Loren D. Estleman - Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Holmes

[kooshmeister]

Holmes pastiches are a bit of mixed bag for me. The Giant Rat of Sumatra was, anyway. But Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Holmes is shaping up to be quite good! The only thing I don't really like is the author's insistence on treating the story as nonfiction. It's well and good to present a book as a "found manuscript" (as Michael Crichton did with Eaters of the Dead) but the overly long and detailed introduction wherein Loren D. Estleman relates how he got the "lost" Holmes chronicle from a gangster (!) was really silly. Do other Holmes pastiche authors do this?

Anyway, Holmes and Watson are engaged by a G.J. Utterson, attorney and friend of a respected medical researcher named Dr. Henry Jekyll. It seems Jekyll has, for whatever reason, taken a shine to a young man named Edward Hyde, lending him enough money to buy an apartment in Soho and furnish it with princely taste. He's even gone so far as to change his will to make Hyde his sole beneficiary! All well and good, except Hyde is a jerk. More than that, he's an uncouth, monstrous ruffian, and Utterson thinks Hyde has some hold on his client and is blackmailing Jekyll.

Holmes' attempts to unravel the mystery of why Jekyll would associate himself with such a cur come to a dead end. He can find no evidence that Hyde existed prior to a few years ago, and his effort to get answers out of Dr. Jekyll himself get him stonewalled and lead to Utterson worriedly dropping the matter. Then an important M.P., Sir Danvers Carew, is murdered quite publicly by Hyde. Although neither Jekyll nor Utterson is willing to assist any further, Holmes' brother Mycroft comes to 221B Baker Street on orders directly from the Queen herself - find Sir Danvers' killer. Bring Hyde to justice.

And so, backed with no less than Royal authority, Holmes and Watson begin their hunt for Hyde. Because Jekyll seems to be the only person Hyde counts as a friend, Holmes, hoping to learn about the killer by digging into Jekyll's past, learns nothing new about Hyde... but does dig up some interesting facts about Jekyll himself. From his former colleague Professor Armbruster at the University of Edinburgh, they learn about Jekyll's pet theories involving the separation of good and evil. And the closer they get to the truth, the more vicious Edward Hyde becomes, going so far as to hire a Scottish ruffian in an attempt to have his initials carved into Holmes!

This is a great book. Of course, anyone knows the secret about the connection between Jekyll and Hyde, but Estleman wisely plays coy, keeping it a mystery just as it was in the original novel by Robert Louis Stevenson. Bonuses for Jekyll & Hyde fans includes cameos by oft-overlooked characters from Stevenson's novel such as Utterson, Jekyll's friend Dr. Hastie Lanyon, and Inspector Newcomen of Scotland Yard. Definitely a good read!

[ripper]

I have a copy of this one, but it is as yet unread. I did read the same author's Sherlock Holmes vs. Dracula many years ago, but I can't remember if the same involved explanation of where the manuscript comes from was used. Other pastiches I have read, particularly novels, have often employed some explanation for the manuscript e.g. found in a bank vault, authorised by Holmes after Watson is asked for more stories and so forth.