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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Poirot on the Radio

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Poirot on the Radio

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I enjoy radio plays, and frequently listen to them on my phone while I drive, work, or drift off to sleep. I only recently noticed Audible’s sleep timer feature, which is certainly useful for the latter.

This includes The New Adventures of Mike Hammer, Nero Wolfe (on the CBC), Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, Clive Merrison and John Stanley as Sherlock Holmes, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, The Caine Mutiny Court Martial, Mistletoe Murders: And Hercule Poirot.

I enjoy audiobooks and listen to them all year long. They let me get to books I wouldn’t have time to sit down and read. And lets me re-visit favorites, easily.

But I quite like listening to a radio play. I’m fortunate that there are a couple dozen good Poirot ones. And John Moffatt’s are in my rotation all year long.

Of course, I wrote about David Suchet’s masterful performance on British TV. It was Suchet’s Poirot, and Maury Chaykin’s Nero Wolfe, which led me to read the stories they were based on. I cannot possibly imagine a better Poirot, ever.

I have gone in-depth on radio Poriot, here and here: I’ll talk about them below. But first, a bit of a surprisingly good radio Poirot.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Death (of a Detective) in Paradise

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Death (of a Detective) in Paradise

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And we kick off 2025 with the return of the column that earned me regular gig here at Black Gate. I’m ostensibly the in-house mystery guy around here, though I’m way beyond all over the place. Death in Paradise is a police procedural (it is not, however, a buddy cop show) with a fair amount of humor, and it debuted on BBC1 on October 25, 2011. The show started airing a Christmas special a few years ago, and episode number 109 just aired on December 22, 2024.

The basic premise is that Scotland Yard assigns a DCI (Detective Chief Inspector) to duty on the island of Saint Marie (pronounced ‘San Marie’), located in the Lesser Antilles. Saint Marie was turned over to the British by the French roughly forty years before the show starts. So, it still has a French-Caribbean culture.

There is a four-person police unit, with the DCI (Richard Poole) joined by a local Detective Sergeant (Camille), and two local uniform ‘beat cops’ (Dwayne, and Fidel). There are two other regulars: the female owner of a local bar (Catherine, who is Camille’s mother), and the Police Superintendent (Patterson). Five of the six main characters are island natives, so this is a classic fish-out-of-water scenario.

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The Best of Bob: 2024

The Best of Bob: 2024

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Happy 2025! Let’s kick butt for another year. Or at least, limp to the finish 52 weeks. from now. I take what I can get. I started a Best of Bob feature last year. And while it may seem I’m constantly finding folks to write my column for me (hey – it’s a gift!), some of you Black Gaters may be surprised that I occasionally actually write my own essays for the Monday morning slot. John O’Neill is too savvy an editor for me to completely fool him for over decade.

So here are what I thought were ten of my better efforts in 2024. Hopefully you saw them back when I first posted them. But if not, maybe you’ll check out a few now. Ranking them seemed a bit egotistical, so they’re in chronological order. Let’s go!

1) Roaming the Old West, with Holmes on the Range (February 5, 2024)

It might look like I just throw something together every week (and looks aren’t always deceptive). But when I can find the time, I love putting together something special. And after reading/re-reading the entire series, I really nailed a three-part series on Steve Hockensmith’s Sherlock Holmes influenced, Old West mysteries about cowboy brothers Old Red and Big Red.

I followed up a pretty solid series overview, with the first-ever comprehensive chronology! And then, we rounded it out with a great Q&A from Steve himself. This is a terrific series: a great read, and solid on audiobook. Late in the year, the first two novels in a spin-off series that’s more Old West adventure than Holmes-flavored, came out. I’m looking forward to more of all aspects of the Double-A Western Detective Agency.

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A Holmes Christmas Carol

A Holmes Christmas Carol

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Just about everyone is familiar with A Christmas Carol. The first short movie was made in 1901, based on a play adapted from Charles Dickens’ novel. And there were new adaptations this year. THAT is enduring.

I’ve seen different word counts, but Dickens’ work is about 29,000 words long. That’s a very short novel. But, as with any adaptation, some things are left out.

I took Dickens’ original novel – not one of the movie versions – and rewrote it as a Sherlock Holmes tale. I include some text from Dickens, and some stuff I’m not familiar with from just watching the movies.

I have about a half-dozen published Holmes short stories, and I think that I voice Watson, and emulate Doyle, fairly well. Well enough to give my stuff a try, I feel. And in this one, I feel like I presented some depth to Holmes, but I also remained faithful to Doyle’s actual character.

So, give it a read.

I

It is with a certain sense of misgiving that I relate the following tale, which took place during the Christmas season in 1902. I had moved out of our Baker Street lodgings earlier that year, having married only a few months before. I had rooms in Queen Anne Street and was quite busy with my flourishing medical practice. A newly married man, I once again found myself as head of a household, with all of the duties thereof. I saw Holmes infrequently, but had found the time to stop by the day before Christmas. Knowing he would have no plans of any kind, I extended to him an invitation to join my wife and I for Christmas day.

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Gothic Noir: The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Gothic Noir: The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

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The Shadow of the Wind (Penguin Books, February 1, 2005). Cover by Tal Goretsky

Shadow of the Wind is the English rendering of  La sombra del viento, the 2001 novel by Carlos Ruiz Zafón and the first (though a standalone story sans cliffhangers) in his five book Cemetery of Forgotten Books series, translated by Lucia Graves (a serendipitously appropriate last name and, as it happens, the daughter of poet and historical novelist Robert Graves, he of I Claudius and The White Goddess fame). I hope this is a literal translation as Shadow of the Wind perfectly captures the story’s gothic and noirish essence. We can’t actually see wind, nor does wind cast a shadow; rather we feel the wind, detecting by inference the sometimes destructive aftereffects of high winds. Or, to paraphrase as someone else famously put it, the allegory is blowing in the wind.

The titular Cemetery of Forgotten Books is a somewhat fantastical labyrinth repository of rare books. Unlike Julia Alvarez’s Cemetery of Untold Stories, where texts are buried and talk to one another in their afterlife, the Cemetery of Forgotten Books could be some idiosyncratic bookshop with obsessively weird stock accessible only to certain people, which is not that all different from certain kinds of booksellers.

But the touch of fantasy  is when our hero, Daniel Sempere, taken to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books by his bookshop owning father, is tasked to select one volume, and one volume only, he feels drawn to from among a complex maze of shelvings. That book is Shadows of the Wind  by Julian Carax, and, yes, we’re getting metafictional here. What kicks the plot off is that there are no other surviving copies of the work, Carax’s output having been destroyed in a warehouse fire of mysterious origins.

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What I’ve Been Listening To: November 2024

What I’ve Been Listening To: November 2024

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So, I did not update you last month, on what I’ve been listening to most recently. Let me tell you, the FLOOD of emails and comments, wanting to know what’s been running through my Audible, was deafening. Wait. No. I mean, deathly silent.

MISTLETOE MURDERS 3

I like Hallmark Christmas movies. They’re all similar, but they’re enjoyable. My ex-wife and I even got our son to kind of enjoy them. He would laugh at the tropes when they occurred, like the snowball fight, the misunderstanding, the plot twist at 90 minutes EVERY time.

Sometimes I watch the Hallmark Mystery movies, and the general ones. Mistletoe Murders is an Audible Original series, included with my membership level. On its third season. This radio show about a gift shop owner is like a Hallmark Mystery Christmas series. But with more emphasis on the mystery side, than the ‘sappy/silly’ Christmas side. She has a past that makes her far more than just a store owner.

Seasons have varied in number of episodes and length, running about an hour and-a-half first time out, and between four and four and-half-hours in the next two seasons.

If you like Hallmark Mysteries (which I wrote about here long ago), this wont’ do much for you. If you do like them, then this is pure bonus for your Hallmark-loving heart.

Just a few weeks ago, the first season of a streaming series started on Hallmark+. I don’t have that channel, so I haven’t seen it. But I think it’s cool they took the audio series and put it on screen. I hope to catch it soon.

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What I’ve Been Listening To: August (II) 2024

What I’ve Been Listening To: August (II) 2024

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I posted last week about several audiobooks I’ve been listening to. Audiobooks totally fit in with my lifestyle (to the extent I have one). I can listen to them while working, driving, writing, falling asleep, walking outside, and even watching soccer which I’m not too invested in.

I wouldn’t get to a lot of the stuff I listen to, if I had to read it. I mean, you have never heard such caterwauling as the folks in the carpool when I read a paperback while driving. Yeesh!

I re-listen to a lot of stuff. But between Audible Premium, and select library borrows through the Hoopla app, I have audiobooks going a lot of the time.

Here are some more recent listens – some repeats, some brand new to my ears.

LEAPHORN AND CHEE – Tony Hillerman

I did a rather in-depth three-part series on Tony Hillerman and his terrific police procedurals set on the Navajo reservation. I have read/listened to this series a dozen times over the years. I absolutely love it. Somewhere I’ve got some cassette tapes, read by Hillerman himself. But between DVDs and Audible, I’ve managed to get unabridged (do NOT get the abridged versions. Not nearly as good) versions of each novel, read well by George Guidall.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Richard Deming’s Manville Moon

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Richard Deming’s Manville Moon

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“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

(Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

 

Richard Deming’s career flourished during the end of the Pulps and the birth of the digests. He published short stories in five different decades. After serving in World War II, he was working for the Red Cross when he sold his first story, “The Juarez Knife,” to Popular Detective. He would write a total of sixteen more stories, as well as four novels, featuring his one-legged war veteran, Manville (‘Manny,’ ‘Mister’) Moon, mostly appearing in Black Mask, and Dime Detective.

He wrote three police procedural novels starring Matt Rudd, a vice cop in Southern California. Deming appeared in the final issue of Dime Detective, but had already transitioned to Manhhunt, the digest magazine that was the successor to the hardboiled Pulps.

Deming also wrote for television – an experience he did not speak of fondly.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Rex Stout’s ‘The Mother of Invention’

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Rex Stout’s ‘The Mother of Invention’

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“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

(Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

If you read more than just this Pulp series of mine each summer, you know that I am a gargantuan Nero Wolfe fan. It’s my favorite mystery series, and I have written a lot of fiction and non-fiction about Wolfe, and Archie Goodwin.

Rex Stout wrote several novels and many short stories, before the first Wolfe novel dropped in 1934. Of course, there was no looking back after Fer de Lance.

He placed “A Professional Recall” in the December, 1912 issue of The Black Cat magazine. “Pamfret and Peace” followed the next month. There would be three more over the next few years.

The Black Cat was founded by Herman Umbstaetter in 1895. He had gained and lost a fortune before managing to fund his own magazine in Baltimore. It was not a Pulp, and was about the size of the Dime Novels of the day (about 6” x 9”). Umbstaetter encouraged new writers, and paid based on the quality of the story, not by the word. His wife did the early covers.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Ya Gotta Ask – Reprise

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Ya Gotta Ask – Reprise

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“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

(Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

Nine years ago this past January, I wrote a post here titled, Ya Gotta Ask. I felt like that one could use a bit of polish and expansion, and it would still be a pretty good post. So, here’s a revised version, as the Monday morning column gets ready to kick off another Summer of Pulp with A (Black) Gat in the Hand.

One of the cool things about Black Gate is that there are a bunch of authors who blog here. These are Writers with a capital ‘W’. I have worked hard to become a pretty good blogger, and I think I’ve succeeded. I’ve got a couple awards to back that up. I’ve published some short stories and non-fiction, as well. But I still think of myself as a lower case ‘w’ writer. I am working towards capitalizing that letter, but as any Writer will tell you, you just gotta keep working at it.

Now, some authors here at Black Gate can (and have) given you advice on how to write a novel, or get a book published: be it here, or on their own blogs or other sites. Follow their advice, make it happen, and then you can be a Writer too (a novel isn’t the defining element: I’m just using it as a benchmark for this essay). I’m going to make a suggestion on how you can become a writer, like me. I know, I know: you’re all atingle.

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