"A Scandal in Bohemia"

[Steve Glover]

New member to the board here, hello to all and glad to be a part of the community keeping the memory of our favourite fictional detective and his medical friend alive.

Just read Sandrine Bessancort's take on "A Scandal in Bohemia" on Smashwords and other outlets - though not Kindle for some reason, though the review below was taken from a review on Goodreads. "It runs at about 25K words and Sandrine renamed it "REVISITING A SCANDAL IN BOHEMIA. I'm in complete agreement with the reviewer. I'm just hoping Sandrine (likely a pseudonym) decides to put her own unique period slant and style on all of Sir Arthur's Holmes & Watson catalogue as she has with her other re-imagined tales from antiquity.

Would love to hear the thoughts of any of you intrigued enough to want to read it.

January 27, 2021

Quote

 

This is a 2012 adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes short story, A Scandal in Bohemia. The story was made famous in the TV series Sherlock where it was adapted differently, but which also made the female nemesis an assertive woman.

This version precedes that. It's also much more subtle and in the Victorian style. The setting, the writing and the way characters interact are all in keeping with the spirit of the original and give it a sense of authenticity. As appropriate, the parts dealing with Irene Adler are more implied than anything else. This serves well and allows the Adler character to remain powerfully elusive and anticipated, to some extent haunting the story of with her activities teasing the detective. She is rather the source of the nefarious goings on and the puppeteer behind the events and as it begins to dawn on us that she is a woman with a sinister agenda and facts trickle out, the intrigue only deepens.

Do not expect an erotica novel with explicit scenes; the woman-power is more part of the story and what is happening and the mystery of what is unfolding behind closed doors. In those terms it is an excellent take on a vintage tale.

 

Great short story and version

 

.

 

 

[Carol the Dabbler]

Hello, Steve, and welcome to Sherlock Forum!    

Sorry, to keep your post in limbo for so long -- the forum staff doesn't have a schedule, we're all volunteers who pop in whenever we have some free time.

I have some questions, but need to rush off again.  Maybe tomorrow.  Sorry!

 

[Steve Glover]

Hi Carol, 

No problem about the wait and look forward to hearing from you.

[Carol the Dabbler]

Hi again!  I checked the link you left, but didn't get very far because I'm not a Goodreads member, and don't seem much point in joining, since this is the first/only time I've come across anything on there that isn't accessible to everyone.  Found another link, though -- is this the same review?

That story does sound more my speed than the Sherlock episode.  Moffat & Gatiss claim that their adaptation has the equivalent shock value to what Doyle's original story did back then.  I have no idea whether that's true, but in any case I think whatever shock value the original may have had was sort of incidental, whereas it seems to be the main point of their episode.  Plus it means I need to issue a parental warning whenever I recommend Season 2 to people with kids.

Since the new story seems to have been professionally published, it's not fan fiction.  I'm going to move this thread to "Other Versions," and leave a temporary link here.

 

[Steve Glover]

Yes, it's the same as the review from KIndle on Goodreads and the one above I included in my post. 

It also contains adult content so will need a parental warning.

Steve.

[Carol the Dabbler]

OK, so nobody actually needed to follow either link, because the review is already in your post (as you mentioned).  I'm gonna clarify that a bit by enclosing that part of your post in a quote box (please let me know if I've put too much or too little into the box).  It's a good thing that you did quote the review, because my link no longer leads to the review, only to a very brief teaser-type description of the story.

Or I may be misremembering what my link used to lead to.  (We have a new kitten in the house, and I've been kinda distracted!)

 

[Steve Glover]

Good luck with the kitten and I'm sure whatever you add will be spot on.

Enjoy your weekend,

Steve.

[Carol the Dabbler]

Mind you, I have not yet (and quite likely never will) read the "Revisiting" story.  But going by the review of it that you quoted, here's my opinion:

Bessancort's Adler is said to "[haunt] the story ... with her activities teasing the detective."  I think that also describes Doyle's original pretty well.  But the two versions part ways when "it begins to dawn on us that [Bessancort's version] is a woman with a sinister agenda."  This Adler, like the Sherlock character, diverges from Doyle's original by being "nefarious" and "sinister," whereas Doyle's Adler was inventive enough to outwit both Holmes and the King without stooping to anything illegal or even hostile.

Why do recent adaptations (including the American TV series Elementary) feel the need to make Adler increasingly criminal?  Seems like the easy way out!

 

[Steve Glover]

That's the beauty of stories (as with music) that stand the test of time; in that they inspire writers and composers, etc., to reinvent the fundamentals of the pieces to keep them fresh and alive for a modern audience while, hopefully, winning a whole new audience for the originals. Not sure about your "Easy way out" observation, Carol - and especially in regards of the Bessancort. Seems to me she was at great pains to keep to the original story as much as was feasible, given the somewhat warped female-supremacist interpretation of the Adler character, and this only served to underpin and validate her description of Holmes in an emotionally stricken way in which neither we, and especially his friend and memoirist, had seen him before.

I think if you were to read the vastly extended 2026 edition of "Revisiting" it would prove more explicable. And even more so as Ms Bessancort's excellent writing and insight contrives to restore our favourite detective back to the condition in which he is best know to us. Albeit a detective now in possession of an Achilles Heel serving to make his near supernatural gifts and dispassionate manhood seem a little more flawed and human to us.

Long may H&W keep the imagination active enough for new writers to contribute other versions of them in tribute to Doyle's originals.      

[Carol the Dabbler]

29 minutes ago, Steve Glover said:

... stories (as with music) that stand the test of time [....] inspire writers and composers, etc., to reinvent the fundamentals of the pieces to keep them fresh and alive for a modern audience....

Unless the original story is in a foreign language, or predates modern English, I usually prefer to read the original -- although I often enjoy reading (and occasionally writing) fan fiction that fills gaps in the original (which may or may not be consistent with what the original author had in mind, but didn't include, so who knows?).  Likewise some stories (such as the Enola Holmes novels) that present a sidebar to the original while remaining true to it.

Then there are stories (such as The Great Mouse Detective) that mimic a well-known piece to some extent, but with no attempt to BE the original in any sense.  Those can be lots of fun.

I'm not so usually keen, however, on stories that rewrite a classic story by changing a key character in a significant way (often by making them evil), which means they're not consistent with the original -- i.e., they cannot both exist in the same fictional universe.  If I like the original, I don't have much interest in seeing someone "fix" it -- and "Scandal in Bohemia" is one of my favorite original-Holmes stories.

All of that said, however, I have not read the Bessancort version, so cannot comment on it as such.  Hopefully someone else will read it and respond more meaningfully to your review.