Sherlock and Robert Goddard at Crimefest

It was Crimefest at Bristol last weekend, an excuse for lots and lots of crime writers and readers to get together with each other.

One star of the show was definitely Robert Goddard, who’s a very funny man and a very polished – but genuine – speaker.  I did like the way he described writing a bit of historical fiction.  In certain types of historical mysteries, the hero or heroine can’t set foot outside the door without describing everything they see in meticulous detail.  So, for example, if they cross a market, there’s jugglers juggling, jesters jesting, bears being baited, dwarves dwarfing, to say nothing of all the stall holders shouting odd phrases in Medieval at each other.  Scatter a few more boils, skin diseases and people with more severed limbs than we’re used to, and you have the average Medieval market.

On the other hand, when the hero or heroine of a book set nowadays crosses a market, it’s just a market.  Now, of course you can go to town on a modern market, with its many-coloured canopies and stall holders bellowing about their amazing products and the smell of bacon frying and sausages sizzling, jostlers jostling and the flocks of hopeful pigeons but, unless there’s a reason to – that is the H or H is actually looking for someone or something – why would you? Sometimes, he said, a market is just a market.

Exactly.

The other star turn was by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss of Dr Who/Sherlock fame and I loved the way they described the genesis of Sherlock.  They’re both dyed in the wool Conan Doyle fans and, in many discussions on many train journeys up and down to Cardiff, Dr Who’ing together, (and yes, the character of The Doctor owes a lot to Sherlock Holmes) decided that their favourite screen incarnation of the Great Detective was Basil Rathbone.  Now, the thing about the Basil Rathbone films was that they weren’t set in Victorian London, with foggy streets and rattling hansoms, but made Holmes and Watson contemporary.

Conan Doyle’s Holmes was edgy, cool, energetic and up to date, a scientist and a man of action.  Also – and this has been sadly overlooked in many recent screen adaptations – great fun to be with.  Why not, they reasoned, bring him slap up to date so as to do real justice to the character?  So they did.

Sterling stuff.