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by John Hall JOHN HALL is a writer specialising in crime (in the nicest possible sense). He is Co-President of The Northern Musgraves; Honorary Secretary for Europe of the Tokyo- based society, The Men with the Twisted Konjo; Editor of The Musgraves' Journal, The Musgrave Papers; Editor of Breese Books' house magazine, Sherlock Holmes News; and a writer and reviewer for Sherlock. He contributes a regular column to the Sherlock Holmes Journal, and contributed an irregular crime review column to the old London Magazine. His short stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, the Crime Writers' Association anthologies, and elsewhere. His books include the commentaries Sidelights on Holmes, on the sixty Sherlock Holmes stories, and The Abominable Wife, on those cases left unrecorded by Dr Watson, as well as a biographical study of Dr Watson, Unexplored Possibilities, which has been translated into Japanese. He has published several Sherlock Holmes stories, the latest of which is Sherlock Holmes and the Adler Papers, and a medieval murder mystery, Special Commission. In 2002 he was elected a member of The International Pipe Smokers' Hall of Fame. Mr Hall has been kind enough to contribute two Sexton Blake stories to this website: THE CURSE OF OZYMANDIAS and THE WHITE FAIRY. In the latter case, the story concerns 'the yellow peril'. Mr Hall here explains his choice of subject matter:  I have long felt that Sexton Blake was undeservedly neglected, and about three years ago I had a couple of Blake stories published in Sherlock Magazine. I'd decided that if one were to pay proper homage to the character then one ought to write as much 'in period' as possible; none of this nonsense about Blake (or Holmes, or Raffles) punching the air and screaming "Yes!" like some 1990s football yob. The themes of the stories were deliberately chosen as pretty standard for the time, the 1920s: Egyptology in THE CURSE OF OZYMANDIAS, and a villainous Chinese nobleman in THE WHITE FAIRY. The widespread choice of a Chinese villain in many books and stories of the time is interesting. Britons have long had a fascination with the East, dating from the time of Aurangzeb and the East India Co., and the focus of that interest moved ever eastward until the opening up of Japan in the middle of the nineteenth century, so that is one factor. Another is the readily identifiable 'foreign-ness' of the Chinese (to an Englishman, at any rate! — presumably we all look the same to them). At the time that Conan Doyle's Holmes stories were first appearing, the Strand and similar magazines were running sensational articles with titles like A NIGHT IN AN OPIUM DEN (and Conan Doyle himself used the setting at the start of THE MAN WITH THE TWISTED LIP, of course). Easily identifiable foreigners are very frequently used as scapegoats; when I was in Bulgaria in the Communist 80s all crime, drugs, prostitution etc, was attributed to the Vietnamese (there in large numbers as cheap labour, a sort of human repayment for support in the Vietnam War), for all the world as if no Bulgarian could, or would, ever think of such things. The term 'conspiracy theory' may be a recent invention, but the theory itself isn't; in the 1920s otherwise intelligent people took seriously the notion of a Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world (cf eg Buchan's THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS), and the villainous 'Chinaman' (now a pejorative term) fitted neatly into this paranoia. Indeed, the use of the sinister Oriental in fiction became so much a cliché that it was expressly forbidden by the rules of the Detection Club started up (mainly for her self- aggrandisement [note 1]) by Dorothy Sayers (whom I must remember to call Dorothy L Sayers, lest I be accused of something or the other); a rule broken to splendid effect by Agatha Christie (a far better writer than Sayers ever was) in THE BIG FOUR. It is also interesting to note that when Blake made his first appearance, the average Briton had probably never seen a Chinese in his or her life, unless he or she lived in the East End of London, the natural setting for many of the tales. But yet, thanks to the pulp mags of the day, 'The Yellow Peril' was feared by all. Paradoxically, the Chinese villain is usually [note 2] far more interesting, and indeed far more sympathetic, than his sturdily British nemesis; we all remember Fu Manchu, but who recalls the name of his arch-enemy [note 3]? (Wasn't it a pity that Fu Manchu never succeeded in persuading that enemy's sidekick Dr Petrie to throw in his lot with that of the Marquis himself? A device also used by Christie in THE BIG FOUR, and again wasted, as the solid (or stolid?) sidekick, Hastings, was impervious to common sense there as well. The tales would have been far more interesting!) If THE WHITE FAIRY is a tribute to Blake it is only about 49% so, the other 51% is a tribute to Fu Manchu, to Wu Ling, and to all the other sinister figures who lurked (and, one sincerely hopes, still do lurk) in the shadowy rat-holes of Limehouse. And — entirely fittingly, in my view — my own Oriental villain lived to fight another day. Notes: Note 1: Just so did John Creasey start up the Crime Writers' Association. Note 2: Though not in THE BIG FOUR, where we never get to meet him! Christie's book is a very obvious tribute to Conan Doyle's THE SIGN OF FOUR (a phrase Christie uses, in quotes, at one point in her narrative to underline her source), but also appears to have been something of a swipe at Sayers and her ridiculous mania for writing rules about everything. Note 3: Nayland Smith, of course; but you had to think, didn't you? |