A 1001 MIDNIGHTS Overview
by Marvin Lachman
ROBERT L. FISH – The Unimaginable Schlock Houses: 12 Tales from Bagel Road. Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 1966. Avon, softcover, 1976.
Solely essentially the most humorless Sherlockians might object to the best way their hero is handled in these enormously humorous parodies, all twelve of which had been initially revealed in Ellery Queen’s Thriller Journal. As a result of Fish clearly knew the canon, these tales arc additionally glorious pastiches of the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He has captured Doyle’s type in having a Dr. Watson narrate the occasions, and the circumstances usually begin with the identical time-tested units used to start the Sherlock Holmes tales. A distressed potential consumer seems, and Houses, who has by no means seen her or him earlier than, makes use of his finest deductive strategies to guess pertinent info. He’s completely mistaken, however hilariously so.
Beginning with a decidedly cockeyed chronology, “Watson” proceeds to confer with previous successes of Houses’s, and these are merely excuses for among the most outrageous puns ever to seem within the thriller style. For instance, Houses’s efforts on behalf of a Polish group are included as “The Journey of the Danzig Males.” The detective’s involvement with a British lord who, due to dishonesty, needed to resign from his golf equipment is named “The Journey of the Dismembered Peer.”
Clearly, nothing is to be sacred right here, together with the names of the well-known characters. Watson goes beneath the title “Watney,” Mrs. Hudson turns into “Mrs. Essex,” and Professor Moriarty operates as “Professor Marty.” The motion begins at 221B Bagel Road.
“The Journey of the Ascot Tie,” Fish’s first revealed story, might be the very best within the assortment, however it is just minutely superior to “The Journey of the Stockbroker’s Clark,” “The Journey of the Artist’s Mottle,” and “The Journey of the Snared Drummer.”
One other group of tales, virtually pretty much as good, was collected and revealed as The Memoirs of Schlock Houses (1974). All are pleasant to learn as they lovingly spoof the strategies and idiosyncrasies of essentially the most well-known character in all of literature, exposing the incessantly tenuous reasoning by which Sir Arthur’s hero got here up along with his options. Schlock’s strategies are very similar-except he’s at all times mistaken, to our comedian delight.
It’s proof of the everlasting enchantment of Sherlock Holmes {that a} gifted author like Robert L. Fish can take him aside, giving us nice pleasure. and but on the identical time make us anxious to learn the unique tales as soon as once more.
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Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Invoice Pronzini & Marcia Muller and revealed by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Field, 2007. Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Household Belief.
