, intellect, hair colour, use of hair product, and even decline in fortune. Throughout the Sherlock Holmes canon, the detective performs comparable feats of deduction from the study of personal belongings, including eyeglasses (‘The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez’), a pocket watch (‘The Sign of Four’), a walking stick (‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’), and a pipe (‘The Adventure of the Yellow Face’).

“A very seedy hard-felt hat.”

Over the last 35 years, LEGO® has produced a variety of accessories to accompany minifigures from various themed sets, such as Space, Pirates, Castle, and City, as well as film-based sets like Harry Potter, Indiana Jones, Lord of the Rings, and Pirates of the Caribbean. Many of these accessories have proved useful when creating the illustrations for the Sherlock Holmes Re-Imagined book series. For example, the first illustration of the current story (above) includes several different accessories for LEGO® minifigures, such as a magnifying glass, printed newspaper tiles, and a tattered hat (which was part of a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde minifigure called ‘Mr Good and Evil’). Additional accessories featuring in the other illustrations for this adventure include a glass bottle, a meat cleaver, and a gemstone (representing the titular blue carbuncle). However, for the book series, I have also had to create, from existing LEGO® parts, some minifigure accessories including Holmes’s smoking pipes and the dead Christmas goose from ‘The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle’, which was difficult to design to minifigure scale. In the end, for me the most accurate representation of the goose (see photo below) was the simplest, consisting of only two LEGO® parts: a white hand of a standard minifigure to represent the neck of the bird and the arm of a collectible minifigure called ‘Chicken Suit Guy’ to form the body.

“He bowed solemnly to both of us.”

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LEGO® is a trademark of the LEGO Group of Companies. The LEGO Group has not been involved in nor has it in any other way licensed or authorized the publication of this book series.

Friday, 1 November 2019

Disguises in the Sherlock Holmes canon

‘The Man with the Twisted Lip’ Re-Imagined

Dr Watson accompanies Sherlock Holmes to Kent, to investigate the strange disappearance of Neville St. Clair, a respectable country businessman. A disfigured beggar is arrested for the murder of the missing man as some clothes of Neville St. Clair were recovered from his room above an opium den. Holmes surmises, however, that the truth is less sinister and simply an exceptional case of mistaken identity.

“He broke into a scream.”

Disguises employed in the canon

Throughout the Sherlock Holmes canon (the original 56 stories and four novels written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) disguises, worn by both Holmes and other characters, feature in a number of adventures. Of these disguises, that of Neville St. Clair as the disfigured mendicant Hugh Boone is one of my favourites, as I find the idea of a respectable man giving up his career as a journalist to beg in the streets because he can earn more money quite intriguing. Even though the ability of the titular character to earn a decent living begging has been questioned, there is some evidence which suggests that it may in fact be possible, although perhaps not likely. As for Holmes himself, he assumes numerous disguises in order to obtain information for his cases, including an old man in an opium den in ‘The Man with the Twisted Lip’. In fact, in ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’, the first story in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Re-Imagined book series, Holmes adopts two distinct disguises, namely a clergyman and a horse groom (or stableman). Additional disguises of the detective include, but are not limited to: a sailor (‘The Sign of Four’), a plumber (‘The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton’), an elderly book collector (‘The Adventure of the Empty House’), an elderly woman (‘The Adventure of the Marazin Stone’), and an Irish-American spy (‘His Last Bow’).

“He is a professional beggar.”

All the many characters appearing in the various stories of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, as well as the disguises they employ, require the use of a number of distinct LEGO® minifigure face designs. Fortunately, more than 2000 different LEGO® minifigure heads that have been produced since 1978, when the first heads with the standard grin were manufactured. Minifigure heads now have a variety of expressions to exhibit emotions such as anger, fear, surprise, confusion, concern, and mirth, as well as more detailed features including wrinkles, cheek lines, eyeglasses, and facial hair, like eyebrows, beards and moustaches, which come in an assortment of colours in addition to the traditional black. In the current story, Neville St. Clair’s disguise as the beggar Hugh Boone (the above photo) necessitated a very particular facial expression in order to represent his ‘twisted lip’. This particular minifigure head was created for a ‘Hunchback’ character from a LEGO® set released in 2002 called ‘Vampire’s crypt’. For Sherlock Holmes, when not in disguise, I wanted to find a facial design which conveys the detective’s wry sense of humour, thus the crooked smile and raised eyebrow. And the Watson minifigure needed to have a steadfast expression and a moustache, of course.

“He took out a very large bath sponge.”

Can I see more information about your book series?

LEGO® is a trademark of the LEGO Group of Companies. The LEGO Group has not been involved in nor has it in any other way licensed or authorized the publication of this book series.

Friday, 25 October 2019

The grave failures of Sherlock Holmes

‘The Five Orange Pips’ Re-Imagined

In this fifth adventure, John Openshaw visits Baker Street to consult Sherlock Holmes as to the mysterious deaths of both his uncle and father upon the arrival of letters containing five dried orange pips and bearing the mark “K.K.K.”. The young gentleman further relates that he too has received a similar envelope with instructions to surrender some papers. Holmes quickly deduces that his client faces imminent danger from a secret society in America.

“Shook out five little dried orange pips.”

The death of clients

This adventure, which Conan Doyle ranked seventh in a list of his twelve favourite Sherlock Holmes stories, is notable as the client of the Great Detective is murdered after seeking his help. Although Holmes appreciates the seriousness of the situation for his client upon hearing the details of the case, he underestimates the urgency of the matter. In fact, Holmes instructs his client to return home to carry out the demands of the secret organization threatening his life, while the detective remains at Baker Street to mull over the facts of the case, at which time his client is murdered. A similar fate befalls another of Holmes’s clients in ‘The Adventure of the Dancing Men’, which I hope will be the next story to be published in the Sherlock Holmes Re-Imagined book series. In that adventure, Holmes does not directly accompany his client to the latter’s Norfolk home after hearing the facts bearing on the case, although in this instance the detective lacks sufficient information to take immediate action. When Holmes finally can act it is too late as his client has already been murdered. As an aside, it is interesting to note that in both of the cases mentioned above, garden sundials feature as the location of the exchange of information between Holmes’s clients and their eventual killers.

“Holmes, I cried, you are too late.”

As much of the action of ‘The Five Orange Pips’, besides for recollections by their client, takes place in the Baker Street residence of Holmes and Watson, rendering the Sidney Paget illustrations in LEGO® required designing and building furniture that is to the scale of the minifigures. As can be seen in the photos above, LEGO® minifigures do not possess normal human body proportions but rather are quite short and squat. Because of this, and given the average size of LEGO® bricks and pieces, it can be somewhat difficult to create furniture and other accessories that are appropriately sized. The table and chair in the above photo were used in several earlier adventures, but for the current story I had to design a couple of other tables as well as an umbrella and two oil lamps, including the one in the first illustration above.

Can I see more information about your book series?

LEGO® is a trademark of the LEGO Group of Companies. The LEGO Group has not been involved in nor has it in any other way licensed or authorized the publication of this book series.

Sunday, 20 October 2019

Sherlock Holmes and his travelling attire

‘The Boscombe Valley Mystery’ Re-Imagined

In this fourth adventure, Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard summons Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson to Herefordshire to investigate the murder of a wealthy landowner named Charles McCarthy. Holmes, donning his “travelling-cloak and close-fitting cloth cap”, carefully examines the crime scene and soon unravels the mystery involving a secret criminal past, thwarted love, and blackmail.

“He stood behind that tree.”

The depiction of Sherlock Holmes

The very first illustration of this adventure by Sidney Paget, which is presented below along with my LEGO® rendering of this drawing, is quite notable in that Paget chose to depict Sherlock Holmes wearing a deerstalker cap and Inverness cloak. As many Sherlockians know, this was solely a decision of the artist as Arthur Conan Doyle never specifically mentions Sherlock Holmes wearing these two items of clothing in any of the stories. In ‘The Boscombe Valley Mystery’, for example, Conan Doyle only describes Holmes as wearing a “long gray travelling-cloak and close-fitting cloth cap”. Likewise, in ‘The Adventure of Silver Blaze’ Doctor Watson describes the Great Detective as wearing “his ear-flapped travelling cap”. Considering that the deerstalker was the most common cap of the period matching both of these descriptions, it is unsurprising that Sidney Paget depicted Holmes wearing such a hat. But of course, as a deerstalker was typically worn only in rural areas, such as in Herefordshire, the setting of ‘The Boscombe Valley Mystery’, it would not have been Holmes’s daily choice of headgear while investigating cases in and about London. However, many subsequent artists, including Sidney Paget himself on at least one occasion, depicted Holmes donning his deerstalker cap in the city leading to the popular image of Holmes persisting to today.

“We had the carriage to ourselves.”

As for the LEGO® version of this now famous attire, the LEGO Group fortuitously released a ‘Detective’ minifigure in 2011, two years after I conceived the idea of my Re-imagined book series. Although it was not referred to specifically as Sherlock Holmes, the minifigure consisted of a Victorian-style detective complete with a deerstalker cap (see photo above), Inverness-cloak-patterned torso (see photo below), and magnifying glass. This minifigure has been of obvious use to me when creating and photographing models for the Sherlock Holmes Re-Imagined book series, and it even served as the model for creating the silhouette of Holmes featured on the cover of each of the books in the series (see cover image below).

“Lestrade shrugged his shoulders.”

Can I see more information about your book series?

LEGO® is a trademark of the LEGO Group of Companies. The LEGO Group has not been involved in nor has it in any other way licensed or authorized the publication of this book series.

Saturday, 12 October 2019

The case of identification

‘A Case of Identity’ Re-Imagined

In this third adventure, Miss Mary Sutherland, a woman with a substantial income, visits Sherlock Holmes to request his assistance regarding the mysterious disappearance of her fiancé, Hosmer Angel, from the carriage that was conveying him to their wedding. Holmes effortlessly deduces what has really happened from his residence on Baker Street, but chooses not to inform his client as he fears she will not believe him.

“She laid a little bundle upon the table.”

Sherlock Holmes and forensic science

Among the illustrations for this adventure, I am fond of the image of Sherlock Holmes in deep contemplation about the case in front of his chemistry table where he had been busy conducting experiments. This is only one of many instances in the canon (the original 56 short stories and four novels featuring Sherlock Holmes written by Arthur Conan Doyle) in which Sherlock Holmes conducts research or utilizes the methods of forensic science (or the application of scientific techniques and principles to the law) to help solve a case. For example, in addition to forensic chemistry, Holmes employs toxicology (drugs and poisons), ballistics (firearms), document examination (handwriting analysis), as well as the analysis of trace evidence (human and animal hair, fibres from clothing, pieces of glass), latent impressions (shoe and tire tracks), fingerprints, and bloodstain patterns. And interestingly, in ‘A Case of Identity’ the Great Detective uses typewriter identification (also now part of forensic document examination) to catch the wrongdoer, which is the earliest known reference of this type of analysis. In fact, the story which was published in 1891 appeared only 23 years after the first practical typewriter was invented and a couple of years before such a technique was employed in an actual police case!

“I found Sherlock Holmes half asleep.”

Although I am not currently active in the discipline, I have conducted research in the field of forensic anthropology or osteology, which is the study of the human skeleton in a medicolegal setting. For the most part, my research entailed the study of human bones to help estimate the sex (male or female), age-at-death, and stature (height) of unidentified human remains, such as those that are decomposed, burnt or skeletonized and thus identification based on fingerprints or facial recognition is not possible. And like Holmes, who authored several monographs on forensic techniques, the results of my investigations have been published in various scientific journals dedicated to forensic science. For those interested readers, a list of my published research can be found on my website.

Can I see more information about your book series?

LEGO® is a trademark of the LEGO Group of Companies. The LEGO Group has not been involved in nor has it in any other way licensed or authorized the publication of this book series.

Saturday, 5 October 2019

The ‘grotesque’ case of Jabez Wilson

‘The Red-Headed League’ Re-Imagined

In this second adventure, Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson are called on to investigate the bizarre proceedings of The Red-Headed League, a philanthropic society which promotes the interests of men with red hair by paying them handsomely to perform small tasks. Holmes soon realizes that The League is not as charitable as it appears but rather part of an ingenious criminal plot involving the fourth smartest man in London.

“Mr. Jabez Wilson.”

One of Conan Doyle’s favourites

Among the illustrations for this adventure, I quite like the iconic image of Sherlock Holmes with his feet up on his chair as he contemplates, in the words of Dr Watson, the ‘grotesque’ case of The Red-Headed League. Interestingly, this singular term, ‘grotesque’, is also used by Holmes in 'The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge' to describe the circumstances of that case as well as the affair of 'The Five Orange Pips'. From a creative standpoint, I think the simple step of removing the two legs from the hips of the LEGO® Holmes minifigure and placing them on the seat of the chair yields a fairly realistic representation of rounded knees drawn up to the chin.

"He cured himself up in his chair."

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was also fond of the grotesque case of Jabez Wilson as he listed The Red-Headed League as the second best Sherlock Holmes tale, when he was invited in 1927 by The Stand Magazine to name the twelve best stories he had written. Others on the list included: 'The Adventure of the Speckled Band' (#1), 'The Adventure of the Dancing Men' (#3), and 'A Scandal in Bohemia' (#5), the latter of which is the first story in the Sherlock Holmes Re-Imagined book series (see our post from last week). In addition, as mentioned by many scholars, Conan Doyle appears to have recycled the basic plot lines of 'The Red-Headed League' for a later story, namely 'The Adventure of the Three Garridebs'. In both tales, Holmes's client is a naive man who seems about to receive a windfall due to the bequest of an eccentric American millionaire. Likewise, in both stories Holmes discovers that the wealthy benefactor is a fabrication invented by a criminal who wants to lure the client from his home.

Can I see more information about your book series?

LEGO® is a trademark of the LEGO Group of Companies. The LEGO Group has not been involved in nor has it in any other way licensed or authorized the publication of this book series.