The restless afterlife of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

As of this writing he's been dead for some 80 years, 4 months and an odd number of days; yet in many ways Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (ACD) seems more alive than ever. There are a huge number of Sherlock Holmes "homages" out there, a volume of prose which exceeds the original canon by at least a factor of 10. Some of this stuff is good (Nicholas Meyer's contributions as well as those of Laurie R. King come to mind) and some not so good. Since I've veered towards the mathematical this morning then I should really try to pin a number to this ratio. As always, with just about everything, Sturgeon's Law is a rather good rule of thumb. Sadly, that gives us a figure of 90% not so good.

I don't feel that ACD would have been too perturbed by this. It's well known that he felt Holmes cast a shadow over all of his other work. What might have upset him more profoundly is his own all-too-frequent resurrection as a character in fictional works. I'm sure that most authors who venture to use Doyle in their fiction do so with great respect and affection. Julian Barnes fleshes out the story of Doyle's involvement as a "detective" in the real life case of George Edalji in his gripping novel "Arthur & George" quite masterfully. It's when other authors have tried to fictionalise ACD as some kind of action hero that I begin to get a little uncomfortable.

On television ACD was included as a character in an episode of the (usually enjoyable) Canadian series "Murdoch Mysteries". For some reason I found it irritating that the actor playing the role tried to speak with an upper crust English accent. My annoyance may be due to the fact that actual footage of ACD talking is available on "You Tube". The most basic research would reveal his strong (even after many years of living in England) Scots accent. Even more vexing was the short-lived series "Murder Rooms" which portrayed ACD as the "Watson" to Dr. Joseph Bell (Doyle's teacher and the acknowledged basis for Holmes). This was an irregular series of dramas which had many good points but played fast and loose with many of the facts of ACD's life and times.

The American writer Mark Frost has written two novels featuring Doyle as an all-action sleuth but which I found hard to enjoy simply because they stretch reality too far. William Hjortsberg's "Nevermore", involving both ACD and Harry Houdini with a serial killer who uses the works of Poe as inspiration for his murders, is also a step too far towards the weird for my tastes.

I suppose that the use of actual, living people in fiction will always be difficult for some members of a readership / audience to accept. When Anne and I went to our first "Crimefest" earlier this year (we've already booked for the next) I attended a panel where the authors, in winding up, had to very briefly talk about one thing that really annoyed them in crime fiction. The formidable M.C. Beaton, with a Scots accent as unmistakeable as ACD's, said that the use of real people in mystery stories was a pet hate. She also asked if Gyles Brandreth, the guest of honour for that weekend, happened to be in the room; presumably she wanted to make her feelings on his "Oscar Wilde Mysteries" known. Sadly, there was no sign of Mr Brandreth and so the chance of an entertaining clash of views was missed.

What is making me particularly uncomfortable at the moment is a book which claims that ACD is communicating from beyond the grave. It's called "A Study in Survival" and I admit to being fascinated by a review published in the "Fortean Times" a few months ago. I've considered buying it but, working as I do in a job where I'm often faced with other people's grief and bereavement, I'm not sure I could read it with an open mind.