Solar Pons

Off-topic
1

Has anyone come across this?

I am quite a fan of Sherlock Holmes and have read all the original short stories and the four short novels far too many times. I’ve also recently been listening to some fairly “convincing” new stories on BBC Radio 7.

On a whim, today, I searched Wikipedia and followed the various links and came across a character called Solar Pons. Pons was a detective who lived in London, had a sidekick who was a doctor, and there are deliberate parallels with Holmes. Apparently Conan Doyle refused to give permission for the author to write about Holmes, so he just changed the names and set the stories about 20 years later.

The original writer of the Pons stories was August Derleth, who seems to have been something of a copycat as he also added to the Cthulhu mythos started by H P Lovecraft.

A quick search of Amazon found some books for only a few US$, but when I went to order, the postage and packaging was something like four times the price of the book!

Anyone out there read any Solar Pons stories?

Anyone else a Homes fan?

2

Here’s a Solar Pons website.

3

Just finished reading the entire Sherlock Holmes works, so yes quite a fan. Mike could you possibly straighten a point that me and a friend were arguing about? Watson originally lives with Holmes, but marries at the end of “The Sign of the Four” and consequently moves out to live with his wife. For some time ACD comes up with tenuous reasons for watson to join holmes for a few days to embark on cases i.e. his wife is visiting her sister or similar. Soon, Watson moves back in with Holmes and his wife is never ever mentioned again. What the hell happened there? Did she die, or divorce? is it ever mentioned?

4

She died. The original Mary dies “off screen” as a convenient device for Conan Doyle to move Watson back in to Baker Street.

At some unspecified later time, Watson remarries, and in the very late stories, when Holmes has moved into semi-retirement, Watson is still in London with his second wife.