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From
The Surrey Shore . .
.
The Newsletter of the Hated Rivals on the Surrey Shore Vol. 3, No. 2, April 2004
****A Scion
Society for All Who Enjoy Sherlock Holmes in All His Manifestations!****
. . . waiting for the sun? Well,
not exactly. (Nor, we hope, for the English rain.) But we will be sitting in
Garfield Park, near its lovely gardens, having a picnic under the Indiana sun.
Close enough (and saves a ton of money on airfare!). We do expect all in
attendance to flower at our next Hated Rivals on the Surrey Shore meeting (so
do bring plenty of pollen) on Saturday, May 15, from noon to 4 p.m., as we
picnic at historic Garfield Park, on the near south side of Indianapolis. Yes,
we do plan to have a traditional picnic, along with a tour of the park’s
gardens and a related program. So please plan to bring your own picnic lunch
(although your officers will provide additional goodies should your pic-a-nic
basket be a bit on the light side—whether the result of mooching bears or a
rushed schedule). We will gather at one of the picnic tables on the hill above
the MacAllister Center (band shell) in Garfield Park around noonish for the
picnic portion of our program. Following lunch and sparkling conversation, as
well as our standard Sherlockian toasts and a quick business meeting, our very
own Amelia Peabody (Suzanne Snyder) will present a short paper on Victorian
Gardens. Wrapping things up will be our self-guided tour of the gardens (which,
as I recall from childhood visits, are quite spectacular). We plan to end the
festivities around 4 p.m. or earlier—although you’re free to leave earlier, if
necessary. We hope that you’ll join us for this outdoors event—and bring a
friend or two as well! (And please note: All rumors that Professor Moriarty has
trained a battalion of army ants to disrupt our fun are just that—mere rumors.)
***
As your humble correspondent has had to spend most of the past month and a half recuperating at home from a bout of open-heart surgery (fortunately performed by a competent surgeon and not by angered cultists or criminal masterminds), I’ve asked one of our other club officers to fill in for me on this month’s “Letter from” column. So without further adieu, let me turn things over to our own Historian/Recorder, Amelia Peabody (Suzanne Snyder), for . . .
Here it is May—the daffodils
have bloomed and the irises are getting ready to bloom. The bees are out and
about, replenishing their stores from winter. I encourage you, if you should
see a bee, to take a moment or two to observe it; they’re really quite
fascinating creatures. As Holmes observed to Watson, during his beekeeping
retirement days in Sussex, “I watched the little working gangs [of bees] as
once I watched the criminal world of London” (“The Second Stain”). As was
typical of his scientific and scholarly nature, Holmes wrote a monograph on the
subject around 1914, Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, with Some
Observations upon the Segregation of the Queen. He would be disturbed to
discover that many of our wild and domestic honeybees have fallen prey to the
parasitic varroa and tracheal mites (varroa jacobsoni and Acarapis
woodi) that have decimated hives over the last twenty years. A sinister
plot of the fiendish Professor Moriarty, perhaps? But good will overcome
evil—methods have been found to keep these mites at bay—and beekeepers throughout
the United States are working hard to replenish our bee stock. So, while they
might not be as plentiful as they once were, the magnificent honeybees are
still around. If you should see one, appreciate it as the survivor that it is!—Amelia
Peabody
***
Our extreme gratitude goes to Suzanne for filling in
not only here but in this months’ Victorian Trivia section. Till next issue, I
remain, as always (although now with even more heart), ever yours . . .
—C.
Barker, Esq.
***
A game group of Hated Rivals
(no, not a gamy group) met at the Warren Library on Sunday, March 14,
from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. to solve the mystery of “The Fenian Murders”! And solve
it they did. The action (ably refereed by game designer extraordinaire Chris
Engle) took the player-characters to a manor house in the rurals of Kent to
investigate the murder of a government agent, investigating a possible Fenian
plot against the Crown. Called in on the case was, of course, the Great
Detective and his ever-faithful companion, the Doctor. The game used Chris’
Engle Matrix Games system, in which the players actively helped create the
storyline, while die rolls determined whether their creative ideas (known in
the game as “arguments”) were true or not. (The stronger the argument, the
easier the die roll for it to prove true.) As the game progressed, and Rival
creativity came into play, the plot grew ever clearer — as did the identity of
the culprit. In the end, the murder proved not to be part of the Fenian plot
(which continued on for possible resolution at another time), but the result of
mistaken jealousy on the part of one of the guests at the manor. (And for once,
it was the Doctor who was allowed to nab the killer, while the Great Detective
took the opportunity to let the Fenian cabal know that he was onto them.) All
in all, it proved to be great fun — and the ample munchies added to the event
as well. (Chris also helped the players by explaining the context behind the
game and the Fenians’ role in Victorian England as Irish radicals — precursors
to the IRA — for those not up on their Victorian trivia.) Following the game, a
short business meeting was held to discuss possible changes to this year’s
schedule (to be announced at a later date). At the appointed time, all Rivals
in attendance bid each other farewell and headed off into the windy weather,
until our May meeting brings us together once again and the game, once more, is
afoot!
***
At our next meeting, I—Amelia
Peabody—will be giving a talk on Victorian gardens. This volume’s Victorian
Trivia will give you a foretaste of my presentation, specifically as it
concerns the Victorian mossery. What is a mossery, you ask? Mosseries
were little garden huts, with interiors (and sometimes exteriors) covered in
moss, such as having moss pressed in between the wall slats. Not only was it
popular for Victorian homes to have mosseries in their gardens, but they were
often a feature (or curiosity) of public parks. There was said to be a Mossery
at the Botanic Gardens in Glasgow, near a miniature recreation of Loch Lomond.
***
I Hear of Sherlock
Everywhere!
Moonstone Books has scheduled for June release a
second collection of original Sherlock Holmes graphic novels, Sherlock
Holmes Mysteries, Volume Two—a 142-page trade paperback containing the two
Holmes sagas Return of the Devil and The Loch Ness Horror, by
Martin Powell and Seppo Makinen. The first involves a supply of poisonous
cocaine hitting London—one to which Holmes himself falls victim. And in the
detective’s fevered nightmares, Professor Moriarty returns to life to do battle
with Holmes in the latter’s dreams. In the second Holmes is hired by the
Vatican to investigate the disappearance of a powerful relic—possibly stolen by
the evil Aleister Crowley—while Watson returns to Baskerville Hall to face yet
another seemingly demonic force haunting the moors (a transplanted Nessie?).
Both tales appeared in series form before, but are long out of print. No word
on price yet, although it’s likely in the $15-18 range. We’ll update you as we
get more information.
Recently released in hardcover from Schribner—a new
Sherlock Holmes-Mary Russell novel by Laurie R. King, The Game ($23.95).
According to reviews, this seventh in the series takes Holmes and his wife,
Mary, to India in 1924 to save the life of “one of one literature’s most fabled
heroes”—none other than one Kimball O’Hara, the adult Kim, from Rudyard
Kipling’s novel of the same name. Holmes, who knows Kim from an encounter 30
years earlier—apparently during the Great Hiatus—sets forth with the intrepid
Mary to rescue the now-missing British agent, taking part once more in The
Great Game. The book should be available at most bookstores and online outlets
(at substantial discounts) such as Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.
The February 2004 issue of the Columbia House Video
Club (which actually came out in early March) features the video edition of League
of Extraordinary Gentlemen for the Club sale price of $16.95 (plus
postage), which means that the video should be available in most video stores
at comparable prices by the time that you get this newsletter. (Video stores
such as Blockbuster are already selling pre-viewed copies for as low as $9.95.)
The Club also offers new in this issue Sherlock: Case of Evil, the atrocious
Holmes movie aired on USA last year as A Case of Evil, for the same sale
price. (Look up our review of this turkey in our past online newsletters before
you consider wasting money on it.) Finally, in the “Family Aisle” of the issue
is Young Sherlock: The Mystery of the Manor House (270 minutes), from
the British miniseries, on sale for $27.95 (regular price $39.95). Sale prices
will, of course, be over by the time that you get this, so you can probably
find League (and Sherlock: Case of Evil, if you really want it)
in the stores for less.
The final issue of Archard’s Agents—the Ruse
spin-off featuring other characters from the well-written and excellently drawn
CrossGen comic about the Holmes-like detective Simon Archard—arrived on the
stands in March. This issue featured Theophilis Dare, the adventurer who’d
appeared in a Ruse story arc several issues ago, as well as in the penny
dreadful sequence in the next-to-last issue. The adventure had Dare and several
companions set off in a top-secret “submersosphere” vessel in search of the
lost, sunken city of Myrmoria (although Dare’s actual goal was to find the
legendary sea serpent know as the “Jellicoe Monster”). Alas, neither Archard
nor his partner, Emma Bishop, appeared in the final spin-off, although Archard
did get a brief mention. (The absence wasn’t entirely unexpected, however, as
the spin-off was designed to feature other Ruse characters, as its title
implies.) At least Ruse fans had this one last related adventure after
the demise of Ruse itself. The three Ruse collections of the
first 15 issues are still available, although with the series itself gone, you
may want to look for them soon, as there’s no telling how long CrossGen will
keep them in print. (Check local specialty comic book stores and the online
book sellers such as Amazon.com, doing an on-site search for Ruse. Note,
too, that Amazon.com offers a new Comics and Graphic Novels store on its Web
site.)
A last-minute update to the Ruse situation:
In an ad for its Negation Wars series, CrossGen lists Ruse, along
with its other series (most now canceled), as what’s gone before. No word as
yet as to whether the characters from Ruse will play any part in that
new series. (Our guess is no, since the comic tied in only peripherally to the
rest of the CrossGen universe; we’re thinking that it’s merely a teaser to pull
in former readers of Ruse. In other words, it’s a . . . well, ruse. If
we hear otherwise, we’ll let you know.)
Spotted at a local game store: Mystery Rummy,
Case 3: Jekyll and Hyde, a special version of the card game Rummy, focusing
on Robert Louis Stephenson’s Victorian horror tale of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
In checking for further information on the Web, I discovered that the first set
in the series is Mystery Rummy, Case No. 1, Jack the Ripper. The cards
apparently feature evidence and suspects, etc., and are played according to
variations on the rules for Rummy (at least as far as I can tell, not being a
Rummy player). Price appears to be in the $12 range. Another, different set
(Case No. 4) focuses on Al Capone and the Chicago Underground, and Case No. 2
features Edgar Allan Poe’s “Murders in
the Rue Morgue”—so can a Sherlock Holmes set be very far behind (especially
with two sets already spotlighting two of Holmes’ pastiche adversaries)? We can
only hope . . .
Speaking of the Ripper, a clarification appears to
be necessary for our blurb last month about the Discovery channel’s Jack the
Ripper episode of Unsolved History. In naming two noted Ripperologists
in the same sentence where we stated that many now believe Aaron Kosminski to
have been the Ripper, we didn’t mean to imply that those two (Donald Rumbelow
and Stewart Evans) were of that opinion. Stewart, in fact, is the author of the
book suggesting American Francis Tumblety as the Ripper, and Rumbelow has
remained open on the Ripper’s identity, merely noting the plausibility (or
nonplausibility) of certain of the suspects (at least according to my aging
memories). Sorry for any confusion . . . but it is, of course, a case fraught
with speculation, uncertainty, and . . . confusion.
The Dickens, you say? Well, you might, if you were
to pick up the recent Death By Dickens, edited by Anne Perry (author of
the Thomas and Charlotte Pitt Victorian mystery novels, among others), from the
Berkley Prime Crime imprint ($23.95). Ten prominent mystery writers pay homage
to Charles Dickens in this anthology, featuring such Dickens’ characters as
Pickwick, Sydney Carton, and, of course, Ebenezer Scrooge—a must for mystery
lovers who are also Dickens aficionados. Available at most bookstores and
online book outlets (again at substantial discounts at the latter).
For the gamers among you, Chris Engle has collected
all his Great Detective Case Book scenarios from his various Engle
Matrix game books into a single volume, renamed the Sherlock Holmes Case
Book. The book contains the umbrella scenarios “Save Gordon!,” “The Case of
the Dead Duke,” and “The Fenian Murders” (see the “Meeting Notes,” earlier in
this newsletter for more on this case), each of which contains information for
three individual scenarios using the same location and characters but different
plots — such as “The Case of the Oriental Dog,” “The Case of the Lopsided
Duel,” “The Case of Bad Blood,” and “A Shot in the Dark.” Each umbrella
scenario contains an area map (different sections of London in two and the Kent
countryside in the third) and a number of characters with different motivations
and secrets. The book also contains an easy-to-follow explanation of the Matrix
Game System rules (which even a total novice can learn in minutes), guidelines
on how to play mystery scenarios in particular, and background information for
the different scenarios. The Sherlock Holmes Case Book is available from
Hamster Press (www.io.com/~hamster) for $14.95. (Or see Chris at a coming
meeting. He also has a few copies with a slight imperfection that he’s offering
for the amazing price of only $5 to readers of this newsletter, but you need to
act quickly, as they won’t last long at that price.)
As noted last issue, our own Bill Barton (Barker)
writes a monthly column, “Horror from the Heartland,” for the online gaming
magazine Space Gamer (www.spacegamer.com). We also noted that the
March issue’s column was to focus on Cyrus Barker, Bill’s fictionalized version
of the Canonical Barker, as described in our past two newsletters’ “Letter from
Barker” sections. After the last newsletter went to press, however, we learned
that Space Gamer had gone to a bi-monthly schedule—and that Bill had
written enough about Barker to devote two columns to our favorite Hated
Rival. The first has already appeared in the April issue of the online magazine
and describes how Bill devised the character, similar to the article appearing
in our December 2003 newsletter. The second column, due up in June, includes
the original Call of Cthulhu/Cthulhu By Gaslight stats
Bill composed for Barker that were never published—at least until now. The
online Space Gamer is, as noted previously, a subscriber-only site, but
trial subscriptions for a limited period are frequently available as well.
And finally, coming to a bookstore near you in early
June, a novel by our own Hated Rival Will Thomas, Some Danger Involved, featuring
a certain Victorian detective named . . . Cyrus Barker! (No, it’s not the same
Cyrus Barker as Bill describes in his SG column and in past newsletters, but,
yes, it is the one he referred to when he mentioned someone else coming up with
the same name independently.) Although copyright restrictions prevent Will’s
protagonist from being the Barker of the Canon, you can be sure that the
character is one that we can all enjoy as a true “hated rival on the Surrey
Shore” of Baker Street’s most famous sleuth. (And, for the benefit of the Doyle
Estate, we’re referring here, of course, to Sexton Blake. Ahem.) The 300+-page
novel is to be published by Touchstone Books and will retail for $22.95 (and
for considerably less at online outlets such as Amazon.com, where you can find
a more detailed description of the book). We’ll provide more information in the
June newsletter, after we have a chance to obtain a copy. But in the meantime,
we urge all true Hated Rivals to support Will in his budding career by picking
up his first novel—especially so that the publisher decides to publish more of
Will’s efforts and we can follow the further adventures of his (and our)
favorite Victorian detective, Barker.
***
Coming Meetings!
Following are the details of our
upcoming meeting, plus the dates and tentative information about all our
meetings for 2004. (Check our Web site or our Indianapolis Star Web page
for updates.) So set these dates aside to join the Hated Rivals at the
following soirées:
Sitting in an English Garden
Saturday, May 15, 2004, noon
to 4 p.m.
Garfield Park
2345 Pagoda Drive [on the
near south side of Indianapolis]
Indianapolis, Indiana
Directions and Details: Take I65 to Raymond St. Head east on Raymond to Shelby St. (Note: if you are getting off I65 from the north, you’ll want to immediately get in the left hand lane on Raymond for the left on Shelby—it’s that close!) Go left on Shelby. You’ll pass the Conservatory Drive entrance to the park. Keep on going until you get to Southern Ave. Turn right on Southern. Go a little ways and you’ll see the main entrance to the park on the right. Turn right, then left on Pagoda Dr. You will see two parking areas; there are picnic tables there and we will be at one of them. This is on a bluff that overlooks the MacAllister Center for the Performing Arts. We’re hoping it doesn’t rain, but if it does, perhaps we can go inside the MA Center—or to a shelter further down Pagoda Dr. near the playground.
And don’t forget to mark
your calendar for this year’s other great meetings . . .
Sunday, July 11, 2004: Barker Birthday Bash—An
Afternoon on the Canal
September (tbd): A Sherlockian Surprise!
Saturday, November 13, 2004:
A.C. Doyle
Mini-Film Fest
(Note: Dates and
programs are tentative and subject to change as circumstances
change—but we’ll try to stick to these as much as possible!)
****
For
more information, contact us at P.O. Box 26290, Indianapolis, IN 46226-0290; or
you can contact us electronically (via e-mail) at
postmaster@surrey-shore.freeservers.com. (And don’t forget to venture online to
check out our Hated Rivals Web site, located at
http://surrey-shore.freeservers.com, or to visit our Indy Star Web page
at http://community.indystar.com/928/ for recent updates.)
See
you again in two months, back on the ol’ Surrey Shore, where the game’s always
afoot! (But you already knew that—right?)