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]

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.