Books: Sherlock Holmes: The American Years

I'm about halfway through Sherlock Holmes: The American Years. It features 10 original stories about Sherlock Holmes' years in the U.S.

So far, my favorite story is "My Silk Umbrella." It's an account by Mark Twain of his meeting with Holmes. I don't know much about Mark Twain the man, though, I read his novels and stories in grade school. About the man himself, I knew he had a quick wit and was eminently quotable.

Author Darryl Brock brings that Twainian wit alive with snappy one-liners.

The plot is simple enough. Holmes takes in a Connecticut baseball game (and seems a little put out that it is, in fact, not cricket). He and Twain find themselves sitting together and Twain's silk umbrella, which was given to him as a gift, becomes a topic of conversations. Using those deductive skills, Holmes reduces the prized umbrella to a thing less than the top-shelf module Twain thought it was.

The best scene in the story follows when Twain tries to one-up Holmes' cold logic. You can practically see Twain all but jumping up and down, stomping his feet trying to poke holes in what is entirely simplicity itself.

It shows a much more realistic reaction to Holmes. While reading Doyle's stories and novels, I found myself annoyed at what I thought was a sort of blind faith in Holmes' ability. Sure, the facts were there when he pointed them out. But very few of his adversaries or audiences ever offered an alternative explanation. They were astonishingly accepting, or they accepted, astonishingly.

Twain's determination to doubt was what I was missing in the Doyle books. Twain stood up and said," Wait. What?" He squared off with Holmes and all but pulled a "Dude, seriously?" on him.

And then the umbrella was stolen. Both tried their own methods to get it back. Twain lost. Holmes won.The umbrella was returned. So it goes.

Odd thing is, no matter how irritating I sometimes find the perfection of the Holmes I know, to see him in any other way is hard to believe. Holmes is shown as a young boy conducting science experiments, as a young man feeling the first pangs of love (which presumably keeps him away from women, at least until he meets Irene Adler), and as a young man who meets Dr. Joseph Bell, who introduces him to the powers of keen observation.

I sort of liked the idea that Holmes sprung fully-formed Athena-style from Doyle's head or the fictional Holmes patriarch's head. That I can accept, that he's always got the best explanation, I can't.

In "The American Adventure," by Gary Lovisi, Holmes met Dr. Bell, who was most likely Doyle's model for Holmes. This story helped to humanize Holmes in that it shows he probably didn't pull an Athena and just get born that way. But it did dash the hope I had that he learned his deductive skills from making a study of big brother Mycroft.

Speaking of brothers, Carole Bugge's story, "The Curse of Edwin Booth," features Holmes acting in a production of Hamlet to discover who's trying to kill Edwin Booth, older brother of John Wilkes Booth, sheds the most light on the relationship between Sherlock and Mycroft ... all without Holmes saying anything personal, of course.

Without spoiling this must-read, I can say it offers insight on why Holmes may have been so driven in his detective work, the same "work" that came so easily to Mycroft. It suggests our Holmes is not a pale, lean, hungry, maddening pursuer of his craft because he likes being at the top, but because he's always felt the need to catch up.

Hopefully, the next half of the book will offers more gems.