SHERLOCK HOLMES WEEKEND INTERVIEW - AVRIL FIELD TAYLOR

Avril Field Taylor is the author of the successful Georgia Pattison series. The Linconshire born author came to Sherlock Holmes very young and she had just published her own Sherlock Holmes novel, Murder at Oakwood Grange.

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The Archive caught up with Avril for a question/answer session for this Sherlock Holmes Weekend.




TA-Murder at Oakwood Grange - a Sherlock Holmes story. What responsibility does the writer have when writing about long established and loved characters? Was there more pressure than writing your own characters? What did you feel was the most important element in recreating Holmes?


AFT -The responsibility is tremendous. You have to be aware with every word you write that in some people’s eyes you are crossing an almost sacred line. I think you also have to love and respect the stories and I have since I was a child. I made a promise that I would remain faithful to the world and the characters created by Conan Doyle. My ultimate aim, of course, is for readers to say that the writing is seamless and they might indeed be reading a long-lost manuscript from ACD. If I have re-created a world that my readers will know very well from the canon and they think it authentic, then I have succeeded. More pressure than writing my own character? Only in so far as I felt I was writing about a much-loved friend and I wanted to make sure I did him justice. I think the most important element in the recreation is to be aware that you are only one of a large band keeping the sacred flame alight and that it must be tended with love, respect and the kind of creativity that gave rise to Holmes in the first place.

TA-Sherlock Holmes has a massive following - Why this longevity?

AFT-Sherlock Holmes does indeed have a massive following. I didn’t realise how big until I began to think about marketing the book. I wrote it as the fulfilment of a promise to my tutor in the 1970s. Everyone else was writing dissertations about Austen, Tolkien et al and here was I writing about Sherlock Holmes. I think he catches the imagination in a way that no other detective does because, like Poirot who followed him and who is, in my opinion, largely based on Holmes, Sherlock tells the reader the conclusion and only afterwards do we get the full deductive path that led to that conclusion. Sherlock was the first and the best. He highlights the difference between seeing and observing and never better than in the exchange between Sherlock and Mycroft at the beginning of “The Greek Interpreter”. It is always fascinating to watch a master at work, in whatever sphere, footballer, carpenter, glass-blower. We would need years of training to do those jobs, but all of us have a deductive capability and puzzles have enthralled humans since time began. I think he awakes the ‘I could do that’ we all carry around with us.

TA-Tell us a bit about your own character, Georgia Pattison.

AFT-Georgia Pattison makes her debut in “Dearly Ransomed Soul”. She has the job I would love if only I had her talent and confidence. A professional early-music singer, she falls into sleuthing to try and prove to the police that her friend is innocent. Georgia share some of my traits – a love of singing, a gregarious nature, a dry wit, a need to know what is going on and a short fuse with fools. On the flip side, she has a tendency to fall in love too easily, which can cause problems and she says things I would not dream of articulating (although I would think them!). She is based on a composite of professional singers I have met over the last 35 years. They have just as much talent as the big names, sometimes much more talent, but they haven’t had the breaks. Georgia is flawed and can often appear vulnerable, but she has a strong sense of what is right. One of my readers said she is a classy lady and I won’t disagree with that. I am hoping that the sequel “When I Am Laid In Earth” will find a publisher soon and I have her third outing, “Say Goodbye Now” plotted, planned and ready to start.

TA-Will you ever do another Holmes story?

AFT-Oh yes, please. I adored writing “Murder at Oakwood Grange”. I felt so at home and familiar with the canon that the words just fell off my fingers. I have a number of Watson’s unwritten cases to think about. The Georgia Pattison books allow me to mix music and murder. I have just finished another novel, an alternative history Tudor crime novel called “A Duty of Evil”, featuring Luke Ballard, an apothecary and elemancer (magician who performs magic using the elements), which allows me to mix history and murder. But Holmes is just a sheer joy to write and within half a paragraph I am right back in Baker Street and the game’s afoot again. What I might think about writing are some short stories, perhaps ones that could form the basis of radio plays.


TA: So we may see another Holmes story from your pen. What situations would you like to place the great detective in?

AFT: Living on the coast as I do, I would love to write about the cutter Alicia, which disappeared into the patch of mist and Isadora Persano and the remarkable worm really fires up my imagination but my favourite has to be the depth of the butter into the parsley on a hot day. We often hear about Holmes investigating among seafarers, using the name Captain Basil, so I'd quite like to put him aboard ship for an investigation and the cutter Alicia is one that would fit this scenario. That has to be the ideal closed community for a crime setting. I quite fancy him coming back up to Yorkshire again, too as he did for the Priory School investigation. The most exciting part of writing a Holmes story is that we have the benefit of knowing what scientific discoveries etc were being made at the time and can incorporate household names into the plots, rather like Reckitt & Sons in "Murder at Oakwood Grange". Knowing how these discoveries have developed, a luxury ACD didn't have, we can fuse the past with the present and bring an extra dimension to the stories.


TA-Out of all the film and TV versions of Holmes which have you particularly liked?

AFT -I still love watching the Basil Rathbone black and white movies. Some are so bad, they are brilliant, especially the ones made as propaganda for WW2. Of course, as a child, it was Peter Cushing, who was the archetype Holmes. I shall never forget his “Hound of the Baskervilles” with Christopher Lee as Henry Baskerville and Cushing had the aesthetic look of Holmes, too. But for my money, you will have to go a long way to beat Jeremy Brett. What a fabulous portrayal of the master. When you watch the early episodes, he is sleek, groomed and handsome, but as the stories progress, Brett loses that groomed look and begins to look hunted. “The Devil’s Foot” was a particularly good example of how the actor made the audience see just how much Holmes’s sense of justice drove him to the point of exhaustion. I also liked the way that the Brett series made Watson less of a buffoon than other portrayals.

TA-What do you think Conan Doyle would think of Holmes' incredible influence on writers?

AFT- I think he would be proud on the one hand and impatient on the other. He really wanted Holmes to stay in the Reichenbach Falls, but, like many an author since, he had to write for the market. His fearsome intellect felt so constrained by Holmes. He fulfilled his chivalric side with Brigadier Gerard and his explorative side with Professor Challenger. But really, I think he would like to have been remembered more for his righting of injustices, such as the Edalji case which led directly to the formation of the Court of Criminal Appeal in 1907 and the case of Oscar Slater. I think his amusement at Holmes’s appeal and the huge number of writers who love the canon so much they want to extend it, would be tinged with impatience and perhaps a little derision.

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