Somehow I missed doing a review of The Pontine Dossier, Millennium Edition, Vol. 1, No. 4 (Autumn/Winter 2023), the scholarly journal of Solar Pons, edited by Derrick Belanger. So I rectify that here. There are six issues out, all available from Amazon.
For those who missed my previous posts on him, Solar Pons is a popular character inspired by Sherlock Holmes, created by August Derleth, continued by Basil Copper, and more recently by David Marcum and others. As Pons is more than just a Holmes copy, calling him a pastiche doesn’t do him justice. His stories are set between World War I and World War II.
As I noted previously, The Pontine Dossier was a scholarly journal from the 1970s, now brought back. Following the style of the original Pontine Dossier, the covers for the Millennium Edition so far are the same, just in different colors. Each issue is about the same number of pages.
There are several good articles in this issue, a total of eight from a half-dozen authors.
From editor Derrick Belanger, we get an update on the world of Solar Pons, including a gathering of members of the Praed Street Irregulars.
From David Marcum, we get two articles. The first, titled “American Horror,” takes a look at the original Pontine Dossier and zeroes in on a note about a TV series on Pons being developed in 1976. He was able to track down the writer for it and learn more. While many might have wanted a TV show, we dodged a bullet with this one.
The other article is on his introduction to Pons. Like him, I never cared for the Hardy Boys, but I also enjoyed the Three Investigators. I still have mine. I had some of the Alfred Hitchcock anthologies edited by Robert Arthur, but not the one with the Pons story. I discovered Pons through the Pinnacle paperbacks a couple of decades later.
Bret Fawcett has two articles. The first takes a look at Derleth’s writing, showing the links between his Lovecraftian works and Solar Pons, and ties in Derleth’s Catholicism. I should point out that Arkham House was founded by Derleth and Donald Wandrei. It was not a sole effort. The second takes a deep dive into “The Adventure of the Sotheby Salesman” and whether Pons got the motivation of the murder correct or not.
The article by Jay Hyde looks at Dr. Parker’s detective abilities, or lack thereof. This is backed up by several quotes from the Pontine canon.
Chris Chan takes a closer look at the monograph authored by Solar Pons. This was from a list created by Derleth, and the descriptions seem accurate.
And Stephen Herczeg asks why horror writers often turn to writing crime fiction. I initially thought he was asking why they turn to being criminals. This is an interesting analysis. I knew of some of the examples, but not all.
As always, it’s a nice collection of articles. I always look forward to these and can’t wait for the next volume. As they seem to be putting these out toward the end of the year, and this last time it wasn’t connected with a Kickstarter campaign. I guess I’ll just need to keep an eye out for the next one.
They currently have a campaign for the next collection of Solar Pons stories, Solar Pons: A Year of Mystery 1919, which will be out in August.
