It's time for the first Virgin New Adventure - a book that manages to combine my love for all things Doctor Who with another literary hero.
Move over Batman - it's the word's greatest detective...
All-Consuming Fire by Andy Lane
Originally published in June 1994
Featuring: Seventh Doctor, Ace, Benny
"I've been all over the universe with you, Doctor, and Earth in the nineteenth century is the most alien place I've ever seen."
England, 1887. The secret library of St John the Beheaded has been robbed. The thief has taken forbidden books which tell of mythical beasts and gateways to other worlds. Only one team can be trusted to solve the crime: Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson.
As their investigation leads them to the dark underside of Victorian London, Holmes and Watson soon realise that someone else is following the same trail. Someone who has the power to kill with a glance. And they sense a strange, inhuman shape observing them from the shadows. Then they meet the mysterious traveller known only as the Doctor -- the last person alive to read the stolen books.
While Bernice waits in nineteenth-century India, Ace is trapped on a bizarre alien world. And the Doctor finds himself unwillingly united with England's greatest consulting detective.
Okay, so my first time reading a New Adventures novel and thanks to the fact that our podcast overlord has chosen a different selection system, we are not reading them in publication order. This is going to be interesting !
Mainly because, while a lot of Doctor Who stories contain call backs to things that have not been televised or written, here there are mentions of adventures that I just haven't read yet. This is especially true with a character like Bernice Summerfield. In this book she's been part of the TARDIS team for a while, but I've yet to find out how she meets the Doctor. My own personal River Song I guess.
Anyway, "All-Consuming Fire" is a great book to start with, as it combines two of my favourite things - Doctor Who and Sherlock Holmes
Author Andy Lane clearly knows his Holmes history and peppers the book with references to past cases - and a bit of Googling revealed that he has written a whole series of Young Sherlock novels, so clearly he's a fan. I also liked the mentions of characters from the Sax Rohmer Fu-Manchu novels and Professor Challenger from Conan Doyle's Lost World.
And I especially enjoyed the use of long hidden brother Sherringford Holmes. The name really only appeared in Conan Doyle's notes as a possible alternative to Sherlock - and a fictional biography of Holmes in the 1960's - but it's a name that’s been used by loads of authors since of course. Oddly I first came across it in the character of Sherringford Hovis in the novels of master of far fetched fiction Robert Rankin.
In fact the whole conceit that’s used here about Holmes and Watson being real people and the names being pseudonyms to protect their identities has been around for nearly 100 years - fans often refer to it as "The Great Game". It's a fun idea and many have played with it.
As an aside, as a youngster I personally always liked Author Philip Jose Farmers's "Wold Newton" universe, where everyone from Tarzan and Doc Savage to Holmes, Allan Quatermain, The Shadow and Philip Marlowe are all descended from the same handful of families that were affected by a falling meteorite.
The other bit of the plot I found *really* interesting was the use of spontaneous human combustion or "SHC".
Now back in the '70s and '80s there was a huge interest in the paranormal - things like Bigfoot, the Bermuda Triangle, ESP and of course UFOS. I guess all this peaked in the UK in 1981 - with the TV show "Arthur C Clarke's Mysterious World" and the publication of "The Unexplained" - one of those weekly part-work magazines, this time about all things spooky and weird. I'll admit - I lapped this up and convinced my parents to let me buy every issue. I still have all thirteen volumes in binders more than 40 years later.
There were a number of pieces about spontaneous human combustion in the magazine and as a gruesomely fascinated 13 year old I read these avidly, with their pictures of charred remains, stumps of legs and oddly untouched rooms - so much so that when we had to do a 3 minute piece on our favourite subject in front of the English class, where others talked about football teams or pets or TV shows - I chose SHC.
I diligently memorised my three minute speech and held up pictures from the magazine to illustrate my points - to looks of incredulity from my classmates - and my teacher. I'm not sure what they made of it. It definitely wouldn’t be allowed nowadays !
Anyway back in the Sherlockian world of Doctor Who...
Favourite scenes or lines? Well I did like the Doctor clearly getting his Third incarnation kicked out of the Diogenes Club for breaking the no talking rules - and Benny and the Doctor greeting each other by "performing tricks with bits of our anatomy". And who couldn’t like the Baron snarling to Watson "you will pay in coins of agony".
I also notice Andy Lane gets Holmes to mimic the Groucho Marx line "I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member". As a Marx Brothers fan that made me smile a lot.
However, I'm not entirely sure about Sherringford Holme's final words mirroring those of Colonel Kurtz from Heart of Darkness / Apocalypse Now. A bit out of place I felt.
Anyway all great stuff, and I really enjoyed the book - on to the next one !
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"The horror… the horror…"
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