"Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!"

In anticipation of Pierre Bayard's Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong: Reopening the Case of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" (2008), I spent today reading Conan Doyle's most famous long-form Holmes tale. On opening the novel, I quickly realized that I'd not even looked at it since childhood, when I devoured a poorly illustrated (and quite possibly abridged) edition; all these years later, the very word "moor" still strikes me as sinister.

This time, however, I turned to The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes (2006), the beautifully produced and thoroughly wonderful complete edition of Holmes that W. W. Norton published a couple of years ago, about which I've written a bit before.

While I find editor Leslie Klinger's notes, which range from simple explanations of terms and period detail to more abstruse theorizing that draws on the best of Sherlockian scholarship, to be a sheer joy, rocketlass can't quite bear them. When I'm reading Holmes aloud on a car trip, and I start to read her a note like this one--

In "The Railways of Dartmoor in the Days of Sherlock Holmes," B. J. D. Walsh concludes that Watson and company would have taken either the 10:30 or the 10:35 to Exeter, arriving at 2:28 P.M., where they would have had to change for the Coombe Tracey (which Walsh identifies with Bovey Tracey) on the Moretonhampstead branch. Although there was a slower train at 11:45, only by taking the 10:30 or the 10:35 could they have had the chance of obtaining lunch at Exeter.

--rather than admiring the confluence of two areas of intense, nerdy devotion (railroads and Holmes stories), she simply rolls her eyes and asks me to move on.

Sometimes, however, I can't resist. I read The Hound by myself, but I flagged the following note to share, which I'm confident will amuse her. When Watson discovers Holmes's spartan hiding place on the moor, he notes that Holmes

had contrived, with that cat-like love of personal cleanliness which was one of his characteristics, that his chin should be as smooth and his linen as perfect as if he were in Baker Street.

To which Klinger appends the following note, retailing a theory that, though it may be common currency among Sherlockians, surely leaves the more casual fan a bit gobsmacked:

Noting the absence of shaving gear, C. Alan Bradley and William A. S. Sarjeant point to this as one of the strongest pieces of evidence for their thesis that Holmes was a woman. But Wason never mentions a Sherlockian beard, and Ron Miller, in "Will the Real Sherlock Holmes Please Stand Up?," suggests that his jaw was hairless, revealing American Indian ancestry.

Since Klinger has used the term already, I can't help but suggest that, if Holmes is a woman pretending to be a man, his Sherlockian beard would surely be the fascinatrix Irene Adler?

Klinger's notes also do good work in situating each Holmes story in relation to the others, both in a purely Sherlockian sense--where do they fit in the Canon--and in a more general sense, tracking themes, word choices, and images. Klinger even draws, to good effect, from Conan Doyle's non-Holmes work, as in the following passage from Rodney Stone (1896), which Klinger uses to illustrate the dissolute public life of Regency England. In a scene that, were it just a tad more ridiculous, could come from Wodehouse, the title character's uncle explains why he gave up duelling

"A painful incident happened the last time that I was out, and it sickened me of it."

"You killed your man--?"

"No, no, sire, it was worse than that. I had a coat that Weston has never equalled. To say that it fitted me is not to express it. It was me--like the hide on a horse. I've had sixty from him since, but he could never approach it. The sit of the collar brought tears into my eyes, sir, when first I saw it; and as to the waist--

"But the duel, Tegellis!" cried the Prince.

"Well, sir, I wore it at the duel, like the thoughtless fool that I was. It was Major Hunter, of the Guards, with whom I had had a little tacuasserie, because I hinted that he should not come into Brookes's smelling of the stables. I fired first, and missed. He fired, and I shrieked in despair. 'He's hit! A surgeon! A surgeon!' they cried. 'A tailor! A tailor!' said I, for there was a double hole through the tails of my masterpiece. No, it was past all repair. You may laugh, sir, but I'll never see the like of it again."

Having certain poorly suppressed dandyish tendencies myself, I can fully sympathize with the poor man. A wound will heal, but a ruined coat is lost forever.

Roger Ackroyd is dead. At least we can agree on that, right?

When I was in middle school, I went through a period where I read little but Agatha Christie novels. (For those of you keeping score at home, that period followed the one wherein I read little but Doc Savage novels and preceded the one wherein I read little but Star Trek novels.) They offered exactly what I was looking for in a mystery: a setting vaguely exotic, both in its Englishness and its era; minimal violence, occurring offscreen and with virtually no gore; and, most important, a battle of wits--one which, because Christie always played straight with her readers, I was invited to join. I blazed through book after book, preferring Poirot to Marple but ultimately willing to read whatever my local library held.

For nearly twenty years after that, however, I didn't read a single Christie novel. I had moved on: I preferred straight novels, in general, and when I did read mysteries, I was much more interested in the brooding and violence of noir than Christie's decorum. But then a couple of months ago circumstances, like criminals, began to conspire . . .

First, Spinster Aunt supplied a very convincing post about reading Murder on the Orient Express, in the midst of which she pointed out that "You can read Christie's books, drunk, in a day," and that, "They're very good around Christmas time, when [one does] virtually everything in a pleasant alcoholic haze." Marketers take note: those are undeniable selling points!

Then Michael Dirda weighed in. In his Classics for Pleasure (2007), after acknowledging that Christie is not a good writer "if we look to her for the more obvious literary qualities [such as] distinctive prose style, rich characterization, a picture of society and contemporary life," he succinctly explained--thus making me remember--just what is so much fun about her:

Where Christie excels is in her plotting, that most essential of the elements of fiction. (As E. M. Forster emphatically insisted, "Oh yes, the novel tells a story.") Like a poet who writes only sonnets or a composer working out a set of variations, Christie accepts the conventions of the mystery and then seeks to surprise us with her originality. A creative-writing student could usefully study her novels just to learn the art of narrative construction.

In that sense, Christie stands as the anti-Chandler: her characterizations and atmosphere are nil, but her plots are fiendishly clever, her red herrings sprinkled with well-camouflaged abandon, and her mastery of manipulation and misdirection are second to none. No less a mind than Edmund Wilson wrote, after reading Death Comes at the End, that

I confess that I have been had by Mrs. Christie. I did not guess who the murderer was, I was incited to keep on and find out, and when I did finally find out, I was surprised.

--though fairness dictates that I point out that he continued by writing, "I did not care for Agatha Christie, and I hope never to read another of her books."

When I discovered that, despite Christie's reputation as a seamless plotter, Pierre Bayard had, in his book Who Killed Roger Ackroyd? The Mystery Behind the Agatha Christie Mystery (1998), had the gall to argue that Hercule Poirot had gotten the answer to the question posed by his title wrong, it was obvious: the fates (as represented by my Google Reader and my library) were conspiring to tell me that it was time to give Dame Agatha another try.

Fortunately, I'd somehow never read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), despite its having been the book that made Christie's name, so I was in the fortunate position of being able to read it and Bayard's refutation back to back. And it turns out that . . . everyone was right! Spinster Aunt's recommendation of a drink or two to ease the reading was much appreciated, Dirda's assessment of Christie's characters--

[S]he uses the same stock company in book after book--the retired colonel, the village gossip, the local doctor, the independent young woman, the shrewd governess. They, and the victim, are no more real to us than the characters in a game of Clue.

--was dead on, and Christie's plot was ingenious--yet at the same time Bayard homed in on so many surprisingly weak points as to make a reader wonder if she, too, might have been in on the deception. Reading the two books back to back is a treat I'd recommend to any mystery fan.

Bayard's book consists of two roughly even parts: a section of general reflections on the conditions and rules of the mystery genre, and a section specifically deconstructing Christie's explanation of Roger Ackroyd's untimely demise. Much of the fun of the book rests on Bayard's utter seriousness: though he doesn't make the Sherlockian move of pretending that The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is anything more than a novel, within the context of the novel itself he treats every fact presented as a true description of the characters and events of the book--and he insists on devising an alternate solution that fits those facts. "Our first concern, then, is with rigor," he writes early in the book, and he does not waver; I think not even Christie herself could argue for long against his solution. It is, like Christie's, ingenious and satisfying--the more so because it teases out a possibility that, before Bayard's work, the novel itself had foreclosed. The very act of reopening the question serves to animate and enliven The Murder of Roger Ackroyd in a way that surely hasn't obtained since soon after its first publication.

I can't be the only person who, on reading Bayard's book, wished Borges had been alive to enjoy it, can I? Who Killed Roger Ackroyd? is almost like a bizarre refraction of a story like Pierre Menard, an enactment of the idea that every text is perpetually alive and available for rewriting, for injecting with a new meaning. Bayard has, in a sense, modernized this eighty-year-old story, by giving us that most post-modern of things: a choice. We now have two answers, two interpretations, each with its own strengths and weaknesses, which give rise, between them, to a third choice: we can decide for ourselves which of the proposed murderers killed Roger Ackroyd--or we can decide to revel in ambiguity itself, enjoying the pleasures of close reading and the stimulation of uncertainty.

And if that's what we choose, we can wholeheartedly look forward to Bayard's next book, on . . . get ready for it . . . The Hound of the Baskervilles.

From Passenger to Backseat Driver, or, A Winter's Day, from My Living Room

{Photos by rocketlass.}

From eight a.m. yesterday until twelve-thirty this morning, I did very little (a brief run, listening to Thriller, some cooking, a load of laundry) aside from read Tana French's In the Woods (2007). From the first pages, I realized that this was the sort of book that, like a rented Nintendo when I was ten years old, could easily spirit away a whole day barely noticed--but I also knew that was going to require some complicity on my part.

Ordinarily, I approach pretty much all reading, from cereal boxes to genre fiction to Proust, the same way. I'm always thinking as I read, conducting a sort of running conversation in my head with the author, trying to clarify their ideas, suss out their plans, explore their methods. It's so ingrained that I rarely even notice it; reading for me is engaged, critical reading.

Once in a while, however, in the early pages of a novel I'll realize that a critical approach is just going to lead to frustration--yet at the same time, I can feel the tug of the narrative; I can tell that if I surrender like the author is asking, disengage my critical faculties, the ride will be worth it. It's like making a choice to be a true passenger rather than a backseat driver, and it happens rarely--I think reading Scott Smith's The Ruins (2006) was the most recent time. When I read that way, there's always an odd doubleness to the experience, as if at the same time I'm caught up in and enjoying the book, I can imagine a different me on different day in a different mood hating the book, screaming inside at every sentence, arguing back at it, Kingsley Amis-style, "Oh, no that's not at all what they would do!"

I say all this largely to warn you: In the Woods is that sort of book. To be fair, I should make clear that it's a far better book than The Ruins, which, with its overwritten yet underdeveloped characters, gets by on action and fear alone. In the Woods, on the other hand, features a handful of well-imagined characters, a believable Dublin setting, and, some straining at too-literary effects aside, a compelling prose style.

But what makes it impossible to stop reading is the character of the narrator, a police detective working a child murder with eerie similarities to a traumatic incident in his own childhood when his two best friends went missing and he alone was found, bloody and amnesic. His quest for answers to both cases quickly becomes the reader's quest, its pull convincing me, despite my critical mind's murmured objections, to accept certain implausible characters and situations; that acceptance seemed a small price to pay as I followed the narrator's investigation through the murky present and the lost past.

But then--as it neared midnight--French began taking so many wrong turns that even the most complacent passenger wouldn't have been able to avoid raising objections. Pierre Bayard, in his Who Killed Roger Ackroyd? The Mystery Behind the Agatha Christie Mystery (1998), writes of the construction of a thriller:

The detective thriller does not function as a seamless whole but works in two successive movements. The first of these, which lasts for most of the book, is a movement of opening meaning and tends to multiply leads and solutions. Without exploring all combinatory possibilities--far from it--this movement develops explicit proposals as well as more discreet suggestions, conjuring before the reader's eyes for brief moments a multitude of possible worlds in which different murderers commit virtual murders.

The second movement, which intervenes at the end of the book, is a movement of foreclosing meaning. It brutally eliminates different possibilities and privileges a single one, charged--in conformity with the Van Dine principle--with clarifying all proposed mysteries in retrospect while giving the reader the feeling that it was there in front of him all the time, protected by his blindness.

It is precisely when French begins to close off possibilities that In the Woods goes wrong: the mechanics of the plot turn out to hinge on one of the least convincing of the characters, one whose manner and role are so unlikely that they warp the reactions of even the more well-imagined characters, conjuring up the specter of the author's intrusive needs. Suddenly critical disengagement is no longer possible: the single proposed solution is less believable--and thus less interesting--than the many previously conjured possibilities. The mystery writer's greatest enemy, arbitrariness, begins to rear its head, and the reader can't help but begin to question even the well-developed characters. (There's another, larger problem with the plot as well, but (oh, the frustrations of writing about thrillers!) I can't really discuss it without giving too much away; fortunately, I've written about this very problem before, so if you're willing to risk learning too much, you can read about the second book discussed in this post and draw inferences from there.)

A peculiarity of the mystery genre is that a failure in the second movement can easily render all the content of the first movement essentially pointless: if we don't care who done it, why did the author ask us to waste our time caring how and where and when? In the Woods is a better book than that: the fact that the build-up was so good made the fizzled payoff extra-disappointing--but at the same time the build-up was so good that it seems unfair not to credit it as a real achievement on its own. Tana French managed to tie me in knots all day, and the ultimate disappointment led more to feelings of a chance missed than a long winter day wasted. Though the resolution was deeply frustrating, I don't regret surrendering to the story, and I may even try French's next book. But oh, what could have been!