Much reading is a weariness of the flesh

[flemmings]

The best thing in the weird!Holmes book was the Kim Newman story, and even that I'm having trouble finishing.

Surely someone must have done Sherlock Holmes meets Father Brown?

Comments

[incandescens]

I think that weird!Holmes book is one of a series of anthologies in that vein. Some of the stories in the anthologies have been good: some have been less good.

(If that's the Kim Newman story I'm thinking of, I was snickering throughout the part where Moran obtains the Jewels of the Madonna on stage.)

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

That's the one. And all the injokes that doubtless went past me, though I did get Bianca Castafiore.

[incandescens]

The Creeper and the Borgia Pearl references are from the Pearl of Death Holmes movie, with Basil Rathbone as Holmes. :)

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

I wondered. Got the Maltese Falcon, obviously, and 'Who ever heard of an Irishman called Leopold?'

[incandescens]

I didn't get the Leopold one, I'm afraid, or any of the Irish subplot. I did vaguely remember reading about an opera that is the source of the "Jewels of the Madonna" idea, but I couldn't tell you which one without looking it up in my Kobbe.

(I discovered Kobbe's Complete Opera Book when I was at school. There was a copy in the reference library. I have my own copy, now. :))

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

I believe the line is a reference to Leopold Bloom. The Irish subplot may come from something-- possibly that obscure Canadian Holmes pastiche I never finished, in which he goes up against anachronistic Fenian Raiders in Ottawa, though I'm sure that didn't have Little People in it; or may just be general Irish-bashing on the lines of Flanders and Swann's A Song of Patriotic Prejudice which Newman quotes at some point-- 'And blames it on Cromwell and William the Third.'

[incandescens]

I know he's used the Mountmain family (as named in the Irish subplot) in some of his other mash-up writing: he may just have wanted a plausible way to bring them in and add another plot thread.

[unearthly-calm.livejournal.com]

That sounds like it would be a fascinating but really awkward encounter. Father Brown is so very black and white, so concerned with issues of evil versus good, while Sherlock Holmes has always seemed slightly amoral to me. More concerned with getting to the bottom of a case for the pure pleasure of getting it right or setting the record straight than because he's particularly concerned with the moral health of the persons concerned.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Holmes would be bemused at how Brown reaches the right conclusion through the (entirely!) wrong method; Brown would have dark forebodings at the future career of a man who makes logic his god and shuns human attachments. In Conan Doyle's universe, Brown would trip up; in Chesterton's, Holmes would be revealed as the killer. Authors do stack the odds against their anti-favourites, but Chesterton more than C-D. I think: but then I'm out of sympathy with GKC's values.

[unearthly-calm.livejournal.com]

hmm, I haven't read enough Chesterton to have gotten fed up with him.
I have read a critique that explained why I might if I read more Father Brown, so I see where you're coming from...