The House of Silk

Anyone who has been following my reviews so far knows that I love a good mystery, and I love Sherlock Holmes. Ever since I first read The Hound of the Baskervilles when I was twelve, I have been irrevocably hooked on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories and this most famous and quintessential of detectives. Dupin and Poirot fans are free to look at me askance; I know that Poirot is important to the development of the mystery genre as a whole, and Dupin is the template upon which Holmes is based, but they cannot displace Holmes in my regard and affection. Childhood bias? Perhaps. I did not encounter Dupin until I was fourteen, and Poirot until I was sixteen. By then I had been reading Holmes for a good long while, and could not help but compare Poirot and Dupin to him.

Holmes, in essence, took on a life of his own in my imagination - something which happens to all the best characters, I think. And when a character does just that, said character is no longer restricted to the works of the author that created it. This is why there are so many stories about Holmes not written by Doyle - some of them good, and some of them bad. The last book (or set of books, really) that I read in this vein is The Game by Laurie R. King, which is part of a series of books about Holmes' finding partnership (and love!) with a woman named Mary Russell, who also happens to be his intellectual equal. But I had gotten rather tired of this series, and so have taken a break from it - and from all things Holmes, actually.

That is, of course, until I stumbled on The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz. At first I was ready to bypass it for now as another Holmes pastiche, but put on the brakes when I found out that it is an “official” Holmes book - official in the sense that it is licensed by the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Estate. Essentially, this is a “canonical” Holmes story, the first, if I am not mistaken, since Doyle passed away. And just because of that, I moved it to the top of my reading list, and as soon as I finished reading Cherie Priest's Boneshaker (the last book I read and reviewed), I dove straight (and happily) into this one.

The House of Silk is narrated by Dr. John Watson, now at the end of his life, and simply waiting to pass into the next one. He has recorded faithfully all the adventures and cases he and his friend Sherlock Holmes have encountered together in their long friendship, but he has one more case he wishes to put down, one last story to tell before he passes away. It's rather difficult for me to pin down when, precisely, in the chronology of Holmes stories the events of the House of Silk take place, but I am quite certain that it occurs before the events at the Reichenbach Falls, and after the events of The Red-Headed League. Those who have a more recent memory of the Holmes stories will be able to fit it into the chronology more accurately than I can, I am sure.

Whatever the case may be, Watson explains that he could not write this story until this, the last few moments of his life, for a variety of reasons, one of which is that he promised a host of people he would not write of it until the very last because of their involvement in it. But the primary reason that Watson gives is that the nature of the crime itself is so heinous that writing about it so soon after the events of the crime took place, even if he did not choose to publish it, was a far too difficult task. And while the distance in terms of time have made the writing of it somewhat easier, the recollection of those events is not any easier on Watson. But he must tell it, and so he does.

And Watson is very much right: the crime is indeed heinous - at least, in comparison to all the other crimes documented in the other Holmes stories. No doubt murder is heinous, but the particular nature of the crime at the center of The House of Silk is understandably disturbing enough for men of Holmes and Watson's time that it comes as no surprise Watson would want to distance himself from it, at least for a certain amount of time. A sex ring masquerading as a school for street children, whose clientele are wealthy pedophiles with a taste for young boys, is no unique thing to the twenty-first century reader; but it is entirely conceivable that such a thing would have been utterly appalling to both Watson and Holmes. Such a thing, had it been discovered in Victorian London, would have been sensational, especially if the type of clientele welcomed at the establishment had been made known. While I do not doubt it is entirely possible such a thing did indeed exist in actual history, the fact of the matter is that such a crime, such a story, is not a part of the traditional Holmes canon; in fact, in a concluding essay to the copy I have, Horowitz makes it clear that even murder was a rather infrequent crime in the Holmes and Watson case files. So though I, as a reader of mysteries and a child of my time, finds the crime rather underwhelming in terms of shock value, I also know enough of Holmes canon and of Victorian London itself to know how utterly diabolical the nature of this crime would seem to people of that time and age. Then again, I do not read Holmes stories for their shock value, as that is not their point.

Something that might strike the reader within the first few pages is the tone of Watson's narrative voice. It seems a little off-kilter somehow, like this is not the Watson we readers know and remember from the original stories. This should come as no surprise, since Doyle isn't the one writing it, and no matter how faithful Horowitz tries to be to Doyle's tone, he can never truly capture it, simply because he is not Doyle. But this is hardly a negative thing, for although Horowitz is not pitch-perfect Doyle, he does remain faithful to the spirit of Doyle's originals, and that is far more than I could ask for, considering the other works out there that don't even stick to that one basic rule.

And now that I speak of Watson, it must be said that, although this is a Sherlock Holmes story beyond a doubt, I rather think that this is more about Watson than anything else, and I mean this beyond the fact that he is the narrator. There is a point in the story wherein Sherlock is removed from the story, and Watson is left out on his own to figure things out. He manages to do well on his own, with some help from Lestrade (Mycroft, surprisingly enough, has his hands tied earlier in the novel, and so is of no help) and one of his discoveries does eventually lead to crucial information. It is during this part of the novel that the other characters - yes, even Lestrade - get a chance to shine. I rather appreciate Horowitz taking the time out to give the other characters this chance, since Doyle so very rarely lets them do so. I am especially pleased with the way Lestrade was written here. In the Doyle stories he tends to get the short end of the stick, and Watson (as the ostensible narrator of those stories) does admit this in the course of the narration. Horowitz's version of Lestrade is still very true to Doyle's, but with a far more human face.

One other character makes a crucial appearance in this novel, and it was this appearance that was truly one of the highlights for me. Although one of the reader's first instincts is to pin this whole affair on Moriarty, it turns out that he was not his idea - especially since he tells Watson precisely that in a scene reminiscent in its intensity to some of the most famous confrontation scenes in the Doyle originals. While Moriarty does not give Watson his name, it becomes clear very early on just who Watson is talking to. Horowitz's characterization of Moriarty is incredibly enjoyable to read, despite the fact that he appears for only a brief moment in the course of the novel. It emphasizes the fact that Moriarty is truly Holmes's polar opposite: sharing all of Holmes's genius, and even his morals, because although Moriarty is a criminal (he even uses the word to describe himself in his conversation with Watson) he does have a code of behavior, and what the House of Silk does is beyond the pale even for someone like him.

All told, The House of Silk is an excellent addition to the Holmes canon. It has all the hallmarks of an excellent Holmes story, and a little something extra, besides. While it is rather longer than the novels Doyle wrote about Holmes (The Sign of Four being my favorite novel, and my absolute favorite Holmes story), I do think the scale of the story requires the extra length. After all, this crime is something extraordinary and horrific, quite unlike the other cases Holmes and Watson has encountered before. Fortunately, Horowitz does Holmes and Watson and all of a Holmes fan's favorite characters justice, and maybe someday soon, he'll be asked to write about them again. I definitely look forward to that.