Book Review: The Further Adventures of Solar Pons by Basil Copper
Wisconsin teenager August Derleth was a huge Sherlock Holmes fan. When he learned that there would apparently be no further Holmes stories forthcoming from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, he wrote a letter to the great man asking if he could write the stories from now on. Sir Arthur made it clear the answer was “no”, but that didn’t stop August from creating his own extremely similar sleuth.
Legally distinct character Solar Pons is a consulting detective that lives at 7B Praed Street with his good friend and biographer Dr. Lyndon Parker and their housekeeper Mrs. Johnson. His smarter brother Bancroft has a poorly-defined position in the government, and Solar often helps out Scotland Yard, especially in the person of well-meaning but not quite as bright Inspector Jamison (no relation.)
The stories are set in the same continuity as Sherlock Holmes, who is referred to as “the Master” but never appears. Holmes retired to keep bees in Sussex around the beginning of World War One, and Pons operates exclusively between 1919 and 1939 (and makes more use of available technology than the rather conservative Holmes did.)
After August Derleth’s death in 1971, his estate allowed Basil Copper to continue the Solar Pons series, and it’s one of these volumes that is to hand today. My copy is of the 1987 reprint, which has, I am told, slightly different contents than the 1979 first printing. There are four stories in this short volume.
“The Adventure of the Shaft of Death” finds Pons and Parker in the city of Bath, where they’ve gone for a vacation. But before they can take the waters, there’s a mystery to solve. Of course. It seems there’s been an odd series of occurrences culminating in a known criminal dying on a nearby country estate. He died of a peculiar wound, and his last words were “the shaft of death.” A family tomb may be involved, but there’s no sign of anything that could be the weapon.
“The Adventure of the Frightened Governess” has our heroes engaged by a young woman who’s been hired under bizarre circumstances to be governess to children whose behavior is uncanny, and seem to be stalked by desperate men, who even shot near the governess! I figured most of the secret out very early in the story, and have to wonder how it took the young woman so long to realize that this was a red flag situation.
“The Adventure of the Defeated Doctor” involves a sculptor being murdered with his own mallet in a studio locked from the inside. This one only works if you are already aware that a thinly-disguised Fu Manchu exists in the story’s universe.
“Murder at the Zoo” rounds out the volume with a series of vandalism and release of animals at the London Zoo. The papers are calling the perpetrator “the Phantom of the Zoo”, and ascribing near-supernatural abilities to said phantom, but Solar Pons isn’t so sure. He’s engaged by a young zookeeper who’s been framed for some of the crimes, but there is a deeper mystery, one that will end in death!
These stories are very much in the Sherlockian mode. The observant or genre-savvy reader will be able to work out most of what’s going on, but we don’t get specific clues that Pons is picking up, and he often does research off-page. Parker is more like the movie “stupid Watson” than the original stories’ fairly bright Watson, and Pons teases him about it a lot. Pons is a fair bit more affable than Holmes, and the two men enjoy their banter.
I liked the zoo story the best, and the sculptor story least. I’m told the Derleth-penned stories are of better quality, but these are decent enough if you spot this book at a garage sale.
Content note: Period racism; prejudice against the Roma (here called “gypsies”), and Parker keeps referring to East Asian people as “yellow.” Suicide in one story.
Recommended to Holmes fans wanting to branch out a bit, but not too far.
