Sherlock Holmes and James Bond are to be resurrected. Anthony Horowitz, children’s novelist and TV writer (Foyle’s War, Midsomer Murders), is writing the Holmes novel, while Jeffrey Deaver is following up Sebastian Faulk’s Bond effort, Devil May Care, with a new 007 thriller – Carte Blanche.
A new Holmes volume is intriguing. The cerebral sleuth is out of step with the gruesomeness of modern, hard-boiled detective narratives. Forget Robert Downey, Jr. or Benedict Cumberbatch: Arthur Conan Doyle’s original stories are winsome tales, meandering along in a haze of psychology, subterfuge and pipe smoke. The razor-wielding grizzle of Silent Witness, Law and Order or CSI is chalk to its cheese. And, as ever, attempts to alter the character will be furiously resisted by the Conan Doyle estate; ask Guy Ritchie for the details.
The resuscitation of Bond is less surprising. With a new film given the green-light, the franchise is as mighty as ever. And to be fair to Fleming, he had a knack for briskly efficient prose. But the subject matter dates the novels irreparably, something that the recent films have overcome.
Naturally, the profit principle is primary here, just as it was to Fleming and Doyle. But whilst Fleming was happy to entertain the crowds at base camp and watch the rewards roll in, Doyle, I think, climbed steeper literary peaks. The Holmes stories are a little rose-tinted, but they have a captivating charm that isn’t wholly retrospective. It isn’t just the escapism of Wodehouse or the undemanding comfort of Christie. It is something more fundamental. As T.S. Eliot put it: ‘It is, of course, the dramatic ability, rather than the pure detective ability, that does it…The content of the story may be poor; but the form is nearly always perfect…I am not sure that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is not one of the great dramatic authors of his age’. High praise indeed, and words Horowitz would do well to heed.
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