The House Of Silk

unlikely that the Doyle estate knew this – or cared – but all my life I have read and enjoyed nineteenth century literature: Dickens, George Gissing, Anthony Trollope, George Meredith and so on. This made writing the book and finding my voice a lot easier. I also received a great deal of help from other sources – you’ll find them in the acknowledgements page. That said, I’m sure there are plenty of mistakes too … and will argue (when the time comes) that this is entirely in the spirit of Doyle who was himself occasionally slapdash. Watson’s wound, for example, moves from his arm to his leg. And most famously, in
The Speckled Band
, snakes cannot climb ropes!

    7. Use the right language. It’s quite difficult to pastiche nineteenth century English in a way that won’t put off twenty-first century readers, particularly younger ones. I have to say that I plucked quite a few words out of the original stories to act as guideposts, to give the text a sense of authenticity. My favourites are: ‘snibbed’, ‘foeman’, ‘sickish’ (used by Lestrade) and ‘passementerie’. That said, the book is actually being written in around 1916 and I would imagine that by this time Watson’s own language and writing style would have become more modern.

    8. Not too many murders. Again, this is a point that I’ve already made but it was a very important discipline to set out at the start. And actually, when I count up the bodies, it does rather looks as if I’ve failed.

    9. Include all the best-known characters – but try and do so in a way that will surprise. Mrs Hudson is there, of course, as well as Lestrade, Mycroft and Wiggins. In each case, I added very little to what was known about them simply because it seemed to be taking liberties. I have, however, given Lestrade a Christian name … Doyle only every provided an initial. And of course, I had to have Moriarty in the book … that was obvious from the start. Even so, I shied away from making him the main villain. It’s odd that a character who is only mentioned in about three of the Sherlock Holmes stories and who only appears in one should have had such a huge impact on crime fiction. Perhaps it has something to do with his name? I loved including him in Chapter 14 and although I have no plans to write a second Sherlock Holmes novel, I have a suspicion that the two of us will meet again …

    10. Rule number ten was the most important rule of all and as I am writing this in August, before the publication of
The House of Silk
, I don’t yet know if Orion will have twisted my arm and made me break it (the rule, not my arm). It was this. When publicising the book, never, ever be seen wearing a deerstalker hat or smoking a pipe. I actually asked my agent to put this into the contract.

    By the time you read this, I will know if
The House of Silk
has been a success or not. All I can say is that I have never written a book with more pleasure nor been more pleased with the result. This essay appears, I believe, in the ebook. Doyle, who was always a man ahead of his time, would have had no trouble with it but personally I find it hard to believe. No paper, no cover, no back cover blurb? But then I always was old-fashioned. The nineteenth century is where I most like to be.

    Anthony Horowitz

    August, 2011, Crete

Ten Fiendishly Difficult Questions about Sherlock Holmes

    1. Who wrote ‘Dynamics of an Asteroid’?

    2. What was Victor Hatherley’s profession and which part of his body did he lose?

    3. What do the killers in
The Speckled Band, The Lion’s Mane
and
Silver Blaze
all have in common?

    4. What was Mary Watson’s maiden name?

    5. What links
The Greek Interpreter, The Final Problem, The Empty House
and
The Bruce-Partington Plans?

    6. Why is
The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone
unique?

    7. Napoleons plus students plus gables plus orange pips equals what?

    8. What relevance does the answer to Question Seven have to 221B Baker Street?

    9. Who was ‘the second most dangerous man in London’?

    10. Name the odd one out: Inspector Lestrade, Wiggins, Dr Watson, Mrs Hudson.

ANSWERS

    1. Professor Moriarty.

    2. He was an engineer. He lost his thumb. (
The Engineer’s Thumb
)

    3. They were all animals.

    4. Mary Morstan.

    5. Stories in which Mycroft Holmes appears or gets a mention.

    6. It’s the only Holmes story told in the third person.

    7. 17. (
The Six Napoleons, The Three Students, The Three Gables, The Five Orange Pips
).

    8. There