Review:The Canary Trainer/Christopher Roden
This review of the pastiche "The Canary Trainer", by Nicholas Meyer was written by Christopher Roden and published in the The Parish Magazine (No. 9, december 1993).
Christopher Roden strongly praises The Canary Trainer as an absorbing and well-written Sherlock Holmes pastiche that successfully blends Holmes's Great Hiatus with The Phantom of the Opera. Though not especially surprising and clearly not Conan Doyle, the novel is judged engaging enough to stand beside Meyer's earlier Sherlockian classics.
Review
- The Canary Trainer
- by Nicholas Meyer
- Norton, 1993; 224pp; US$19.95, Cdn$24.99 ISBN 0-393-03608
Reviewed by Christopher Roden
Nicholas Meyer's The Seven-per-cent Solution and The West End Horror are already firmly established as classics of Sherlockian pastiche, and I have no hesitation in saying that The Canary Trainer will soon be joining them.
Pastiche, of course, is a medium in which Sherlockian history and chronology is re-written. It is also a medium which often demands a greater suspension of disbelief than that demanded by some of the original Holmes stories: if the reader finds it hard to accept this, then The Canary Trainer will not be suitable material.
The Canary Trainer actually seeks to re-write two established events: the 'Great Hiatus' of Sherlock Holmes as perceived by Arthur Conan Doyle, and the history of 'The Phantom of the Opera' as perceived by Gaston Leroux. Surprisingly, it succeeds in doing both, and offers a well-paced, well-written Holmes adventure with the added twist that Holmes is pursuing an adversary who many readers will already know well. The outcome is not a surprise and, in truth, there are few surprises throughout. Where Meyer has the advantage over many would-be pasticheurs is that he writes well and maintains the interest. His style is not overly elaborate, and in this story he does not have to struggle to capture the atmosphere of 1890s London: the action is set in Paris.
The Canary Trainer, a manuscript discovered among the papers of the late Martha Hudson, is most definitely not Conan Doyle — but it is still an absorbing read.
- Article courtesy Christopher Roden, founder of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (1989-2003).
