It has been asserted that the only character who has been the subject of more movies than Sherlock Holmes is Count Dracula, most likely an assertion based on statistical project rather than an actual concerted attempt to track down and keep count. Come to think of it, that assertion might actually be the other way around: maybe it is Sherlock who has the edge over Dracula. The point being that it doesn’t matter; in this competition there really is no shame in coming in second. And it makes perfect sense, too, since there is something fundamentally literary about the source material of these two characters while also something given to a fluidity of visual potential.
Which is to say that while there certainly have been a wealth of literary sequels and prequels and way-off-canon books written about Sherlock and Dracula, their existence outside the origin material really comes to us not through the written word, but film and television. The fact remains, however, that there is a wealth of literary material out there which takes up the mantle of both Bram Stoker and Arthur Conan Doyle to keep their legendary creations alive and well more well over a century after they initially appeared. The most successful of these attempts to do within the pages of a book what has been so wildly popular in the form of flickering projected images have almost all come about as a result of a recognition that has escape the less successful attempts. This is especially true in the case of Sherlock Holmes: it is the character rather than the original stories published by their creators that has made them stand the test of the time.
Here’s the unvarnished truth if you can handle it: most of the mysteries solved by Holmes are not really even solved by him but instead rely upon convenient confessions and even then maybe half a dozen are actually memorable. Consider the most famous Holmes story within this context. Of those movies made about Holmes putting him into competition with Dracula, a goodly chunk consist of nothing but various version of The Hound of the Baskervilles. And in that most famous iconic of “Sherlock Holmes tales” Sherlock Holmes is really and truly just a supporting character who really does not do a whole heckuva a lot. Based on the ratio of scenes centering upon a certain character, the evidence is overwhelming. The leading character of that novel is Dr. Watson. Plan and simple. Yet who remembers anything that Watson does in the story. He may not be the focus of it, but Holmes gets the most interesting parts of the story.
This is what author Mitch Cullin recognized and it the single element of his novel that is of the greatest important in situating A Slight Trick of the Mind as among the cream of the crop of the Holmes stories not written by Conan Doyle. Rather than trying to come up with a terrifically complex mystery for Holmes to solve with his powers of deduction, Cullin followed the lead of Conan Doyle. The investigation at hand is subjugated to providing a portrait of Holmes that isn’t just a repeat of what came before. Too often Conan Doyle failed here, but that is what comes from having to meet a quota. When you have to meet a deadline to supply a set amount of stories, the pressure sets in and sometimes, well, let’s just say sometimes you get Charles August Milverton and sometimes you get a vampire in Sussex.
The opening page of A Slight Trick of the Mind is all most people really need to determine whether they will want to pursue the story as the introductory paragraph informs the reader that the great detective—now long retired—has spent the last two months aboard a ship traveling to Japan sometime after the detonation of two atomic bombs above the island nation which brought World War II to a close. This take Holmes well out of his traditional foggy streets and manor houses of Victorian England and into a world in which they not only have never seen him, but likely never even imagined him. That is all it takes to make the decision to press on: either you like Holmes firmly set within the constricted time and space of the original stories or you don’t mind seeing him outside his comfort zone. Those who belong to the former can find much to love in this book, but probably won’t get far enough into it to realize it. For the latter: this is a Holmes only very rarely if ever seen or read about before and that makes it worth the effort.
