Solitary Cyclist,” but when, on his second attempt, he spots the person, the man inexplicably vanishes from view. Bell, who has learned of Grace’s problem via a letter from Doyle, arrives on the scene and takes command of the case. As the situation escalates to murder, the roster of suspects expands to include not only Cullingworth, Grace’s former physician, whose advances were repulsed by her, but Grace’s uncle and guardian, Charles Blythe, and her would-be fiancée, Guy Greenwell. The plot is so carefully constructed that it would do a great disservice to those who have neither read the novel nor seen the film to say much more about it. (Those who have who are interested in engaging me on the ending are welcome to email me—my address is at the end of the column.)
Pirie’s adaptation of his own work is excellent; it manages to capture the creepy essence of the book in a fast-paced 90 minutes that never lags. The translation of prose into visuals helps accentuate the subtle variations the writer has wrought upon Doyle’s original. For example, where Violet Smith’s scary journey is on a path bordered by woods on one side and an open field on the other, Pirie has substituted more woods for the field, creating, from the outset, a more oppressive atmosphere that parallels the tormented inner life of Heather Grace, whose parents were brutally murdered years earlier.
And in the opening scene, Grace’s cycling is initially unaccompanied by background music, creating a feeling of isolation and loneliness just from the sounds of nature, added to by a momentary glimpse of an abandoned gibbet on the side of her path. Her pursuer appears suddenly close on her heels, before the series’s haunting theme music is introduced. And rather than merely a man “clad in a dark suit,” with “a black beard,” the second cyclist is a dark, cloaked figure, with no visible human features. From the opening, with its successful creation of terror in broad daylight, the viewer is hooked. (For contrast, watch the opening of the Jeremy Brett version of “The Solitary Cyclist,” which may leave you intrigued, but not spooked.)
By the way, while it is sometimes easier to build upon or improve another’s storyline (for example, the film adaptation of Death On The Nile, with Peter Ustinov as Poirot, is an improvement on the book, conflating certain minor characters and streamlining the plot while maintaining the central gimmick of misdirection), that is not always the case; and Pirie deserves credit for his picking and choosing elements from the Canon that serve the story he wants to tell.
The idea of an attractive woman stalked by a disguised man is used as a starting point by Pirie, but the various suitors of Heather Grace are not cartoonish buffoons like Woodley, who practically wears a sign announcing that he is connected to whatever plot is aimed against Violet Smith; and Grace herself is not as straightforward as the simple Violet Smith character, or, indeed, most Doyle heroines or women not named Irene Adler; she has, like Doyle, a trauma in her past and still bears the scars from it. And the simple addition of a scene in which Doyle unsuccessfully stakes out the path, seeing no one but Grace riding past, elevates the tension, and allows the viewer to entertain the possibility, despite the opening scene, that her follower is a figment of her imagination.
But while “The Solitary Cyclist” is the most obvious Canonical inspiration for major plot elements, it was not the crucial one for Pirie. Although that story contained the “arresting images in Doyle’s canon,” he sought to provide a framework; and “The Speckled Band” was the emotional starting point. “The Patient’s Eyes” borrows some superficial aspects from “The Speckled Band,” by modeling Grace’s guardian Blythe, with his curious menagerie, on Dr. Grimesby Roylott, (the novel even includes a poker-bending scene omitted from the screenplay); the parallels run deeper. Both feature a woman in danger, a cruel guardian, and a perplexing mystery. In keeping with Pirie’s aim to do more than create a faithful pastiche, those plot points are only the springboard for a much more complex look into the human capacity for cruelty, violence, and evil.
The writing is bolstered by the acting. Richardson does his best work as Bell in “The Patient’s Eyes,” aided by a script that gives him a wide range of emotions to utilize. While many Holmesians (although not I, as will be argued in a future column) did not find the emotional reaction of Christopher Plummer’s Holmes in Murder By Decree to be in character, few, if any, would take issue with a similar outburst from Bell when he confronts one of the many characters in the story whose actions have harmed others. The other episodes in the series—“The Photographer’s Chair,” “The Kingdom of Bones,” and “The White Knight Stratagem”—were not written by Pirie; although they are not at the level of “The Patient’s Eyes”, they are still superior efforts, well worth watching and its a shame that more episodes were not made.
The film also benefits from Charles Edwards as Doyle; while Laing did a decent job in the first film, Edwards is a better fit for the rôle of a slightly-older Doyle, who was withdrawn emotionally from the world after the horrors he has experienced, and who finds, in Grace, a possible soul-mate. And Katie Blake is perfect as Heather Grace, conveying with subtle facial expressions so much of the inner torment that has plagued her for years, and which is exacerbated by her hooded tormentor.
“The Patient’s Eyes” is that rare Holmes film that demands repeated viewing; once the solution to the mystery is known, you can go back and see how fairly, albeit subtly, the clues have been planted, and without resorting to cheap tricks. The challenge of having clues fairly before the viewer has vexed even otherwise excellent TV-whodunit shows; the first seasons of both Murder One and Veronica Mars had their capable and bright detectives learn who the killer was by stumbling upon a convenient inculpatory videotape. And if memory serves, the TV adaptation of P. D. James’s The Murder Room changed the story to have a visual clue, rather than an auditory one, helping Dalgleish reach a solution. By contrast, Pirie cleverly plays on viewers’ expectations to fool them, and in so doing, along with a natural injection of psychological depth into all the main characters, he has managed to create one of the best Sherlock Holmes films ever.
* * * *
Lenny Picker, who reviews mystery and crime fiction regularly for Publishers Weekly, lives in New York City with his wife, two sons, three daughters, and several thousand books. He can be reached at [email protected].
NOTABLE HOLMESIAN PAPERBACK PASTICHES & OTHER ODDITIES, by Gary Lovisi
Most mystery fans know that the first Sherlock Holmes story, “A Study in Scarlet” was published in the 1887 issue of Beeton’s Christmas Annual, a magazine—but few fans know that the first Sherlock Holmes book was in fact, a paperback. In 1888 the British firm of Ward Lock & Co. reprinted A Study in Scarlet in a very rare paperback edition. It is considered more rare even than the Beeton’s magazine version, of which a copy sold a while back for $50,000! That paperback was the first Sherlock Holmes book. It began a long line of Holmesian publishing in softcover that continues today over 120 years later. A facsimile was published in 1993 in a 500-copy edition and that has also become collectable. Here then, is a sampling of Holmesian highlights, oddities, and rarities.
Canonical; Books By Doyle
One of the earliest series of canonical Holmes books (collecting the original stories written by Doyle) were those published by Tauchnitz Books. Beginning around 1893 with The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, this German firm specialized in reprinting books by American and British authors for expats and tourists in Continental Europe. All books were printed in English but not for sale in America or the British Empire due to copyright restrictions. They had plain text covers and are uncommon. All Tauchnitz Books by Doyle are scarce and very collectible.
“Pirates” or pirated editions also abounded since America was not then a signer of the Berne Copyright Convention—publishers did not pay foreign authors to reprint their work. One interesting American pirate edition was A Study in Scarlet from the Golden Gem Library, #17 from April 25, 1892, which had a plain text cover in gold lettering. A later version of the same book from the Arthur Westbrook Company of Cleveland, Ohio, was published circa 1900–1910 and had an early illustrated cover.
Pocket Books was the first American mass-market paperback outfit to reprint a collection of Holmes stories in The Sherlock Holmes Pocket Book (Pocket #95, 1941), a first edition