Sherlock Holmes and the Servants of Hell (Book)
Steve Dillon
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Written by Paul Kane
“The world’s greatest detective crashes into Clive Barker’s infamous realm of horror in the crossover event of 2016. And Solaris is going to hell in process…The world’s greatest detective crashes into Clive Barker’s infamous realm of horror in the crossover event of 2016. ” – From the Solaris website
A long awaited piece by Clive Barker expert (according to Clive Barker himself) Paul Kane, with an introduction from Barbie Wilde, who played the female Cenobite in Hellraiser 2.
The prologue takes us right into the thick of the box-opening action. We’re sitting in that circle, surrounded by filth, obsessing over the box and how it could be opened, when… ahhhh, but that would be a spoiler, wouldn’t it?
This 90,000-worder (approximately) opens with the words of Dr. Watson, who is chronicling (apparently for his own purposes) how he met Holmes and touching on some of their adventures together. This serves as a great reminder of how Holmes was always on the fringes of horror… the Hound of the Baskervilles being the most noteworthy in my mind. I’m not a Holmes expert, although I’ve read most of the stories and seen countless movies and TV adaptations, so I won’t comment on the canonical accuracy or otherwise of the references. Nor does that matter a great deal to me, although I suspect Paul Kane will have spent considerable time ensuring his references are as accurate as possible. As a Holmes fan himself, he is doubtless hoping to please the armchair sleuths who are likely to pick this up and accept it for what it is, a believable Sherlock Holmes tale.
In Watson’s words, “Reality, fantasy. Truth, lies. The line between them is paper thin.” Watson claims that his notes are not intended for our eyes, and that he has made arrangements for them to be burned, which is a commonplace Lovecraftian ploy to get the reader to feel like we’ve chanced on some secret code that may unlock a puzzle… and, of course, it works.
A perfectly plausible storyline follows, as Watson goes on to discuss how, after his feigned death, Holmes went travelling, and how, since Moriarty’s demise, Holmes was lacking a challenge. It’s not a great leap of intuition to put the two things together and wonder how Holmes might have sought some excitement (and danger) to keep him away from his self-destructive habits of choice.
I really enjoyed the tie-ins to the Cotton family and the address on Lodovico street, which Hellraiser fans will recognise… While the first names of the major characters echo closely the characters in the Hellraiser movie, they are clearly some predecessors from a previous era, lending a kind of alternate universe feel to a fairly familiar tale. This is a skill that Kane has mastered through various retellings of faerie tales such as his treatment in modernising Red Riding Hood in “Red” and “Blood Red”. This is something picked up by Watson himself who declared that Juliet Cotton seemed “More like a wicked stepmother from some sort of hideous fairytale.” Reflecting the commonly held observation regarding Julia in Hellraiser.
The parallels with the established Hellraiser mythos continue, and of course are augmented by the addition of Holmes and familiar characters from other well-known sources… But I won’t spoil it here.
Suffice to say, whether you’re a fan of the first two movies, or Clive Barker’s The Hellbound Heart novella, or Paul Kane’s Hellbound Hearts collection of short stories, or the Sherlock Holmes adventures, you’re in for a treat and I doubt if any but the most die-hard purist fan will have any qualms over Kane’s treatment of these subjects that he knows and loves so well…
Steve Dillon, June 2016, series editor of The Refuge Collection | www.Refugecollection.com
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