Death by Dandruff - Nicholas Sercombe (and Arthur Conan Doyle) ***

By Brian Clegg

This is one of the weirdest books I have ever come across. Strictly speaking it’s a short story, but packaged as a thin Ladybird-like hardback. It’s number 16 in a series that began with A Balls-up in Bohemia. The weird and wonderful idea behind it is that we see Watson’s original text, before it was heavily edited for publication – in this case becoming the story The Adventure of the Stockbroker’s Clerk, which after publication in the Strand magazine was incorporated into The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes.

If you are a Holmes fan, as I am, it’s inevitable that you open it alongside the original. After some minor deviations in the opening paragraph (such as changing the previous owner of Watson’s new medical practice from Mr Farquhar in the original to the strangely spelled Dr. Farquar in the new version) it starts to bring in Nicholas Sercombe’s novel ideas of what might have been edited out at the Strand, from the fact that Watson’s wife Mary was actually Mark ‘a female impersonator from Ruislip’, to a scene which in the original featured Holmes arriving at Watson’s house, but now is replaced by Moriarty and a third party, Miss Clytemnestra Fanning)  who buys Watson’s premises (after flashing her bottom).

So it goes on, with touches of the original mixed into a story that features a whole range of ‘comic’ situations, from Watson struggling to impersonate someone from Birmingham to his being able to punch the prime minister (Lord Salisbury) on the back (according to one of the ‘pictures portraying lively action scenes’ by Juliet Snape). Along the way we pick up background that was never mentioned in the original stories, whether it be Holmes’ alleged middle names (Nugent Julius) or the strange origin story relationship between Holmes and Moriarty.

I’m afraid this kind of humour doesn’t appeal to me. If you enjoyed, for instance, National Lampoon’s Bored of the Rings, I think these books would be very much up your street – but for me it didn’t work anywhere near as well as a story in its own right as did the original, and the ‘funny’ bits were consistently puerile. I’m sure, though (would they have got to number 16 otherwise?) that some will enjoy this series.

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Now Appearing is the blog of science writer Brian Clegg (www.brianclegg.net), author of Inflight Science, Before the Big Bang and The God Effect.