Review:The List of Seven/Christopher Roden
This review of the pastiche "The List of Seven", by Mark Frost was written by Christopher Roden and published in the The Parish Magazine (No. 9, december 1993).
This review judges Mark Frost's The List of Seven as a fast-paced and cinematic Conan Doyle pastiche built on occult conspiracy, but criticizes it as fundamentally implausible and badly wrong about Conan Doyle's real character and life. It argues that the novel may work as action fiction, yet fails where it matters most by making Conan Doyle himself the distorted centre of the story.
Review
- The List of Seven
- by Mark Frost
- Hutchinson: 1993; 377pp; £9.99; ISBN 0-09-178190-6
Reviewed by Christopher Roden
We have long been accustomed to the plundering of Conan Doyle's fictional creations as pasticheurs have exercised their varying talents in pursuit of the impossible: the duplication of Conan Doyle's style and his feeling for the character and times of Sherlock Holmes. ACD himself has, on occasion, been introduced into the plot of a novel — presumably to give the novel an appeal which might otherwise be missing. The List of Seven takes the involvement of Conan Doyle much further, however, by making him the character around whom the plot revolves: and, being a fictional study, it offers little more than total implausibility.
Frost's name may be known as the co-writer of Twin Peaks, and he has episodes of Hill Street Blues and the script of The Storyteller to his credit. He is no stranger, therefore, to the visual medium, and it is obvious that this novel was written with film or television in mind. Indeed, the publisher's blurb tells us that a major motion picture is in production with film rights having been sold to Universal. This, I have to say, is disappointing. No-one has yet successfully captured Conan Doyle's character and image on film or television, and to project the image presented by this novel is no compliment at all.
So what is it all about? To quote the publisher:
- 'A young doctor and aspiring novelist receives a desperate plea for help from a mysterious woman. Attempting to save her, the doctor falls into a fiendish trap only to be rescued by a secretive stranger, a man who claims to be Queen Victoria's Special Agent and whose nearly superhuman physical and mental powers are all that stand between the doctor and his deadly pursuers. The doctor is Arthur Conan Doyle. As they track their attackers across the length and breadth of Britain, assailed by forces of darkness, both human and supernatural, Conan Doyle and his rescuer unmask a diabolical plot that threatens not only the Crown but the very fabric of civilisation.'
That should be enough to whet anyone's appetite, but what is it really all about? It seems that ACD has submitted the manuscript of a novel entitled The Dark Brotherhood (possibly the alter ego of The White Company?) to the firm of Rathborne and Sons Publishing Ltd., and that is where 'the list of seven' comes in: the seven directors of Rathborne's are convinced that ACD has uncovered their scheme to bring 'The Evil One' into the world. In fact, Conan Doyle has based his adventure on the writings of Madam Blavatsky, who also features as a character in Frost's novel, along with Bram Stoker, who (surprise, surprise) ACD meets up with in Whitby. (Stand by for a re-telling of the Whitby scenes from Stoker's masterpiece!). During the course of the adventure we also encounter one Armond (sic) Sacker, and several particularly nasty 'beings'.
It would be wrong to give away too much of the plot. It would also be unfair to Frost if I did not say that the novel is well-paced and action-packed. Were it not for the fact that everything is so obviously wrong with the character of Conan Doyle (from his practising medicine in London in 1884 to his being willingly seduced on two occasions in fairly rapid succession), one might even be tempted to label the book 'readable'.
However, just as Sherlock Holmes pastiche (and I am not giving away the plot by saying that even he might appear somewhere in the novel) would be nothing without Holmes, The List of Seven would be totally meaningless without the character of Conan Doyle. This is one occasion where I might wish that ACD was not quite so well known! Christopher Roden
- Article courtesy Christopher Roden, founder of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (1989-2003).
