<p>Our December CC Book Club selection is a duet, pairing a classic with a modern work: The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle and The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz. Per Wikipedia:</p>
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<p>The House of Silk, published in 2011, was written with the endorsement of the Conan Doyle estate. Set in 1890 London (at 221B Baker Street, of course), the novel “truly pulls off the wonderful illusion that Arthur Conan Doyle left us one last tale.” (San Diego Union Tribune)</p>
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<p>Discussion begins December 1st. Please join us!</p>
<p>I picked up copies of both books at the library yesterday. I started The House of Silk today. Finishing it and The Hound of the Baskervilles by Dec. 1 should be no problem - always a good thing when reading one of our duets. </p>
<p>(For what it’s worth, The House of Silk is now the first book in a series: U.S. publication of Moriarty by Anthony Horowitz happens on Dec. 9. Good timing, n’est-ce pas? At least, it will be if we like The House of Silk. Anyway, the reviews are good for this next book - already published in the U.K.: <a href=“Moriarty by Anthony Horowitz, review: 'a fantasia'”>Moriarty by Anthony Horowitz, review: 'a fantasia')</p>
<p>Still, need to focus on The Hound of the Baskervilles and The House of Silk first.</p>
<p>I’m enjoying the references in The House of Silk to many of the Sherlock Holmes’ short stories. Some I’ve read and some I haven’t. I’ve always meant to read through all the short stories … just never done so. Anyway, here’s a link that will let you delve into any one (or more) you want. None take over 15 minutes - give or take - to read. I like “A Scandal in Bohemia” - the first one and a good place to start.</p>
<p>It’s December 1st! I hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving.</p>
<p>Welcome to our discussion of The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle and The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz.</p>
<p>Posted below is one set of discussion questions for The Hound of the Baskervilles and two sets for The House of Silk. Links are included to give credit where credit is due.</p>
<p>I read The Hound of the Baskervilles first and then sailed right into The House of Silk. On the plus side, I thought the transition from one to the other was quite smooth – I felt that Horowitz had the language right, and that he did an excellent job of setting the atmosphere and recreating Watson’s relationship with Holmes. </p>
<p>On the negative side, I thought that Horowitz’s novel could have used some editing. For me, it was sometimes slow-going, and in that respect it differed from Conan Doyle’s stories, which move along at a faster clip. Even his “long” works–the four Holmes novels–are each under 200 pages.</p>
<p>I adored Hound of the Baskervilles – liked it even better this time than I first time I read it – but I had problems with House of Silk. Horowitz got the tone right most of the time, but I felt that his book had none of the charm of Arthur Conan Doyle. Horowitz’s story was fairly entertaining from a certain point on, but his first chapters were ponderous…a slog.</p>
<p>House of Silk could definitely have used better editing, and more consistency in the writing. Every ten pages or so, I’d be tripped up by something that didn’t sound like what a Victorian person would say, or was an outright grammatical error or other kind of error. For one thing, Horowitz should never have used the name of the real town Pittsfield, MA, as the location for the train robbery if he had absolutely no idea where the place is located!!</p>
<p>I agree. The House of Silk surprised me though. For some reason, I expected to put more time into the reading of it. I found the page count lower than expected, the print larger, and I sailed through it.</p>
<p>Like NJTM I adore The Hound of the Baskervilles. My IRL book club discussed the book in April, so this time I listened to an audio version read by Derek Jacobi. NJTM used the word ‘charm’ and that captures how I felt about my time with The Hound of the Baskervilles.</p>
<p>On a side note I have a fondness for Anthony Horowitz. One daughter went through an Alex Rider phase, eagerly awaiting the next in his series. We went to hear Horowitz and get a signed copy of one of the books. The crowd exceeded what I (and Barnes and Noble) expected but he held that young audience in the palm of his hand. He mentioned several times the difficulty he had in school and I believe him. He seemed incapable of sitting - high energy seems a polite descriptor.</p>
I’m not an avid reader of Doyle, and am not sure which if any Holmes stories I’d read before or if I’d just seen the movies. I found The Hound of the Baskervilles slow going and a bit irritating. For me reader should at least have the chance of figuring out the mystery, but we never learn about what observations Holmes has made until the end of the story. In any event Horowitz did the same thing, I believe, which I thought was fair, because that’s the way Watson writes these stories, but still equally irritating. I read the story “The Copper Beeches” which is mentioned in passing and happens to be the next story in the collection I own (Annotated Sherlock Holmes Vol 2 - we don’t seem to have Vol 1 with more of the famous stories.) That story is much shorter and sillier, but rather fun. </li>
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<p>For the most part I felt the tone worked pretty well. I loved the frame - the idea that the story was getting locked away for 100 years so we are just getting it now. I thought the tone was pretty seamless - though I noticed one review complaining that at some point Watson called Holmes Sherlock - which does seem highly out of character. I didn’t notice it however, I haven’t gone back and done a closer read either.</p>
<p>December (already?!) greetings. I took the opposite course of Mary. I read The House of Silk first and just finished The Hound of the Baskervilles. I have not read many of the Sherlock Holmes stories, and this was my first book by Anthony Horowitz. I’m not sure why I haven’t read more of A. C. Doyle, although I’ve always considered it my dear husband’s domain since he’s a huge,huge fan. As a result, I’ve watched various film versions of the Holmes stories and was already in the know on the plot points of the Baskerville’s hound. All that said, I thank the group once again for expanding my horizons with this pair of selections.</p>
<p>I thought Horowitz did a decent job of recreating the Holmes and Watson pairing, and pulling out the gloomy, hazy, tweed-jacketed environment I associate with Holmes’s Victorian era in England. Horowitz’s book was just more sprawly with the American and British characters and its multiple mysteries. I certainly appreciated Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s concise writing. </p>
<p>Both books had improbable female characters. Miss Stapleton had a Spanish accent that Watson took to be a sort of a lisp rather than what it was. It’s quite interesting that Arthur Conan Doyle seemed to find that plausible!</p>
<p>Catherine Carstairs in The House of Silk was ridiculous. A person who could pass as both a male member of a tough Irish gang <em>and</em> a charming young lady whom a rich English gentleman would want to marry?? Give me a break! In addition, the whole notion of a divorced young American woman going on a trip “to make a fresh start” in England? Victorians would have keeled over in astonishment at such a notion. Even these days, it would be far-fetched idea unless perhaps the women were very rich and/or had all kinds of connections on the other side of the Pond.</p>
<p>My younger son recognized the name Anthony Horowitz when he saw it on my copy of House of Silk. He commented, “Oh, I know that name! He writes YA a stuff, doesn’t he?” DS said he had read a couple of the Alex Rider books but didn’t really like them all that much. </p>
<p>I read them and I was right. I don’t really like this genre.</p>
<p>I read The Hound of the Baskervilles first. I was surprised that I didn’t really like the character of Watson very much. He was a nice enough guy, but seemed too submissive when it came to working with Holmes. Watson is an intelligent man, but he didn’t really act like one. It just bugged me. I actually like Watson more in The House of Silk. </p>
<p>Charm yes…and wit, too. Horowitz’s novel was clever, but not witty. Actually, I don’t think Conan Doyle is particularly witty (or maybe he’s too subtle for me), but I think I’ve been spoiled by modern depictions of Holmes and Watson. Thanks to duos such as Benedict Cumberbatch/Martin Freeman, Robrt Downey Jr./Jude Law, and Jonny Lee Miller/Lucy Liu, I have come to expect an amusing repartee between the leading characters, which was lacking in The House of Silk. </p>
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<p>I was okay with this. There is so much suspension of disbelief in these stories that one more nonsensical plot device didn’t faze me. I bought it in Twelfth Night and Mulan, so what the heck.</p>
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<p>Why the divorce story anyway? Since Keelan was incognito, it seems like she would have chosen a more demure, respectable backstory, so as not to draw attention to herself.</p>
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<p>I agree – the hero worship and desire to please was sometimes a bit much. In Hound, I confess I rolled my eyes just a little at Watson’s quivering disappointment when he thought Holmes hadn’t read his letters:</p>
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<p>And as upset as Watson is with Holmes, all Holmes has to do is throw him a bone (hound pun ) and he is appeased: “…the warmth of Holmes’s praise drove my anger from my mind.”</p>
<p>I’ll give this to Watson: He must be pretty darn fit. He does a lot of running across the moors. If I recall, back in the day, Nigel Bruce did the character a disservice by playing him as a less-than-agile arm chair potato.</p>
<p>I deduced (ha) the true identity of Catherine Carstairs. At the end of Chapter 3 Holmes asked Watson: “I wonder if Mrs. Catherine Carstairs is able to swim.” I remembered that Keelan escaped death through a drainage ditch to the river. I also checked Keelan’s description: small, quiet, clean-shaven. Holmes remembered the rumor of tattoos on the brothers’ arms and the single room. I took a different route to the solution than Holmes did but, hey, I got there just as quickly.</p>
<p>I also figured that Keelan/Catherine might be a nod of the head (from Horowitz) to Arthur Conan Doyle’s first short story “A Scandal in Bohemia” in which the lovely Irene Adler trails Holmes disguised as a young man. Good story and not at all long:</p>
<p>I did too, and I just about never figure things out ahead of time in mystery novels. This one seemed a bit disappointingly obvious to me. Then, after that clue, the story did not return to Catherine for a long, long time!</p>
<p>When I read Hound of the Baskervilles, it was for the second time, but I really didn’t remember anything about the story. However, when I got to the part about Watson seeing the mysterious figure silhouetted in front of the moon, I thought, “Oh! It’s Holmes!” I probably knew that because I’d read the book before; it didn’t seem obvious.</p>
<p>I remember that the first time I read Hound, I was vaguely disappointed. I think it was because there was a big chunk of the book where Holmes was absent. This time, though, I really got a kick out of the story.</p>
<p>Speaking of Holmes being absent, I thought the jail escape part of House of Silk was clever and entertaining.</p>
<p>I puzzled over why Keelan had his (her) own room when the other members of the gang were crowded together in another room. I recognized that it was a clue, but stupidly didn’t put two and two together.</p>
<p>However, I did peg the nature of the House of Silk from the beginning. I guess that addresses these questions:</p>
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<p>I wasn’t surprised at the big reveal of the mystery of the House, and guessed it early on. Watson tells us in the preface that he could never bring himself to tell the story before, because it contains elements that are “simply too monstrous, too shocking to appear in print” (p. 5). What else could it have been? I agree with question #5 above: to have the House of Silk involve “merely” murder wouldn’t have been enough. I rarely read mystery fiction so I can’t say if child molesters are “overdone” in that genre. The whole concept is pretty disgusting.</p>
) and he is appeased: “…the warmth of Holmes’s praise drove my anger from my mind.”</p>