Laurie King: Sherlock Holmes and the Easter Eggs

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I have been a huge fan of Laurie R. King's Mary Russell novels since the publication of the very first in the series, THE BEEKEEPER'S APPRENTICE, so I'm thrilled to be introducing the latest Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes adventure, #18,  THE LANTERN'S DANCE! 

Here, Laurie gives us a behind the scenes look at the choices she made as she was plotting--and I'd love to read every one of these potential stories.

Sherlock Holmes and the Easter Eggs*

Laurie R. King

 

I sometimes wonder if I write as an excuse for research. In part, it’s the travel—when you’re writing a book about Japan or Transylvania or the Riviera, you have to go there, right? Smell the air, taste the food? And in part, it’s being what my daughter calls a recovering academic, a person whose grad school career was diverted into a life of fiction rather than a life of theological minutiae.

But honestly, what’s not to love about diving into the historical background of your characters?

One of those characters is Sherlock Holmes, and after decades of pastiches, film versions, and fan-fiction, you’d think people had discovered or invented absolutely everything about him. And it’s true, in the course of a career battling everyone from Jack the Ripper to Nazis to Martians (yes, I’m afraid so), Holmes has gone everywhere.

Except perhaps his own past.

Yes, says the writer’s brain: let’s go there!

And let’s structure the book with glimpses of the past, so we can shape a story that’s like a zoetrope, with a series of images that comes to life as the wheel spins: The Lantern’s Dance.

But where to start? Well, one of the few things Arthur Conan Doyle tells us about his detective, in a story that introduces Sherlock Holmes’ previously unknown brother, Mycroft (“The Greek Interpreter”) is that their grandmother came from a famous family of artists. As Holmes says to Dr. Watson:

“My ancestors were country squires, who appear to have led much the same life as is natural to their class. But, none the less, my turn that way is in my veins, and may have come with my grandmother, who was the sister of Vernet, the French artist. Art in the blood is liable to take the strangest forms.”

“But how do you know that it is hereditary?” [asks Watson]

“Because my brother Mycroft possesses it in a larger degree than I do.”

Naturally, if I wanted to write a story exploring the personal history of Sherlock Holmes, I needed to know something about the Vernets. And naturally, for a writer like me with a taste for academic research, the waters of the investigation pool quickly grew very deep indeed.

I shall not burden you with the… shall we say, challenge of the Vernet genealogies and family histories, no two of which agreed on dates, relationships, or even the sex of a child. Nor will I tell you my personal feelings about a family that cannot stick to an identity, but drops names, randomly switches around their first and middle names, or even adopts one that they like better. I will merely say that there’s good reason why we didn’t create a family tree for The Lantern’s Dance’s book club guide.

But—let’s start small, and first try to decide which “Vernet, the French artist” Holmes was talking about. That is a fairly simple problem, for if we work back from the birth date of the elder Holmes brother (1854, though some sources say 1847), it would suggest a grandmother’s birth date somewhere between 1785 and 1815. The Vernet artist who matches those dates as a brother would be Horace (1789-1863.)

(Horace, Self Portrait, 1835)

Therefore, if we’re interested in playing with the links between the Holmes family and the Vernets in The Lantern’s Dance, the artist we want to start with is Horace.

The problem is, even this one single Vernet carries with him such a huge wagon-load of fascinating facts and potential story lines that I could have written half a dozen books, each following a different side-track.

Such as Horace Vernet’s childhood traumas. As a three-year-old during the Revolution, little Horace was rushed through a hail of bullets in the Tuileries. Soon after, his aunt was put to the guillotine by a colleague of Horace’s artist father, Carle, by name of Jacques-Louis David. What if, all these years later, Sherlock Holmes were to uncover some secret rivalry between David and the Vernets, that…

No. Too convoluted, too thinly linked with Horace—and in any case, I don’t want to spend large portions of this book buried amidst the horrors of the French Revolution.

But what about Horace Vernet’s time in a later unrest, the 1848 revolution? His paintings were burned, he was forced to retreat to a small apartment in the Institut de France, he conveniently found a change of patrons…

No: pas de révolution!

How about some nice espionage instead? Ah yes, that’s more like it.

Without giving away plot-spoilers, Horace Vernet does indeed enter our story, during his 1839 sketching trip to Egypt and Palestine. His companions include a young man with a daguerreotype camera—only invented that year—and a nephew by the name of Charles Burton. Burton is an Army officer fluent in Arabic, 26 years old, who happens to be free to accompany his famous uncle, providing the skills both to translate and to guard this remarkable new machine capable of recording clear and detailed images of such places as Acre and Cairo. Vernet’s reputation preceeded him, clearing the way for the artist and his companions to move among the important officials and leaders of the area.

(Horace Vernet: Arabs Traveling in the Desert)

Hmm, says the writer’s brain: access plus communication skills plus a plausible reason for poking around equals a superb opportunity for sending back reports and images to the French military.

So what if….?

But along that track, too, lies a plot that is not what I need.

There is another generation of artists already in this book. I need the Vernets for their art, not their opportunities for espionage.

Reluctantly, grudgingly, I scoop up whole pages of a first draft involving 19^th century spycraft (Horace even went to Russia! I could write about the Czar!) and drop them into the “Cuts” file.

Instead, the Egyptian sketching expedition takes on a different role, with Horace’s travels made to serve a rather different purpose in the plot. Don’t worry, espionage remains—I couldn’t resist that temptation—but in a far more covert manner than the original thought.

The spying, the travel, the references to specific Vernet paintings all become Easter Eggs, little spots of colorful treasure that not everyone will see, but which nestle into the story and await discovery. A game, between a writer and her readers.

But still, I am curious. If I were to go back and re-make those decisions that went into The Lantern’s Dance, if I were to pick up one of the discarded possibilities that my research teased me with, which do you think that should be? The French Revolution? Artistic spies in North Africa? Some side task required by Czar Nicholas, perhaps?

Let me know what you’d like in the comments. After all, that’s what short stories are for!

* Easter Egg: a bit of hidden treasure, or an inside joke among game-players.

 

Laurie R. King is the bestselling author of 30 novels and other works, including the Mary Russell-Sherlock Holmes novels. She has won the Agatha, Anthony, Edgar, Lambda, Wolfe, Macavity, Creasey dagger, and Romantic Times Career Achievement awards, has an honorary doctorate, and is a Baker Street Irregular and a Mystery Writers of American Grand Master. She is celebrating thirty years of Russell & Holmes with a series of all-day Beekeeper’s Apprentice events (see her events page) and her new book, out on February 13, is The Lantern’s Dance.

Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes, hoping for a respite in the French countryside, are instead caught up in a case that turns both bewildering and intensely personal.

“Deftly interlacing present and past, King offers further fascinating insights into Holmes’s family while also delivering an intriguing mystery.”—The Washington Post

After their recent adventures in Transylvania, Russell and Holmes look forward to spending time with Holmes’ son, the famous artist Damian Adler, and his family. But when they arrive at Damian’s house, they discover that the Adlers have fled from a mysterious threat.

Holmes rushes after Damian while Russell, slowed down by a recent injury, stays behind to search the empty house. In Damian’s studio, she discovers four crates packed with memorabilia related to Holmes’ granduncle, the artist Horace Vernet. It’s an odd mix of treasures and clutter, including a tarnished silver lamp with a rotating shade: an antique yet sophisticated form of zoetrope, fitted with strips of paper whose images dance with the lantern’s spin.

In the same crate is an old journal written in a nearly impenetrable code. Intrigued, Russell sets about deciphering the intricate cryptograph, slowly realizing that each entry is built around an image—the first of which is a child, bundled into a carriage by an abductor, watching her mother recede from view.

Russell is troubled, then entranced, but each entry she decodes brings more questions. Who is the young Indian woman who created this elaborate puzzle? What does she have to do with Damian, or the Vernets—or the threat hovering over the house?

The secrets of the past appear to be reaching into the present. And it seems increasingly urgent that Russell figure out how the journal and lantern are related to Damian—and possibly to Sherlock Holmes himself.

Could there be things about his own history that even the master detective does not perceive?

DEBS: Horace was quite the dandy, wasn't he? What fun!

And we have more fun for you today--2 GIVEAWAYS!!

#1

Comment here on the BLOG to be entered to win a signed copy of THE LANTERN'S DANCE!!

#2

And comment over on our REDS & READERS Facebook group to be entered to win a copy of ECHOES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, a fabulous collection of Sherlock-themed short stories edited by Laurie and Leslie Klinger. Hank, Hallie, and I all have stories in this anthology and it is such fun!! 

If you haven't joined our REDS & READERS FB group, here's the link.

You can learn more about Laurie and THE LANTERN'S DANCE here:

Web site: https://laurierking.com

Events: https://laurierking.com/events/

The Lantern’s Dance: https://laurierking.com/books/the-lanterns-dance/