The Adventures of Solar Pons by August Derleth

The Adventures of Solar Pons Reviews

• 
  Craig

  This is the first of Derleth's six books of Sherlock Holmes pastiches that feature Solar Pons and his intrepid biographer Dr. Lyndon Hardy. Most of the stories were written in the late 1920s, and some were published in pulp magazines The Dragnet and Detective Trails, but they weren't collected in book form until 1945. Pinnacle reissued the whole series with considerable success in the mid-1970s, a few years after his death. (This edition, annoyingly, has no table of contents.) Derleth didn't see Pons as a Holmes caricature, but as a well-intentioned impersonator, a detective for the next generation. They're very clever stories with ingenious crimes and solutions, as well as good-natured homages to The Great Detective. For Doyle fans, the game is still afoot.
• 
  Gary Sundell

  Like all collections of short stories, some tales are better than others. Well done Holmes tribute by the great August Derleth, founde of Arkham House Publishing.
• 
  David

  I'm not sure how the writer of tepid Lovecraft pastiches can be the same person who also created these excellent Holmes-inspired mysteries, but this is exactly the case. I could not have been more surprised. I enjoyed these stories so much that I actually had a hard time putting down this book to go and do other things such as sleep, work, etc.
  
  Derleth himself said, "Solar Pons is Sherlock Holmes," and the resemblance is obvious. The characters are identical. My only question is why he bothered to change the name. All of the Baker Street usuals are included: there is a Watson substitute (Dr. Lyndon Parker) a Lestrade proxy (Inspector Jamison), and a dependable housekeeper (Mrs. Johnson). We even see a version of Moriarity (Baron Kroll).
  
  The mysteries themselves are inventive and definitely NOT paint-by-number Holmes. I was taken by surprise by the conclusion of almost all of them.
  
  Highly recommended for lovers of mysteries, and especially for all Holmes fans.
• 
  Riju Ganguly

  This collection of stories occupy a rather unique position in the eyes of lovers of Sherlock Holmes. On one hand, Solar Pons and his stories are unabashed successors of the Canon. They are gentle, breezy, mostly snobbish, and rather derivative of Doyle's works in all sense. On the other hand, Derleth's own vision of UK between the wars makes them much more interesting. Plus, he adds more dynamic female characters in tune with the changing times. As a result, the stories read almost like an updated version of the Canon.
  This edition begins with the well-written and candid introductory forewards by David Marcum and Derrick Belanger. Then we have the introduction penned by Vincent Starrett for the first edition. Then comes the unedited and author-intended versions of the following stories:
  1. The Adventure of the Frightened Baronet
  2. The Adventure of the Late Mr. Faversham
  3. The Adventure of the Black Narcissus
  4. The Adventure of the Norcross Riddle
  5. The Adventure of the Retired Novelist
  6. The Adventure of the Three Red Dwarfs
  7. The Adventure of the Sotheby Salesman
  8. The Adventure of the Purloined Periapt
  9. The Adventure of the Limping Man
  10. The Adventure of the Seven Passengers
  11. The Adventure of the Lost Holiday
  12. The Adventure of the Man With the Broken Face
  I enjoyed this collection, and would like to pursue the adventures of Mr. Solar Pons with active interest. I suggest, you do the same.
  Recommended.
• 
  Doug Bolden

  Until I read this volume, I was never sure what to think about Solar Pons, August Derleth's "Schrodinger's Pastiche" of Sherlock Holmes[1]. On the surface, it seemed a more extreme case than even Derleth's pseudo-collaborations with Lovecraft[2]. Nearly every aspect of Solar Pons is Sherlock Holmes with the names merely changed and only slightly (the most jarring example has to be Bancroft Pons as a stand-in for Mycroft Holmes). You hear the story about how a younger Derleth wanted to fill in the gaps left by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's retraction from writing Holmes, and it adds even more weight to the fanboy theory, but it does not necessarily explain the fans that Pons has or the fact that other authors, namely Basil Copper, have gone on to write their own Pontine stories. This left me with a massive curiosity about Solar Pons. Surely there had to be more to it than merely writing sub-par Holmes tales with names changed enough to avoid [some] copyright infringements. This curiosity was heavily stymied, however, by the simple practical fact that it was not easy to acquire Solar Pons without buying older, expensive copies. Stymied and yet enlarged, as it were.
  
  I recently stumbled upon the fact that Belanger Press had been releasing them into new editions (including, praise be, ebooks) and, at nearly the same time, the fact that PS Publishing has brought back the Basil Copper stories (again in ebooks as well as hardcopies). This means, all at once, over the period of a couple years, the entire Derlethian and Copperian canon of Solar Pons is available for relatively cheap after decades of being a series of rare books hard to track down. I could finally read more than just a few snippets of Solar Pons and tear open Schrodinger's box to find out if the cat was alive or dead[3].
  
  My feelings, having read this volume, are a lot more forgiving and less prone to take it as a joke. That is to say, the "joke" is there but intended. It is clear that Derleth wrote these to be very-nearly-Sherlock-Holmes stories and was also well aware of the issues with taking his post-Doylean semi-Holmes all the way to Baker Street. Rather than bury it in five layers of subterfuge (as other writers have done), he chose to go gaudy with it. Solar Pons is perhaps the most ridiculous phonetic almost-pun one can make on the name Sherlock Holmes outside of just a straight anagram (he could have went with Kcolrehs Semloh, for instance). Bancroft Holmes? Praed Street? The Praed Street Irregulars? Indeed. Reading this, I feel that Derleth was being honest in his young fandom, and wore the silliness of the nearly-name like a mark of pride.
  
  I mean, look at the title of the book (a title explained in the introduction to the book itself). Look at the stories that claims Solar Pons is the "Sherlock Holmes of Praed Street". This isn't coding, this is simply admitting what this is: Derleth loving Sherlock Holmes stories and wanting more so badly he wrote them himself.
  
  How are the stories? They are fair. To very nearly the last one they lack the genre-defining skill that the best Sherlock Holmes stories had (though not all of Doyle's stories were quite so genre-defining). Some of Derleth's stories are quite good. "The Adventure of the Man with a Broken Face" has a nice near-horror vibe to most of it (see also "Frightened Baronet" and "Limping Man"), and has some good elements of swashbuckling adventure in the background (largely unseen in the adventure itself). "The Adventure of the Purloined Periapt" has some fun puzzling games to play. Others are less good, but pleasing enough. That would be the majority. You have "The Adventure of the Three Red Dwarfs" with something of a Boston Marriage, only between two men, meeting a tragic end and it still manages to bring in a bit of humanity. Only perhaps the two stories involving the Baron Kroll—Pons' substitute for Moriarty—are actively lacking and mostly in the way that the mystery ends up with pointless espionage and confrontations that do little to further anything, much less their own plots.
  
  What makes this a volume of stories that fits alongside Holmes, rather than a throw-away volume of fan-fic, is the fact that Derleth is simply a different writer than Doyle. Solar Pons is a more relaxed version of Holmes. His methods are friendlier. He's a bit more likely to take a chance on protecting young love (and does so in several of these tales). He feels less like an outsider and more like a person that you would actually like to hang around. Derleth's mysteries tend to fall into two categories: a) those where the clues given are sufficient for the reader to solve more than half the mystery, if not all of it, before it is revealed and b) those where the mystery requires leaps of not-supplied information. The latter is a rarity (the first story written, "The Black Narcissus", fits that mold). For many, you can readily play along better than you can with most Holmes stories. This flavors the whole thing in more of a cozy light, something more like a relaxing beach read (one just happening to contain several murders).
  
  Other elements are more mixed, perhaps. For one, Derleth had never seen London when he wrote these (apparently just using reference books and openly aping descriptions by other writers). This means some of his language choices (like his use of "second floor") being a bit off in the mouths of London natives. And he is prone to repeating certain locations and descriptions in a way that underscores his lack of first-hand knowledge[4]. The stories are moved forward in time to the early 20th century, though given out of chronological order and being inconsistent with some of their technological descriptions, which sometimes makes it feel like a more contemporary (to Derleth's time) Holmes and other times like a strange mismatch. Solar Pons exists in the same world as Holmes and so others harken back to that detective a few times (I actually found this element sort of neat), but for all of that the characterization of Pons and Dr. Parker ironically ultimately rest on the reader knowing Holmes and Dr. Watson and filling in some gaps (despite the aforementioned differences in character). This last bit allows Derleth to cheat a little in developing his characters, despite his "Holmes" being a different Holmes, and this occasionally gives the volume a slightly disjointed feel.
  
  Still, I am glad I was able to read this and glad I managed to have a more open-mind while reading it than younger me would have had. It was enjoyable, albeit overall a slighter entry into the genre than the master it copies. I can at least see, now, why there are fans and why people might like to play with such a sandbox. Like Derleth, they are in on the joke, one that is nevertheless meant to be taken a bit seriously.
  
  ======
  1: in that is, and is not, bootleg fan-fiction at the same time.
  
  2: where Derleth, after Lovecraft's death, took some [occasionally slight] notes and wrote out entire stories in the Lovecraftian vein and publishers, through the years, have attempted to make it sound more proper Loveraft than it truly is.
  
  3: though, it must be said, I had already read a couple of stories from The Chronicles of Solar Pons, which the library I work for has, and did not like them. This is in part due to the fact that when I came across them, I was in something of an anti-Derleth mode (mostly see #2, above). I have since become less pig-headed in my literary ways having read more fiction from the time period and being made more aware of the vagaries of publishing of the time and everything that entails.
  
  4: one wonders if this is partially why Derleth suggested a young Ramsey Campbell stick to writing the locations that he, Campbell, knew...or maybe Derleth was just more aware of how strange locale descriptions can be in the hands of a person that had never been there once the roles were reversed. The same Derleth who wrote a poorly mapped fictional London and thought it was fine could easily have been a bit pissy seeing his own United States treated the same by a Brit.
• 
  Bettie

  Just the one story from this: The adventure of the Callous Colonel - excellent stuff, and will read more from these sheerluck pastiches.
  
  High 3*
  
  ETA - AUGUST Derleth also fits my personal seasonal challenge rather well
  *two thumbs up*
• 
  Robert Hepple

  First published in a this volume in 1945, the Adventures of Solar Pons is a collection of 12 short stories originally published in pulp fiction form from around 1929 onwards. The stories are a connected series, inspired by Sherlock Holmes and with enough similarities to cause some legal issues. The stories themselves are, in my opinion, and based on the evidence of the 12 collected here, is that they are inferior to the Conan Doyle originals, insomuch that the mystery element is often so transparently obvious that it stretches credibility too far to believe that a client or the police would seek the help of a 'super-sleuth'. Some of the stories have a quasi-supernatural plot, and whilst this is not surprising considering Derleths credentials in this genre, the result is like a bad Scooby-Doo cartoon. One story, 'The Adventure of the Late Mr. Faversham', bears an uncanny resemblance to the 1990 Sherlock Holmes pastiche 'The case of the Vanishing Head-Waiter' by June Thomson - ironic perhaps? All in all, not brilliant unless, like me, you are really keen on pulp fiction from the 1920/30s.
• 
  Brooke

  If you enjoy Sherlock Holmes short stories, you will enjoy this Solar Pons collection. You could literally do a find & replace swapping the names in this with the names we all know from Conan Doyle, and it would be a Sherlock Holmes collection.
• 
  JJ

  Solar Pons (did he grab tiles out of a Scrabble bag to make up that name. I did that once and ended up with Gux Wuzaby). Still there are other weird sounding names in the book so he is not alone.
  The stories and characters are borrowed from Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes books. I found them quite interesting on the whole but they are definitely not as good as the real thing.
  Pons and his doctor companion, who despite being the narrator contributes little, investigate various police baffling crimes. He’s a speedy detective and usually clears things up in a day, it is very unusual if he has to spend a night away. He likes to get in his ‘Elementary my dear...’ bit in each story and he wears an Inverness (I had to look that up, it’s the coat with a short top cape that Holmes often wore).
  As you read you go Oh that’s from the Hound of the Baskervilles and that’s from The Second Stain and that’s from.....etc etc. An odd few Americanisms creep in but not too many.
  As I say it was not a bad read but it doesn’t match that which it hopes to emulate.
  
• 
  Robert A.

  Well, unlike August Derleth's Lovecraft pastiches, I was able to read it to the end. Overall, I liked it but there were stories that dragged in the middle or where the mystery seemed a bit trite for a Holmesian story. The stories also seemed to find and adhere to a formula fairly early on but I didn't really mind that all that much. I'm all for pulp Holmesian stories and these for the most part fit the bill. However, they lack any real atmosphere (as does any of his writing that I've happened upon) and the characters were interchangeable, there are no real memorable characters of note here even the Broken Faced Man! So, would I recommend this one to someone seeking a little lighter Holmesian fair, sure, it's not stellar but it is pretty close to the real thing. I did get jolted more than once expecting to read Watson rather than Parker.
• 
  LuAnn

  When teenage Derleth asked Arthur Conan Doyle if he could continue the Holmes stories and was denied, he created Solar Pons, an obvious knock-off of Holmes. Pons is more insufferable than Holmes in this first compilation, chiding his Boswell's (Dr. Parkers) denseness and reaching his conclusions much sooner than Holmes would, often before doing any sleuthing. It was fun to read aloud with my husband and try to guess the solution, especially if you know the Holmes canon, that is only sometimes obvious,. These stories are very true to Doyle’s style with creative plots and character, though Americanisms slip in, not surprising given the young age at which he wrote these. I look forward to seeing if Pons methods get more involved and if the plots become less Holmesian as the author ages.
• 
  Tekken

  Solar Pons pole veel Sherlock Holmes 2.0, aga 1.5 mõõdu annab vabalt välja. Derlethi esimesed lood on hulga asjalikumad kui Conan Doyle’i enda omad surnust ülestõusnud Holmesist. Solar Pons on hoopis värvikam asjamees kui Holmes ning erinevalt Holmesist saab temaga sageli nalja. Doyle ise luges end ju ajalooliste romaanide autoriks, Holmes (eriti too Reichenbachi kose järgne variant) oli üksnes money-making machine.
  
  Derleth oli samuti piisavalt nupukas, et paigutada oma tegelane Sherlockiga sarnasesse kohta ja ajastusse. Mitmed meie sajandi katsetused klassikat moderniseerida (eriti too BBC 2010. a seriaal) jätavad kogu haibist hoolimata paremal juhul abitu mulje.
  
• 
  Sev

  Very good, though some stories were of course better than others. Oddly enough, I was able to figure out "whodunit" in every one pretty much right from the start. Could never do that with the Sherlock Holmes canon. Will definitely read the other books in this series, I think they're all on Kindle Unlimited (Canada).
• 
  David Allen

  Highly entertaining additions to the Holmes canon in the form of Solar Pons and his chronicler, Dr. Lionel Parker. Very little separates these from Holmes stories, and while they are not as memorable as Conan Doyle at his best, I was surprised how much fun they were and how much they caught the atmosphere and tropes of the originals.
• 
  Erik Tolvstad

  This is a collection of very well done Sherlock Holmes pastiches. Pons uses logic to solve the cases and Dr Parker is the Watson standin. They're mostly set in the 1920's, but otherwise follow the Holmes playbook.
• 
  Patrick Walker

  I'd give it 6/5 stars if at all possible!! Gotta love some "underground" Sherlock stories!!
• 
  Karen

  An entertaining Holmesian hommage but could Derleth really not have come up with a better name for his protagonist?
• 
  Chelsea

  dnf @ 11% it really is just sherlock holmes with another name 🤷‍♀️
• 
  Erik Deckers

  A nice substitute
  
  While these aren’t as good as the original Sherlock Holmes canonical stories, it’s a nice pastiche fix to keep ua going.
• 
  Jayaprakash Satyamurthy

  Varied and clever mystery tales. Set in the 20s and 30s unlike the Holmes canon. World war 2 looms, and the tensions of europe between world wars provides the basis for some of the stories.
• 
  Read1000books

  August Derleth was a voracious reader of the original Sherlock Holmes adventures, even writing to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, asking him if he was going to do any more. Unhappy with the response (or lack of one) he decided to create his own. This is the first of several books of short stories featuring his Sherlockian-knock-off detective Solar Pons. Quite good.
• 
  Nickleby

  Not really ACD. Not really Sherlock. But really close without being offensive. Yes really good.