The Big Idea: Paul Cornell

Posted on May 19, 2016    Posted by John Scalzi      11 Comments

Sure, Arthur Conan Doyle once killed off Sherlock Holmes, but it took Paul Cornell to do terrible things to his ghost. He does it in Who Killed Sherlock Holmes? and today in his Big Idea, he explains why he thought this might be such a great plan.

PAUL CORNELL:

The big idea behind Who Killed Sherlock Holmes? came into being in my head like a line of dominoes falling, as soon as I’d thought of the title. In the London of my Shadow Police novels, ghosts are people, either real or fictional, who are remembered by the collective minds of every Londoner, alive and dead. They’re not quite sentient. They’re only perceptible by those, like my modern Metropolitan Police officer protagonists, who’ve been gifted (or cursed) with ‘The Sight’, the ability to see London’s magic and monsters. They’re tied to the locations where they’re expected to be. So of course in that world there’s a Sherlock Holmes, and of course he’d be found at 221b Baker Street, which is, as in reality, a Holmes Museum.

Except when my heroes encounter him, he’s face down, with a ceremonial dagger through him. Because my guys somehow working alongside how the ghost of Holmes would be, in my world, with him like a hologram, unable to deduce anything, only half there… well, why are they meeting him in the first place? It’s not even interesting, it’s a side issue, a tourist attraction for them, but… if he was dead…

Holmes’ body remains ghostly, intangible, fluttering in appearance between every version of him there ever was. The deer stalker, featuring so often, is a bit more solid on his varying head. So Detective Inspector Quill, Lisa Ross, and undercovers Costain and Sefton have to work out not only why he was killed, but what it means, even, to murder a ghost. Is his ‘death’ linked to the three different productions of Sherlock Holmes which are all being filmed in London at once, leading to ‘Sherlockmania’ in the capital? (And allowing me to indulge in a bit of fond satire of all the modern Holmes brands.) Is the killing linked to whoever is committing the crimes from the Conan Doyle stories, in order, at their original London locations?

All of that filled itself in as I began to work at the central idea, and figure out what kind of a puzzle I needed this time round. I wanted it be a proper whodunit, and an astute reader is, I think, able to play along. One enormous coincidence between the locations I’d already established for the series and the Holmes canon made me leap around in delight at synchronicity at play in the world.

The case also had to allow my characters to at least begin to deal with the traumatic and terrible things that happened to them in the previous book. (Or, actually, mostly, not deal.) This is the third novel in the series which began with London Falling, but I was determined, given the popularity of the subject matter, that it be entirely accessible to new readers. If you join us here, you’ll be brought swiftly up to speed with the lives of our put-upon coppers, trying to deal with a supernatural only they’re aware of, without mentors, magical skills or special items, using only their training and an Ops Board.

The Shadow Police novels are known for their big twists, and this one is as twisty as either of the previous entries, I hope. At the end of the chapter which sets up the crime scene, an ‘orgy of evidence’ with eccentric clues scattered around Holmes’ rooms, Detective Sergeant Costain can only turn to his colleagues and say ‘mate… the game is afoot‘.

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Who Killed Sherlock Holmes? Amazon|Amazon UK|Barnes & Noble|Waterstones

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