Sherlock Holmes: Travels in the Canadian West

Trevor S. Raymond is a teacher and librarian with the Peel Board of Education and editor of Canadian Holmes.

The years between Arthur Conan Doyle’s “killing” of Sherlock
Holmes and the time when public demand forced him to resurrect his
famous creation continue to be filled with “newly found” manuscripts
detailing the activities of the great detective during this hiatus.
Ronald C. Weyman, a retired filmmaker and writer, is among many who have
tried to fill this gap, and this book, the final volume in a trilogy
that began in 1989, consists of five short adventures. Like the previous
volumes, this book is attractively printed and delightfully illustrated
(with drawings of photographs of the period). Fans of Sherlock Holmes,
however, who will measure the writing style against that of Conan Doyle
and will want the characters of Holmes and Watson to remain as they were
created, may be disappointed. The further our heroes are taken from
Baker Street, the more ordinary they seem, and the more implausible
their adventures. Perhaps the Watson who fought in the Afghan wars might
have ridden in the tumult of an Indian buffalo hunt, but would the
sleuth of Baker Street really have played piano in the best little
whorehouse in Calgary? Many writers of Sherlockian pastiches, seemingly
unable to invent such delightful characters as Conan Doyle gave us,
resort to having Holmes and Watson meet folk from the pages of history,
often in somewhat unlikely situations. Here they share the cowcatcher of
a railway locomotive with Sarah Bernhardt as their train puffs through
the Kicking Horse Pass and ride with the legendary Mountie Sam Steele,
but when Holmes leaps from a dugout Nootka canoe into a whale to rescue
the King of Siam, who has become entangled by harpoon ropes on the
creature’s back, one’s credulity is seriously strained. This book is
for Holmes fans who are trying (in vain) to find a story that revives
the magic of the originals. My fear is that others who read this book
will think they have read a Sherlock Holmes story—or much worse, that
having read this they will never want to read one.