Thread: Would You Rather Read...

Hi all! I hope this is the right place.


I have a simple question that has been really bugging me in the past few days. It involves something that all you probably know: Sherlock Holmes.

Now, I know that there has been recently a lot of spinoffs and such of the character Sherlock, but with my idea, it's not about Sherlock, as I have made up my own two characters - who 18, not adults, because I want it to be Young Adult - and such.

I have decided to base my new idea off of Sherlock Holmes, but I have one little problem.

I don't know what era to place it in.

I had originally planned on placing it in 1891, because I have always thought of it as an interesting time era, and there aren't that many YA books in that time era. At least, I haven't read many. The only one I have read close to that time ear would have to be "The Book Theif", and that takes place around WWII, I believe.

But, of course, I thought that could cause a ruckus of some sort, even though Sherlock is now in the public domain. So, upon watching BBC's Sherlock, I thought about a modern day setting.

But, sooon after that decision, CBS released information that they decided to start their own modern day Sherlock Holmes series.

So, I am now very, very confused and torn. I keep saying I want to write a modern day one, but then I think of my other idea. So, I figured that I would ask for peoples opinions.

What would you rather read: A modern day or Victorian era twist?


Thank you for your help.

You could do both.. Have characters in a modern-day plotline, while simultaneously running another plotline with other characters that takes place in the Victorian era.

... That's a good idea.

The sci-fi writer in me says there's a YA novel in here where two modern high-school boys end up getting time warped and solving mysteries back in Victorian London. Rather than do one of each, you could do one with both!

But if you have to pick one, I'd go with Victorian. It's got a lot more character, and you'll have a lot less trouble solving Victorian mysteries without going beyond the content bounds of YA than you would solving modern mysteries. Just my thoughts.

If it's 'Sherlock', I don't care for the cheap quality modern era versions.
If it's not 'Sherlock' and is just a detective series, then any era (maybe up to 1960s-70) is fine if you can write it well.

Put them in the present day, and let them use the technology of today the way Holmes would have used it had it been available. Consider that newspaper, post, and telegraph were much employed by Holmes. If he were alive today the computer, the Internet, email, and such, would be weapons in his arsenal.

The Sherlock Holmes stories continue to work because they were written by a man who was living in the time in which he set the stories. When Doyle describes a walk through London, we can not only see it, we can feel it. That's difficult to achieve if you are looking back 120 years.

@garza : Question. You wouldn't worry that there mightn't be any 'romance' (for want of a better word at this moment) in a modern day detective book series?

'Romance', as you so delicately put it, is part of the scenery in today's literature. It's lack would be a serious flaw. I don't mean that graphic scenes are needed, but the protagonists should both have Significant Others. With Holmes there is only Irene Adler, and that was no romance. It's true Watson married, but his married life was an incidental side note in only a few of the stories.

Even a hundred years ago note was taken of the lack of romantic interest on the part of Holmes. There is nothing to indicate he was gay, so the conclusion generally reached is that he was one of those rare birds who simply have little or no interest in sex of any sort. To make that work today would almost require that one of the protagonists be a robot, or an advanced AI computer of some sort. That might make an interesting story line. A young super smart computer techie and his pal, the electrocuted robot from Short Circuit.

Some such story line as that would be far more interesting, I should think, than another reworking of Doyle. Let Holmes alone. Create new characters and put them in the real world we know today.

Sorry garza, for the life of me I can't think of the correct word. When I said 'romance', I didn't mean sexual. Bah... Can I say bah again.

Ok, ok.

When you think of a detective series set in a previous era, you think of thrilling detective adventures resonating with the everyday person's perceptions; and a reader can imagine themselves there. They can be true masterpieces, whilst still delivering the 'yes it could have happened in our world' factor. I'd wonder (& worry) whether a detective series set of the modern era could actually recreate that. Somehow, DA matching, computerised address matching, and simply knocking on the door to arrest somebody doesn't have the same allure for me. I simply can't picture a modern exciting detective series, unless of course you make a significant distortion in your book's world.

But maybe that's just me.

I can see it plainly. Today's world is no less exciting than London 1891. It's different, is all. Take someone with the analytical mind of Holmes and put him down in any city today with a sidekick who makes up with bravado what he may lack in crime-fighting brilliance and you have a winning team. Hasn't this been a successful formula all along?

Consider this. You make the robot look human, with a brilliant mind but no emotions. That's Holmes. You have a young techie who knows all about computers but nothing about the world of crime and little about any of the people who are outside his world. That's Watson, who was a doctor and knew how the body works but did not understand how many people think. To add to the team you have a stationary computer with even greater capacity and reasoning ability than the mobile robot. That's Mycroft.

I've the feeling this has already been done, but not being a regular reader of science fiction or fantasy I don't know. Even if it has been done, it can stand being done again.

Personally I'm always significantly less interested in anything that doesn't take place in modern day. But that's just me. *shrug*

@ Rustgold:
I think I know what you mean when you say "romance." I'm thinking about the charm of a setting in a bygone era. That's the word I think of when I read the 19th-century stories of Georges Simenon. You get that sense when the descriptions take you back to that era and allow you to imagine the sounds, smells, sights, etc. Am I right? (If I'm wrong, you can stop reading this right now, LOL.)

I think that a book written about the modern era can exude charm as well, but the writer has to feel an affinity with the setting in order to pull it off. For example, I could write a murder mystery that's set in a low-income housing community in the Bronx (New York). Another writer, especially one with a dislike or unfamiliarity with the area, might write about the inhabitants of a building as being just a bunch of poor people. I would be more likely to bring out the charm of being around them by showing how they bond together and look out for each other, and how the entryways of many of the immigrant families are decorated with images of Jesus, etc etc.

I honestly feel that bringing out the "charm" of living in the modern day can be achieved, depending heavily upon the approach of the writer.