Alias Simon Hawkes (2002) by Philip J. Carraher

I generally prefer homages, parodies and spoofs over outright pastiches, because pastiches seldom measure up to the original and rarely add or outshine the original – imitation has its limitations. So never understood why the estate of Agatha Christie commissioned a bunch of new Hercule Poirot novels, which were never going to be as great or rival the originals. Why not commission writers, like Sophie Hannah, to write a series of Sven Hjerson mysteries under the "Ariadne Oliver" name? Ariadne Oliver and Sven Hjerson can be used to expand on Christie's work without intruding on it. Not to mention fairer to whomever is doing the writing considering it's less of a Herculean task than expecting them to create a new Poirot novel from scratch.

Another problem I have with pastiches, especially Holmesian pastiches, is writers selling their own ideas short by presenting them as imitations. A problem that becomes even worse when the characters and writing aren't perfect imitations of the original. No matter how good the writing, characterization and plot actually is.

For example, Roy Templeman's short story collection Sherlock Holmes and the Chinese Junk Affair & Other Stories (1998), which features a pale shadow of the Great Detective, but the plots of "The Chinese Junk Affair" and "The Trophy Room" aren't without merit – fun impossible crime stories in the David Renwick mold. Sherlock Holmes and the Chinese Junk Affair has very little to offer for hardcore Sherlockians and ignored everyone else not interested in the "further adventures" of Sherlock Holmes. That's how today's subject got overlooked for more than two decades.

Philip J. Carraher's Alias Simon Hawkes: Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in New York (2002) is one of three volumes of Sherlock Holmes pastiches chronicling his long-lost adventures in New York City during the Great Hiatus. A period during which the Great Detective concealed his identity under the alias "Simon Hawkes." I likely would have never known about Carraher or Alias Simon Hawkes had Brian Skupin not mentioned the collection in the introduction to Locked Room Murders: Supplement (2019). Skupin noted the stories are "decidedly non-Holmesian, but clever" with "a good locked room mystery." Only locked room fan who acknowledged the collection is Hal White who listed Alias Simon Hawkes ("worth reading") on his website under "Suggested Reading & Viewing." And the few reviews from Sherlock Holmes fans are a bit mixed. So enough to place Alias Simon Hawkes on my special locked room wishlist, but never gave it special attention or top priority.

Why this rambling, quasi-coherent preamble about pastiches? I recently found out Alias Simon Hawkes is still in print and dug around a bit to see if it was worth to snatch up a copy with, as you have seen, meager results, but enough to pique my curiosity – especially the two stories listed in Locked Room Murders: Supplement. They impressed me stories more suitable for today's locked room revival than the lean years of the early 2000s ("The Locked Room Mystery & Impossible Crime Story in the 21st Century"). I decided to just order a copy and judge the stories solely on their merits as detective stories/locked room mysteries rather than Holmesian pastiches.

"The Adventure of the Magic Alibi," a novella, is the first of four stories making up Alias Simon Hawkes and is an inverted mystery in which the murderer is known, but the bastard has an alibi that stands like a fortress. The murderer is question is Clifford Greenleaf, a rich man, who's hobby is magic tricks and is himself a gifted amateur magician. Greenleaf has gained a reputation for throwing fancy dress parties ("imaginative affairs") for high society and entertaining his guests with "feats of wizardry and pretend-witchcraft." Greenleaf is planning a very special theatrical trick, "a feat of magic," performed during a Halloween party to serve as a cover for murder and creating an unbeatable alibi in the process.

During the festivities, Greenleaf is going to enter a specially prepared room, on the second floor, which has only one door and a window permanently nailed shut that morning. The door is going to be locked behind him and guarded by a Chief Inspector of the New York City police, William "Big Bill" Devery. After a minute, the room is unlocked to allow twenty, ten men and ten women, randomly selected party attendees to go inside and investigate – only to discover their host has inexplicably vanished from the locked and guarded room. Apparently having crossed "the unseen bridge between this physical world and the world of departed souls" as promised. Before the trick can be completed with Greenleaf's reappearance, the murder of Virginia Greenleaf is discovered. She had been fatally wounded in her bedroom, but lived long enough to scrawl her murderer's name in blood, "Cliff killed me." Nothing cryptic about that dying message! Only problem is her husband has a very strange, but incontestable, alibi. There are over twenty people, including Devery, who swear Greenleaf was in the locked, guarded room with them without actually seeing him ("...a very unique alibi"). Inspector Cullen's colleagues belief the dying message was a fake, based on the strength of her husband's alibi, but if he's guilty how did he manage to get out and back into the room?

Inspector Cullen turns to Simon Hawkes for help. Hawkes had assisted Cullen before in The Adventure of the Dead Rabbits Society (2001) and the problem of the magical alibi appears to be better fix to keep boredom away than his usual 7% solution. The setup of the story is great! A crime adhering to Tetsuya Ayukawa's believe that an alibi is a locked room in time and a locked room an alibi in space, which Carraher smashed together. For example, the plan requires a fake locked room-trick to explain Greenleaf's unseen presence inside the locked, watched room. So the setup is first-rate stuff. Unfortunately, the second-act and solution to the locked room alibi are not. And that while there was a much better, more convincing solution staring you in the face (ROT13): nyy lbh arrq vf tvzzvpx gur jvaqbj gb znxr vg nccrne vg jnf anvyrq fuhg (phg-bss anvyf, rgp. cvpx lbhe gevpxf). Nsgre ragrevat gur ebbz, Terrayrns fvzcyl bcraf gur ebbz, fgrcf bhg ba n ynqqre, pybfrf gur jvaqbj naq rvgure tyhrf vg fuhg be hfrf pynzf gb znxr vg nccrne sebz gur vafvqr vg'f ybpxrq naq anvyrq fuhg. Ohg hfvat tyhr jbhyq tvir uvz nabgure ernfba gb jnvg jvgu evfvat gur nynez, orfvqr przragvat uvf nyvov. Vg arrqrq gvzr gb qel. Jura gur zheqre vf qvfpbirerq naq thneqf ner chyyrq njnl sebz gur ybpxrq qbbe, Terrayrns fvzcyl hfrf uvf fcner xrl gb tb onpx vafvqr gb or sbhaq jura gur ebbz vf haybpxrq. Not a blistering original solution, but it eliminates (ROT13) gur arrq sbe n crfxl, gebhoyrfbzr nppbzcyvpr jub arrqf qvfcbfvat naq Terrayrns univat gb qvfthvfr uvzfrys nf n jbzna. Fhpu vzcrefbangvba gevpxf vaibyivat jvtf, naq jungabg, eneryl pbzr npebff nf nalguvat ohg frpbaq-engr. This would have shortened the novella to a short story, but sometimes less is really more. Still enjoyed the overall story, despite the second-half and ending failing to live up to the excellently posed problem of the miracle alibi.

The second and first short story of the collection is "The Adventure of the Captive Forger" and brings Simon Hawkes into contact with an art dealer, named William Lancaster, who has "a reputation for being able to discern forgeries." Lancaster tells Hawkes at the Dead Rabbits Society he has gotten a lucrative, but troublesome, offer to go the home of one Charles Buonocore to appraise some sketches. A battered Lancaster returns the next day with a strange story of a long carriage ride in the dark to a remote, lonely house where a young woman's being held captive and barely escaped the ordeal with his life. And he has no idea how to find the house again.

If the premise sounds somewhat familiar, you're correct. "The Adventure of the Captive Forger" is a rewrite of one of Conan Doyle's worst Sherlock Holmes short stories, "The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb" (1892). Only real difference is in the characters and settings, but, in every other regard, they are essentially the same story following exactly the same pattern – right down to the ending (ROT13: ubhfr sver naq bar bs gur pevzvanyf trggvat njnl). Even worse, Holmes barely does anything in the original short story except retracing the route the house by figuring out the carriage-trick. Only thing Hawkes has to here is to recall the case of that young engineer Victor Hatherley, "he too was taken on a ride in a carriage," and remarking how striking the similarities between cases are. No shit, Sherlock! And, no, I don't accept the argument that the story is clever self-parody about forgers missing the creative spark to create art themselves.

Detective story or pastiche, either way you cut it, "The Adventure of the Captive Forger" is lazy, irredeemable trash and a case-in-point why not every detective fan is keen on exploring the lost adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

Fortunately, "The Adventure of the Glass Room" is the best story of the collection and the reason why Alias Simon Hawkes was even noticed by Skupin and White. A tricky, complicated locked-room-within-a-locked-room mystery. The story begins with Sherlock Holmes, alias Simon Hawkes, is talking at the Dead Rabbits Society with a former client and devout spiritualist, Alwyn Pritchett. Pritchett is boosting to Hawkes about a method he devised "to assure the authenticity of any psychic phenomenon" during a séance. A glass structure, or cube, erected in his own parlor with a glass door that can be bolted from the inside. The only furniture in the glass room is a small table and two chairs. One for Pritchett and the other for the spiritual medium, Charlotte Davreux. Nobody's allowed inside the parlor, beside Pritchett and Davreux, which is also securely locked. So no room for the usual trickery. Hawkes is surprised when the news arrive the next day Pritchett and Davreux died in an apparent murder/suicide.

According to the evidence, Pritchett shot Davreux before turning the gun on himself. They were all alone, sitting in the glass room, the door bolted from the inside and the parlor securely locked ("...a sealed room of glass that is itself standing within a locked room"). So the involvement of a third person seems impossible. Hawkes finds an explanation to explain the seemingly impossible from droplets of blood found in an odd place and reasoning from there. The locked room-trick is complicated and a bit patchy with some points raising an eyebrow, but not bad and a really involved solution fits the tricky, equally complicated and involved presentation of the murders. Just read it before any of the other stories, because you'll appreciate it more (SPOILER/ROT13): fvzvyne gb gur svefg fgbel, gur fbyhgvba erdhverf n crfxl, oheqrefbzr nppbzcyvpr naq gur zheqrere vzcrefbangvat n jbzna.

If "The Adventure of the Magic Alibi," is too long, "The Adventure of the Talking Ghost," the fourth and final story, is too short. Simon Hawkes receives news from London that "the criminal empire of Professor Moriarty now lay shattered" ("an exception of note was the escape of Colonel Sebastian Moran") and considers shedding his new identity to resurrect Sherlock Holmes. While pondering his option, Hawkes receives the news that an ex-client, Joseph Carter, was shot and killed by a gypsy fortune teller. Madam Tollier claimed she shot Carter in self-defense after he tried to attack her with his sword stick. But why? Carter tried to kill the medium to "silence a ghost." Carter's daughter died recently in a drowning accident, but her ghost told him she was murdered ("my killer must be punished"). After his daughter's accident, his wife was killed during a mugging in Central Park. Now he has been shot!

Something fishy is going on! "The Adventure of the Talking Ghost" should have been an intriguingly played, meticulously executed breakdown of Madam Tollier's identity and motive, which would have justified the length of the opening novella. Now it almost feels like the solution is thrown out there when the time comes for Hawkes to simply recognize her (SPOILER/ROT13: pbzcyrgr jvgu chyyvat njnl n jvt. Lrf, gur guveq fgbel va juvpu gur zheqrere hfrf n tbqqnza jvt). There's undoubtedly a good, Doylean-style detective story hiding in here, but Carraher only caught a glimpse of it.

Alias Simon Hawkes is the expected mixed bag of tricks with the first-half of "The Adventure of the Magic Alibi" and "The Adventure of the Glass Room" standing out, but, read back-to-back, the stories come across as repetitive and derivative. Funnily enough, there's a short "About the Author" stating that Carraher believes "each new book should not merely be a practiced variation of the previous one." These stories are all practiced variations on previous/other stories. I already mentioned (SPOILER/ROT13) gjb bs gur fgbevrf eryl ba gebhoyrfbzr nppbzcyvprf naq gur zheqrere vzcrefbangvat n jbzra, juvpu ur ergheaf gb va gur guveq fgbel jvgu n oybaqr jbzna vzcrefbangvat n tlcfl jbzna jvgu n oynpx jvt naq znxrhc, ohg gurer'f nyfb gur fcvevghnyvfg frg qerffvat naq jnyxvat fgvpxf uvqvat jrncbaf. That's why I recommended reading "Glass Room" first. It's the best and most practiced variation of Callaher's favored plot-ingredients. And the only story I can honestly recommended to impossible crime fanatics.