Imagine a young man writing to his favourite author, asking for more stories of his favourite character, only to learn that there won’t be more of them. Imagine the same young man writing to his favourite author, asking to be allowed to write more stories himself and be denied. Imagine, again, that young man, deciding to write stories like those of his favourite author and creating a new version of his favourite character. That young man was August Derleth (who is usually more connected to H. P. Lovecraft than to Arthur Conan Doyle) and the new version of his favourite character (Sherlock Holmes) is Solar Pons.
This review is mainly based on the first collection of Solar Pons stories (“In Re: Sherlock Holmes”). The full series spans ten books which also include pastiches by other authors and a few Sherlock Holmes stories Derleth wrote later on. I will probably return to Solar Pons at some point and do another review, but I wanted to talk a little about him already.
Solar Pons is not just a copycat, not just the same character by another name. Derleth worked off the ‘Sherlock Holmes’ template, no doubt, but he didn’t just copy Holmes. For one, he changed the setting. Sherlock Holmes went into retirement in 1903 (according to the canon) and moved to Sussex to keep bees. The first Solar Pons story, in which Pons and his chronicler Dr. Parker meet, is set in 1919. The latest stories about Pons are set in 1939, so his work life as a detective, as covered by Parker, spans the time between the two World Wars. In addition, several literary detectives exist within the canon of Solar Pons, including Sherlock Holmes himself, who is long gone by then.
Pons himself is often referred to as ‘the Sherlock Holmes of Praed Street’ (which is where he lives). There are a lot of parallels - Pons has a landlady/housekeeper, he has a contact at Scotland Yard, he even has his own Moriarty (who, fitting for the time, is a German spymaster), and he has a brother who is in an important position in the government.
There are also parts where things are different. The Occult is something which never features in a serious way in a Sherlock Holmes story (they were written before Doyle himself became a spiritualist) - he’s fully on the rational side, at least in the original canon. Derleth has put some supernatural elements in here and there. Most of the stories don’t have any suggestions of ghosts or monsters, but there are suggestions that sometimes the answer is not completely rooted in the rational.
It’s also interesting to see how much the later setting changes things. Pons has a telephone at his disposal and there’s cars around. Technology which makes things go a little faster and means he can have some answers in a few minutes, not in hours or days (as might be the case with telegrams).
There’s much less of Pons really dressing up, either (unless you count the ‘old-fashioned’ Inverness coat and hunting cap that make him look like the Great Detective). He’s not going around in disguise as much as Holmes (who, clearly, missed his calling as an actor).
On the other hand, Derleth lays out the hints a little more clearly than Doyle did, making it a little easier for the reader to come to the same conclusion as the detective. If you pay attention, you will be able to realize how things have been done well before Parker - who reports everything, but sometimes seems at a loss when it comes to connecting the pieces.
I did enjoy reading the stories even more because, as mentioned, it’s a little easier to solve them alongside Pons. It’s more thrilling to read the story when you know you can figure it out and you will be right there with Pons when all is resolved, knowing how they ‘did it’. Some of the stories also have an interesting solution, such as a moveable floor (something not possible in Sherlock Holmes’ time) or the ability to hang oneself with the help of a winch mechanic. The stories give me the satisfaction of having solved them and that’s something not all of Doyle’s stories do - not before Sherlock Holmes is ready to unveil everything.
That is, at first glance, due to Watson not having all information at his disposal beforehand, but Pons has his own ‘Watson’ and Parker relays all information he has to the reader, which is enough to solve the case. I’m not quite sure whether Doyle wanted for the audience to be able to solve the case alongside Sherlock Holmes in the first place, which might explain why Watson doesn’t relay everything. Derleth clearly wanted to give all information to the reader, to make it a fair game for them, and so he made sure that Parker didn’t always make the connection, but always had the necessary information to give to the reader.
Solar Pons is, in addition, a more rounded character. Sherlock Holmes is highly specialized (it’s what prompts Watson to write at one point that Holmes doesn’t care whether the earth orbits the sun or the other way around) and he doesn’t have time for things not relating to his work, unless it’s his violin and his love of music and art. It’s not really a surprise he’s into cocaine when he needs stimulus - his life doesn’t provide much of it outside of work, so if interesting work is scarce, he needs a dose of seven-per-cent stimulation.
Solar Pons has more hobbies and interests outside of the field of crime (and has written monographs on them as well). He might not be quite as good with music (Parker describes him as ‘scratching on the violin’), but he certainly has less need of drugs to keep himself stimulated.
The different society they live in also has an influence on things. Between the wars, society had changed greatly from the later Victorian era of Sherlock Holmes. Women are more self-sufficient and more confident, seeking out help from Pons with less worries than decades earlier with Holmes. The social class of the clients is also much more varied, ranging from the government (even without Pons’ brother in the mix) to lowly clerks and their amulets.
The changes are refreshing, giving Pons more personality and making him his own character. He might mirror Sherlock Holmes in many aspects, but he’s not just a copy, which is good for the stories.
I personally have very much enjoyed my version of the first book so far and am deep into the second (the new editions follow the original Mycroft&Moran ones, not the later ‘edited’ ones out in the 1960s/1970s).
There’s just enough of a difference for Pons to be his own person while at the same time not enough of a difference to make it feel like a completely different franchise. If you like Sherlock Holmes, you will enjoy the Solar Pons stories, too. If you’re not into Sherlock Holmes, Pons will probably not convince you to like him now.
In the end, we owe Arthur Conan Doyle for not wanting to write more stories about Sherlock Holmes - had he done so, August Derleth wouldn’t have had a reason to do so instead and Solar Pons would never have been born. If you like Sherlock Holmes, you might want to take a look at Solar Pons as well - the stories are worth it and there is a good edition out there, too.
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