The House of Silk

How do I set about creating a murder mystery? This is another question that often comes up at literary festivals. For me, all murder stories boil down to a very simple formula: A+B=C. A is one person. B is another person. C is the reason why A wants to murder B. The genius of Agatha Christie was that she managed to find so many variations on this basic formula. The narrator did it. The detective did it. The little boy did it. They all did it. And yet, the strange thing is that when you come to think them up, there are very, very few reasons why anybody actually wants to murder anybody. In fact I can only really think of three: money, fear and passion… which may be sexual passion, revenge or whatever.

I see a murder story as a series of concentric circles, almost like a dart board. At the very centre is that equation. It is where I start because it is both the beginning and the end; the springboard and the solution to the crime. But then I have to add the next levels. The other suspects. More stories which, though often irrelevant, nonetheless link up with the bull’s eye. In Foyle’s War, I would add whole stories which had nothing whatsoever to do with the crime but which in many ways interested me much more: anti-Semitism in Britain, the birth of plastic surgery, funk holes, spies, etc These would all be layered in. Every book has to have a shape. A murder story is circular.

If there was a model for Foyle or, for that matter, Midsomer Murders, it was probably closer to Agatha Christie or Dorothy L. Sayers than Doyle. The crime is committed. The detective is introduced and pursues a scattering of clues, meeting people who all add a new perspective to the original crime. A second murder takes place and seems to send the story in a completely new direction. At last the suspects gather in one place. The detective has his moment in the spotlight — and if he’s Poirot he accuses everyone in the room before he finally settles on the guilty party who is, of course, the last person you expected. The guilty party claims innocence. Cue the flashback. Poirot is proved right. Everyone goes home.

All of which is actually completely irrelevant to Sherlock Holmes because Doyle’s approach was completely different. Take, for example, the twelve stories which make up the collection with the title The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. No fewer than nine of these contain no murder. Even more remarkably, three of the stories — A Case of Identity, The Noble Bachelor and The Twisted Lip — don’t even contain a crime. Throughout the canon, there is a remarkable shortage of red herrings and suspects. One of the two favourite stories that I mentioned, The Dying Detective, is virtually a two-hander. In one story, the killer is a horse. In another, it’s a jellyfish. Even more oddly, if you look at the four novels, three of them — A Study in Scarlet, The Valley of Fear and to a lesser extent The Hound of the Baskervilles even manage to lose sight of the detective, transporting us to Utah, to Vermissa and to Dartmoor.

If you were to ask what has made Sherlock Holmes the most successful and best loved detective of all time, I would argue that it is not in fact the crimes or the mysteries. It seems to me that the appeal of the books has much more to do with character, the friendship of Holmes and Watson, the extraordinary and very rich world they inhabit and the genuine and often under-rated excellence of Conan Doyle’s writing, a touch melodramatic at times but still very much in the tradition of gothic romance. When I was asked to write The House of Silk, I realised that this would be the key. I had to become invisible. I had to find that extraordinary, authentic voice.

And the first two challenges were immediately apparent. The first one was the length. My publishers, Orion Books, had requested a novel of between 90,000 and 100,000 words (the final length was around 94,000) — big enough to seem like value for money on an airport stand. But actually, this goes quite against the spirit of Doyle’s originals which barely run to half that length. The very nature of a Sherlock Holmes story is that the narrative has a slightly silky feel. The chapters are short and to the point. Characters are not described at any great length and even Victorian London is economically sketched in. Nor are there any major action sequences as such. A boat chase down the River Thames, yes. A midnight encounter with a hell hound on the moors. But these are singular occurrences. The greater part of the novels take place in closed rooms… hardly ideal for a modern audience and certainly of no interest to any circling Hollywood producers (well, it’s just a thought).

The other challenge was the title. Modern novels, particularly the sort of bestseller than Orion had in mind, have to shout loud on a crowded shelf. Doyle, although he had an uncanny eye for what the market wanted, was less troubled by such commercial pressures. The Sign of Four is a perfect title and many of the short stories have the same gentle elegance: The Problem of Thor Bridge or The Golden Pince-nez. Although titles for the Alex Rider books were always a bit of a struggle, I decided on The House of Silk at a very early stage. It just felt right.

I should also add that the plot of the book came very quickly. In fact, by the end of my original meeting, when I hadn’t even accepted the commission, most of it was in place. This is very rare for me and helped persuade me that I should go ahead. Writing the book was also an intense pleasure and I hope I won’t sound arrogant when I say that I think it is my best work. I am not superstitious by nature but Doyle, of course, was a confirmed spiritualist and before I began writing The House of Silk, I went out and bought an old Holmes edition which he had personally signed. It was with me the whole time and that tiny, neat signature became something of a talisman for me. I even felt occasionally (or was tempted to feel) that Doyle was in some way watching over me, guiding my hand. This may sound completely ridiculous but it’s just how it was.

By a strange coincidence, I was invited to give a talk to the Sherlock Holmes society in the House of Commons while I was writing the book and it was then — December 2010 — that I announced it for the first time. I can’t say they were completely overwhelmed. These people take Holmes very seriously. They can recognise a short story from a quotation of three or four words. Once a year they visit the Reichenbach Falls and dress up as their favourite characters. They are not eccentrics or fanatics but they are fairly extreme and they can be found all over the world.

This essay is, in part, adapted from the talk I gave that night. And it seemed important to me to reassure them that I was not going to play fast and loose with their beloved creation. Part of this was commercial good sense. If you annoy the core enthusiasts, you’re going to make enemies you don’t need. I have had contact with several estates — Tintin, Agatha Christie, Ian Fleming — and know this to be true. But I was more swayed by a sense of personal responsibility. I liked Sherlock Holmes much too much to want to muck him up.

And so I set out the ten rules which I would have beside me as I wrote The House of Silk — and here they are again. If you’ve read the book, you can judge for yourself how well they were kept and, indeed, if they were worth keeping.

1. No over-the-top action. I’ve already touched on this — but after writing nine Alex Rider novels, this was the most difficult, the most exasperating piece of self-restraint. It’s difficult to think of a modern thriller without gun-fights and car chases. We all know that Holmes is an expert singlestick player, boxer and swordsman and occasionally carries a firearm. But the original stories have a cerebral, even sedentary feel to them. My image of Holmes is in his study, in front of the fire — not escaping from circular saws or diving six storeys into the River Thames. All that I can leave to Robert Downey Jnr. The House of Silk has disguises. There are expeditions to Bluegate Fields, to Vauxhall and to the slums of Boston… but I hope I have managed to avoid the genre-crossing extremes which, though enjoyable, might best be described as Indiana Holmes. I have to admit, though, that I was quite pleased to be able to sneak in the brief coach chase at the end.

2. No women. Of course it was tempting to create a romantic lead, to give Holmes a love interest. But re- reading the short stories before I began work, I came almost immediately upon that famous sentence — ‘To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman’ — and knew at once that it would have been madness to try and create another Irene Adler. I did briefly think of bringing Irene back (I believe she appears in the second Holmes movie) but I felt somehow it would have been taking a liberty and anyway Watson had already set the seal on that subject: ‘All emotions and that one (love) particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind.’

3. This is very much related to rule number two. There would be no gay references either overt or implied in the relationship between Holmes and Watson. This was hinted at in Billy Wilder’s film, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes which has a scene with Watson tangled up with dancers from the Bolshoi ballet. But it is of course silly and wrong — although I did have an advantage, being a modern writer, in that I was able to examine some aspects of the sexual mores of Victorian England in a way that Doyle could not.