AUGUST DERLETH and SOLAR PONS

by Leigh Lundin

Why isn’t the great detective Solar Pons better known? Pons strikes me as the friend you loved in school but were afraid to like too much lest your own popularity suffer. After all, what could Derleth, a North American Midwesterner who’d never been to England know about crime in those fog-laced streets? Didn’t Margery Allingham and Ngaio Marsh have 1930’s London well-covered?

Bob Byrne was a columnist for Sherlock magazine and has contributed to Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine and The Strand Magazine. His "The Adventure of the Tired Captain" was included in the Sherlockian short story collection, Curious Incidents I. Bob runs the Solar Pons web site while maintaining two free, online newsletters: the elucidating Baker Street Essays and the elegant The Solar Pons Gazette. Ask Bob for the ‘missing’ Gazette, volume 2 issue 2.

Who Needs a Hard Boiled Detective?

by Bob Byrne

It’s quite possible that you aren’t familiar with Solar Pons, the ‘Sherlock Holmes of Praed Street.’ If that is so, a quick viewing of the  Solar Pons FAQ page might help. And if you’re thinking Solar Pons is nothing more than a tired copy of the Baker Street sleuth, the first essay in the first issue of  The Solar Pons Gazette might change your mind.  

Welcome back. So, August Derleth was a born and raised Wisconsin boy, enamored with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s tales of the great Sherlock Holmes. He wasn’t much different than an awful lot of American youths in the nineteen twenties. Except, the enterprising Derleth wrote to the author and asked if there would be any more stories, and if not, could he write some himself. Doyle, not the friendliest person in regards to his meal ticket, did have the courtesy to send back a reply, denying Derleth permission to continue the adventures. 

Not discouraged at all, the nineteen year-old University of Wisconsin student made a note on his calendar, ‘In re: Sherlock Holmes’, as a reminder to write a story in imitation of Doyle’s creation. The date is lost in the mists of time, but August Derleth did in fact sit down and produce The Adventure of the Black Narcissus in one afternoon, starring Solar Pons and Dr. Lyndon Parker.  It appeared in the February, 1929 edition of Dragnet and Derleth would produce over seventy more tales before passing away in 1973. British author Basil Copper added over two dozen more Pons stories with the blessing of Derleth’s Estate.

Standing Amongst Giants

Derleth’s Pons stories received praise and support from noted Holmes fans like Edgar Wallace, Vincent Starrett, Anthony Boucher and the cousins jointly known as Ellery Queen. And it’s safe to say that quite a few of today’s Sherlock Holmes readers are familiar with and enjoy Solar Pons. However, Pons is not a major character in the history of detective literature, nor are the books best sellers. But one unique aspect of the series, worthy of mention, is that Derleth was going against type.

As I stated in my essay,  Hard Boiled Holmes, “The era of British detective fiction between the two World Wars is known as The Golden Age. This was the time of the country cozy and the locked room mystery.” Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Morrison were replaced by Lord Peter Wimsey and Miss Marple. In America, Caroll John Daly, Raoul Whitfield, Dashiell Hammett and others were countering with the hard boiled school, in style far more than just an ocean away from the British mystery story.

But Derleth chose to create a new detective that wasn’t a part of either school. Because of his love for the Sherlock Holmes stories, he spent the next fortyish years periodically writing stories that, while set in a London where cars had replaced hansom cabs, immediately called to mind 221B Baker Street and all that went with it.

Hard Boiling Point

The start of the hard boiled school can be definitely traced to April and May of 1923 when Black Mask contained Carrol John Daly stories featuring, first, Three Gun Terry Mack and then the longer-lasting Race Williams. By the time Solar Pons made his first appearance, a fellow named Dashiell Hammett had published almost three dozen Continental Op stories in Black Mask. Heck, Sam Spade and Solar Pons both came into print in 1929. Hard to picture them solving a case together!

In 1934, Rex Stout introduced Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, a pair that blended the hard boiled private eye with the armchair genius best personified by Mycroft Holmes. Stout was a well known Sherlockian and the Holmes stories exerted a great influence on the Wolfe books, which remain popular today. However, Stout was astute enough to know that pulp magazines set the style of American detective fiction and Wolfe and Goodwin very much read like contemporary mysteries, not throwbacks to gas lit London.

The Solar System

But Derleth continued to write new Pons tales while the British Golden Age came to an end and the pulp magazines fell by the wayside. Pons was a hobby that he indulged in out of affection for his boyhood idol, Sherlock Holmes. He wasn’t compelled to create a tough private eye or a gentleman thief to meet the demands of mystery readers. Brett Halliday and Michael Shayne; Raymond Chandler and Philip Marlowe; John D. MacDonald and Travis McGee; Ross MacDonald and Lew Archer: just a few of the popular detectives that American readers gobbled up while August Derleth kept writing about Sherlock Holmes’ successor.

Solar Pons was a return to the earlier days of detective fiction at a time when his peers left that era behind. Fortunately, August Derleth was a fine writer and the Holmes fan who has not yet discovered Solar Pons has a treasure chest ready to be opened.

— Bob Byrne

Praed Street Irregulars

Bob drew my attention to the Praed Street Irregulars headed by the Honourable George Vanderburgh. A physician and retired army major, he founded a small press specializing in Edwardian and Victorian fiction. George is working on a nascent Facebook page, one of many projects including an intriguing silver and golden age book site called The Battered Box and its companion blog.

The web site contains a sort of ‘Easter egg‘. Click on the ‘How to Buy’ tab and scroll to the bottom. You’ll find a photograph of Baker Street as seen in Marylebone at the turn of the century. Praed Street (which rhymes with ‘preyed’) is not far away in the Paddington district.

George asked me to pass on the following contact information. (There’s no truth to the rumo(u)r Ontario has poutine marshes– that’s Quebec.)

George A. Vanderburgh M.Bt. PSI
The Viennese Musician
The Lord Warden of the Pontine Marshes
P.O. Box 50, R.R. #4
Eugenia, Ontario
Canada N0C 1E0
gav(at)cablerocket(dot)com
The Battered Box and blog

Turn down your gaslight, visit Bob’s and George’s sites, and say hello to Solar Pons and the art of vintage detection.