Tuesday, October 18, 2016
Sunday, October 16, 2016
THE RED-HANDED LEAGUE & THE FACES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
The faces of Sherlock Holmes: So many, so varied. Some so bewildering.
I’m specifically thinking about Mr. Holmes’ countless incarnations on film.
When you look over the list of actors who’ve taken on the
task of playing Sherlock—and if
you’ve somehow evaded forming your own opinions of The Great Detective—then you
might believe the character to be wildly elastic.
There’s a vast range between Basil Rathbone and Benedict
Cumberbatch; bigger still between Roger Moore (James Bond, The Saint) and Tom
Baker (Rasputin…Doctor Who).
Even the guy who played Max Headroom got several turns as
Holmes early during the previous decade.
The old black-and-white Rathbone films simply don’t speak to
me. Not a smidge.
Rathbone’s Holmes is rigid, distant, and terribly off-putting to
me.
The Basil-era Watson comes across as a daft old uncle slipping
into senility. You can’t fathom the two men actually being able to spend a
simple evening together in their Baker Street digs, let alone having a
constructive partnership as crime fighters.
Surely, that
Watson would drive that Holmes to
murder.
Throughout much of the 1960s and 1970s, it seems to be there
was more very bad miscasting: venerable but dull old British actors (Peter
Cushing, John Neville) and some bewildering choices including George C. Scott
and “I Dream of Jeanie’s” Larry Hagman (it’s true, look it up!).
Things started to improve, at least from my perspective, in
the late 1970s, with Nicol Williamson’s haunted take on a cocaine-addicted Great
Detective in Nicholas Meyer’s “The Seven-Percent Solution.”
Soon after came Christopher Plummer’s rather dashing Holmes
in the under-rated “Murder by Decree.”
In both those iterations, Watson finally got an I.Q.
up-grade courtesy of Robert Duval and James Mason.
In 1984, my definitive Holmes at last arrived in the person
of Jeremy Brett.
Particularly in the early going of his sublime array of
Granada adaptations, Brett for me embodies the Holmes that captivated me on the
page.
Once Mr. Brett passed, it took over a decade of this new
century to give me another Holmes in whom I could invest in and take to my
heart in the person of Benedict Cumberbatch.
We all have our favorite or preferred takes on Holmes and
Watson.
I know some actually prefer Robert Downey, Jr. and Johnny
Lee Miller to Cumberbatch. I don’t get it, but to each his own, right?
When it came time to put my spin on Sherlock Holmes for my
new novel, The Red-Handed League, I was aiming for a synthesis of the younger Jeremy
Brett and the current Cumberbatch versions of Holmes.
Given the chance, how would you portray Holmes and Watson? Who would you be seeing in your mind’s
eye as you tried to restore them to life on the page?
Wednesday, September 28, 2016
PUBLISH OR PERISH? (THE RED-HANDED LEAGUE DEBUTS)
“I am lost without my
Boswell.”
—Sherlock Holmes
The Red-Handed League, my new thriller about Sherlock Holmes,
debuts this week.
Hewing to a Doylean
naming strategy, this little essay might be called, The Matter of the Murdered Biographer. It could also be titled, The Case of Fearful Symmetry.
Here’s what I
mean:
My first work
published by Betimes Books was the literary thriller Permanent Fatal Error. It centers on a presumed-dead cult novelist ala
J.D. Salinger or Thomas Pynchon whose would-be biographers mysteriously die.
The Red-Handed League is a present-day prequel to Conan
Doyle’s first-published Sherlock Holmes tale, A Study in Scarlet.
My new book spins
on inappropriate relationships between students and instructors at an upscale
private school. It also re-imagines and melds aspects of several noted Holmes
tales, including “The Red-Headed League” and “The Master Blackmailer.”
What goes around
comes around, they say.
Or as Holmes
might observe, “Everything comes in circles. The old wheel turns and the same
spoke comes up. It’s all been done before, and will be again.”
There’s a creepy
nexus between my first and second books for Betimes, you see.
While we were
working on cover designs and last touches for The Red-Handed League, my publisher ran across an article about a
man obsessed with writing the definitive biography of a famous author, only to
die violently under the most mysterious of circumstances.
The excellent
article by David Grann detailing this real-life mystery was published in The New Yorker in December 2004.
“That’s pretty
far back in the rearview mirror, Ms. Colt,” you might point out.
And I’d respond,
“Yes. Yes, it is.”
And yet?
There is fearful symmetry in this. Deliciously
lingering mystery, too.
The Betimes Books
publisher and her author were struck by the very strange overlap between the mysterious
death of a deceased novelist’s would-be biographer (the set up for an elevator
pitch for Permanent Fatal Error) and
the fact our second novel together centers on Sherlock Holmes.
You see, the real-life
biographer who met his mysterious death in his home surrounded by Holmesian books
and collectibles was a revered Sherlock scholar named Richard Lancelyn Green.
His intended
biographical subject was (of course) Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Apparent cause
of death: (Clears throat) Self-garroting
with a bit of string and a spoon.
Pray, go off now
and read Mr. Grann’s superb piece on this mysterious affair. I’ll wait
here, staring out the window, surely brooding, but sans pipe or violin.
***
Welcome back.
Chilling, no?
What was I doing as Christmas crept up in
2004? How did I miss this when it was
fresh?
At any rate, like
all good 21st Century armchair detectives, I went straight to
Googling this matter to see if any official investigator or real-life Holmes had
advanced the ball.
In the
intervening twelve or more years, surely someone shed definitive light on what
happened to this unfortunate biographer, yes?
But beyond the
mystery of the mysterious American voice on the answering machine turning out
to be a factory-loaded feature, there’s no more new to report, alas.
Matters stand
now as they did in December 2004.
You can believe this
was a case of murder, or you can dismiss it as an elaborate suicide staged by a
man given to extreme dramatics (very Holmes-like, that last).
Permanent Fatal Error, my thriller about murdered biographers,
opens with a quote declaring, “Any biography uneasily shelters an autobiography
within.”
Maybe too, a
biography can shelter mortal risk for the would-be Boswell… Perhaps even the
prospect of perishing before publishing.
Tuesday, September 6, 2016
NOVEL NUMBER TWO COMING: IT'S ELEMENTARY
Hi there...it's been a while.
My second novel is forthcoming from Betimes Books in just a few days. (It can be pre-ordered now, here.)
More on all this, soon, but for now, here's the cover, and the publisher's pitch:
Holmes and Watson.
The centuries-old names continue to thrill crime and mystery lovers around the world. Now the mysterious and bestselling author Hadley Colt breathes sexy new life into the timeless legend of The Great Detective.
We are witness to a young Sherlock Holmes, brilliant, arrogant and at the start of what promises to be a stellar career as the world's first and only consulting detective.
Enter Jona Watson, a fetching young forensics student recruited to go undercover in a tony private school rocked by scandalous affairs between teachers and students. A primary suspect Jona is directed to investigate: the mysterious and slightly odd, newly hired chemistry teacher named Mr. William Sherlock Holmes, a charismatic enigma.
But Ms. Watson also harbours her own wrenching secrets.
Erotic, fast-paced, yet brilliantly true to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's classic characters, this is a tour-de-force exploration and subtle reinvention of the beloved sleuth.
THE RED-HANDED LEAGUE is a gripping new Sherlock Holmes tale at last revealing the dark and intensely private mystery that secretly shaped and which drives fiction's most famous detective.
My second novel is forthcoming from Betimes Books in just a few days. (It can be pre-ordered now, here.)
More on all this, soon, but for now, here's the cover, and the publisher's pitch:
Holmes and Watson.The centuries-old names continue to thrill crime and mystery lovers around the world. Now the mysterious and bestselling author Hadley Colt breathes sexy new life into the timeless legend of The Great Detective.
We are witness to a young Sherlock Holmes, brilliant, arrogant and at the start of what promises to be a stellar career as the world's first and only consulting detective.
Enter Jona Watson, a fetching young forensics student recruited to go undercover in a tony private school rocked by scandalous affairs between teachers and students. A primary suspect Jona is directed to investigate: the mysterious and slightly odd, newly hired chemistry teacher named Mr. William Sherlock Holmes, a charismatic enigma.
But Ms. Watson also harbours her own wrenching secrets.
Erotic, fast-paced, yet brilliantly true to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's classic characters, this is a tour-de-force exploration and subtle reinvention of the beloved sleuth.
THE RED-HANDED LEAGUE is a gripping new Sherlock Holmes tale at last revealing the dark and intensely private mystery that secretly shaped and which drives fiction's most famous detective.
Sunday, September 14, 2014
THE ANATOMY OF A BOOK TRAILER
In the beginning, there are the words.
Every novelist secretly dreams of a film option, but those
are rarely in the cards.
Book trailers are too often a dime-a-dozen.
Rarely, but sometimes, the stars align and you get something
like a cinematic treatment—however short it might be in form—of your authentic vision.
I LOVE my book
trailer secured for me by my publisher, Betimes Books.
Joose TV and the brilliant Eddie McCaffrey fully delivered a
brilliant book trailer for PERMANENT FATAL ERROR.
In the early going, I was asked to provide a kind of script for the thing. What I delivered ran long—more of a cinematic short film than a proper teaser/trailer.
Eddie sculpted that down, picked up an element or two from
elsewhere in the book. The result is the perfect set-up of my novel and distillation
of its dark themes. We see the mysterious Everett Hyde, author long believed dead, pounding out a wine-stoked warning email to a prying academic.
The music kicks it into overdrive; the noir setting and lighting?
Sublime…
Eddie’s available if you wish to explore the option of your own book trailer with him. His official site is here.
For my part, I just sit back and continue to savor his
vision of my novel.
Check it out here:
PERMANENT FATAL ERROR ordering information:
Friday, July 4, 2014
WHO IS HADLEY COLT? THE MYSTERY ENDURES...
Throughout July, we continue to offer the chance to win a $100 Amazon Gift Card to the reader who can penetrate the enigma wrapped in mystery that is Hadley Colt.
In other words, pierce the veil of my penname and correctly identify who the real, already-known author of PERMANENT FATAL ERROR is and win a prize (and literary bragging rights).
Clues have been sprinkled around the Twitter-verse for several weeks now, but the contest to reveal my true identity continues.
Here are your clues:
Guess the famous author Clue 1 What is the common symbol for the Roman God "Mars"?#whoishadleycolt?
Guess the famous author who wrote this Clue 2 Hadley Colt is an Edgar finalist...#whoishadleycolt?
Guess the famous author Clue 3 What is my 1st published work? (Hint: The devil's in the details...)#whoishadleycolt?
Guess the famous author Clue 4 Colt is a name in a novel published under my real byline.#whoishadleycolt?
Guess the famous author who wrote this Clue 5 Do the math: 31313#whoishadleycolt? #lastcontestclue #PFE
In other words, pierce the veil of my penname and correctly identify who the real, already-known author of PERMANENT FATAL ERROR is and win a prize (and literary bragging rights).
Clues have been sprinkled around the Twitter-verse for several weeks now, but the contest to reveal my true identity continues.
Here are your clues:
Guess the famous author Clue 1 What is the common symbol for the Roman God "Mars"?
Guess the famous author who wrote this Clue 2 Hadley Colt is an Edgar finalist...
Guess the famous author Clue 3 What is my 1st published work? (Hint: The devil's in the details...)
Guess the famous author Clue 4 Colt is a name in a novel published under my real byline.
Guess the famous author who wrote this Clue 5 Do the math: 31313
Email your best guesses and contact information to betimesbooks@gmail.com
If there is more than one correct guess, a drawing will be held to determine the winner at the end of July.
The prize is two-fold: A $100 Amazon gift certificate, and a signed copy of PERMANENT FATAL ERROR in its rarest form: autographed by Ms. Colt, and, well, by me…
Happy guessing. Clues will be fair, but authors often have a much harder time hiding behind an assumed prose style, so if you want to go at this the old-fashioned way, you can order PFE here:
Friday, June 13, 2014
CONTEST: WHO IS AUTHOR HADLEY COLT, REALLY?
There actually is no “Hadley
Colt,” of course. That name is a pseudonym for the real me, who has published a
number of books under a very different name.
My rational for adopting a penname
is explained here.
Having revealed that fact fairly
early in the game, it can now be stated it was never intended Hadley’s true
identity would be some secret for the ages.
So…
We are officially announcing a
contest to rip the mask off Ms. Colt.
Starting Monday and continuing
over the course of the week, a daily clue will be posted to Hadley Colt’s
official Twitter account @HadleyColt, to @betimesbooks and to Facebook.
Email your best guesses and
contact information to betimesbooks@gmail.com
If there is more than one correct
guess, a drawing will be held to determine the winner at the end of July.
The prize is two-fold: A $100
Amazon gift certificate, and a signed copy of PERMANENT FATAL ERROR in its
rarest form: autographed by Ms. Colt, and, well, by me…
Happy guessing. Clues will be
fair, but authors often have a much harder time hiding behind an assumed prose
style, so if you want to go at this the old-fashioned way, you can order PFE
here:
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