The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

Well, you can't beat a bit of Sherlock Holmes, can you? These stories about this quintessentially English eccentric must probably have a place on most bookshelves - at least in Britain. I chose this book because it includes The Final Problem - the story in which Sherlock Holmes finally meets his match at the hands of the evil Professor Moriarty. I had never actually read this story, but of course I knew of it, and the final scene in The Coronation seemed to be something of a homage to it.

I don't usually enjoy collections of short stories - I find it frustrating for a story to end just as I'm starting to get into it. I've had a really busy week though, so it was actually great to be able to dip into the book for a few minutes and read a whole story. As expected, I found that the format didn't really work for me - once I'd got to the end of one of the stories I didn't have as much incentive to pick the book up again as I would have done if I'd been in the middle of an exciting novel.

I hadn’t read a Sherlock Holmes story since I was a teenager, and as I progressed through the stories I began to realise how naive my youthful preconceptions of the detective and Doctor Watson were.  In my head they were a stereotypical duo of the infallible detective and his likeable but bumbling assistant, but this turned out not to be the case at all. Holmes is in fact a very complicated man with more vices than virtues and, as Watson (the narrator) is often at pains to point out he isn't always entirely successful in his investigations. In several of the stories the mystery is solved in spite of, rather than because of, Holmes' interference. Watson also surprised me. He certainly gave very little help to Holmes in his investigations but, unlike Ziukin in The Coronation, neither did he get in Holmes' way or try to take it upon himself to get involved in the action. He also came across as an extremely sensible and supportive friend, although maybe a little too accepting of Holmes' eccentric behaviours and dour moods.

I liked the variety of the mysteries in the book - they are not all crimes. Some are very simple domestic or relationship problems although they all had fairly improbable solutions. My main problem with the book, however, was that the reader was rarely given the chance to solve the mystery before Holmes did.  I suppose it's difficult in a short story to provide the reader with all the clues and red herrings that would be possible in a full-length novel, but time-and-time again, at the denouement, I would be exasperated by the amount of information Holmes had at his fingertips that the reader had not been given access to. Maybe I'm unusual, but my favourite thing about detective stories is getting to play detective myself. On the rare occasion that I work out who the culprit is I'm always so proud of myself, and so I felt rather cheated in most of these stories.

The story I enjoyed the most was The Final Problem, which surely contains one of the most famous scenes in English literature - even people who haven't read it have heard of it. I'm really glad that I've finally read it for myself. What I hadn't realised was that Watson didn't witness the final events at first hand - his narrative is based on a reconstruction of the likely events based on the evidence left at the scene. This makes for really powerful narrative - both Watson and the reader are forced to imagine what might have happened to Holmes and Moriarty, which somehow makes the scene far more vivid than if it had been recounted in detail.  The end of the book really is desolating - I felt so sorry for poor Doctor Watson. In his typically reserved English style he makes very little of his own emotions but beneath the understatement it is easy to see that his life will never be the same again.  I'm glad Conan Doyle at least had the decency to marry him off.

One tiny thing - I really, really don't like the cover of this edition. I just don't get it. It looks like it should be on the front of a collection of ghost stories.  Very unattractive.

On the whole I did enjoy this book and I'm glad I've finally read it. Holmes and Watson are both fascinating people to spend a bit of time with, and even when the detective element of the stories didn't quite do it for me, the character study of Sherlock Holmes was always fun to read.

The Coronation

I had never heard of Boris Akunin's Erast Fandorin mysteries until I went hunting on the internet for another book narrated by a butler. The series is massively poplar in Russia (think Harry Potter and you'll be close) and has been translated into English by Andrew Bromfield. The Coronation is the seventh book in the series.

Erast Fandorin is a celebrated detective who seems to be more in the mould of Sherlock Holmes than Hercule Poirot. After a rather slow start, Fandorin first appears in the book as a stranger who saves one of the Tsar's cousins from kidnap, but unfortunately allows another cousin to be kidnapped instead. It soon becomes clear that the kidnap has happened on the orders of Fandorin's arch-enemy, the Moriarty-esque Dr Lind - a baddy with absolutely no redeeming features whatsoever. The ransom demanded is a diamond without which the coronation of Tsar Nicholas II cannot take place. Fandorin is employed to attempt to retireve the child without handing over the diamond - the loss of which would apparently bring more shame and distress to the royal family than the kidnap and death of its youngest member.

The book's narrator is Afenasii Ziukin, butler to one of the Tsar's uncles. I can see why authors find it a useful device to use a servant as narrator - by their nature they are present at most of the action but are able to comment on it dispassionately. However Ziukin gets himself involved in the action, taking it upon himself to try to investigate the case and carry out several daring missions of his own - most of which end in disaster or with the need to be bailed out by Fandorin. Every detective must have a bumbling sidekick and Ziukin is certainly Fandorin's.

I suppose it's always going to be difficult jumping into a series halfway through - in fact it's something I don't usually do. The Coronation does, in fact, work fairly well as a stand-alone book, but I probably missed out by not knowing any of Fandorin's back story. I think I was supposed to like and trust Fandorin from the beginning, but in common with Ziukin, I had never met him before and consequently didn't warm to him very much. In a way this didn't really matter, as Fandorin is less the protagonist of the book than Ziukin himself, and I did very much like the butler's character.

I can only assume that Akunin has read The Remains of the Day and I wouldn't be surprised if this book was an intentional homage to Ishiguro. Like Stevens in The Remains of the Day, Ziukin is pompous, obsessed with the idea of dignity and utterly blind to the attentions of his female colleague. He is, however, brave (to the point of stupidity) and flawed enough to appear human. Very few of the rest of the characters made much of an impression on me. To be honest I had a hard time differentiating one from another, especially as they tend to be referred to variously by their given name and patronymic, or their surname. Working out who was who was sometimes a challenge.

One element of the book that I really liked was its basis in Russian history. The coronation of the title is that of Tsar Nicholas II and Akunin makes use of several events of the time, including the Khodynka tragedy, in which over a thousand people died in a stampede at the coronation festivities. Akunin obviously knows his period well and pays minute attention to historical detail which makes the book really fascinating and entertaining reading.

On the whole though, I found the book rather difficult reading. I struggled to get into it, and even when the action began I just wasn't gripped or convinced enough by the story to care too much about what happened. Most of the action sequences verged on the farcical, which made the book a fun read but not one that I was able to get too emotionally involved in.  Having said that, I loved the plot twist at the end, which I absolutely hadn't seen coming and which finally gripped me - just a little too late.

I can't say that The Coronation has turned me into another of Akunin's many fans, but I feel a bit bad dismissing a book that comes so late in the series. At some point I'll probably give a Fandorin book another go and see if the detective or his author can change my mind.