'Dust and Shadow' by Lyndsay Faye

Arthur Conan Doyle famously tired of Sherlock Holmes and repeatedly tried to end the series of stories featuring the detective he dismissively called "my most notorious character." On each occasion, though, an intense popular clamor -- and the opportunity it afforded to shore up the author's shaky finances -- coaxed Conan Doyle into an additional sequence of stories. Holmes' adventures total four novels and 56 short stories.

As he explained in the single chapter of his 1924 autobiography devoted to the most famous character in detective fiction, "I do not wish to be ungrateful to Holmes, who has been a good friend to me in many ways. If I have sometimes been inclined to weary of him it is because his character admits of no light or shade. He is a calculating machine and anything you add to that simply weakens the effect. . . . I would say a word for Watson also, who in the course of seven volumes never shows one gleam of humor or makes one single joke. To make a real character one must sacrifice everything to consistency and remember Goldsmith's criticism of Johnson that, 'he could make the little fishes talk like whales.' "

Conan Doyle may have Holmes' measure in that appraisal, but he's a mile wide of the mark when it comes to Watson. As no less a novelist and creator of memorable characters than John le Carre writes in his concise (but splendid) introduction to Leslie S. Klinger's two-volume annotated collection of Holmes' stories: "Dr. Watson doesn't write to you, he talks to you, with Edwardian courtesy, across a glowing fire. His voice has no barriers or affectations. It is clear, energetic and decent, the voice of a tweedy, no-nonsense colonial Britisher at ease with himself. . . . He is a first-class chap, loyal to a fault, brave as a lion, and the salt of the earth. All the cliches fit him, but he is not a cliche. . . . He is one of the greatest storytellers the world has ever listened to."

One of the reason's first-time novelist Lyndsay Faye's energetic, charming and nicely atmospheric new Holmes pastiche, "Dust and Shadow: An Account of the Ripper Killings by Dr. John H. Watson," entertains so successfully is because she gets the critical component -- Watson's voice -- right. As Le Carre and others have pointed out, Conan Doyle's style in the Holmes stories -- clear, spare and unadorned by authorial flourish -- isn't hard to emulate, which is why these tales are among the most widely and successfully translated in the world. The dialogue, particularly between Holmes and Watson, actually is a bit more delicate. Faye, who was trained as a stage actress, also gets this just right. She has, in fact, not only an excellent ear for the spoken word, but also an eye for the scene-setting visual detail and a cinematic instinct for evocative gesture. (Given the book's camera-ready final scene, if this book hasn't already been optioned to film, I'll buy every agent in the Grill this Friday a drink.)