Monday, September 15, 2014

Famed Sherlockian character Quentin G. Stanhope?

Think you know the Sherlock Holmes stories backwards and forwards? Okay, then, riddle me this: In what story do we find Quentin G. Stanhope?

According to KOIN news a forger apprehended in Lincoln City, Oregon told authorities that's what his name was, and also according to KOIN, "Quentin G. Stanhope is a spy character in a Sherlock Holmes book."  The link KOIN supplies with the last part of that will take you to a web page of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London that distinctly does not feature the name "Quentin G. Stanhope."

Yes, the cases of Sherlock Holmes have Stamfords and Hopes, and even G. Lestrade. But "Quentin"?

Now, so many, many, MANY pastiches of the original Holmes tales have been done over the years that to say a name appeared in "a Sherlock Holmes book" does open up a thousands upon thousands of potential character names, so it's surely out there somewhere. But where?

At times like this, one has to wonder where we would be without Google. A search for "Quentin G. Stanhope" pulls only the story in question, but dropping the middle initial?

Suddenly, a site called LibraryThing has the answer: Quentin Stanhope is apparently a character in four of Carole Nelson Douglas's Irene Adler novels.

Ah! Irene Adler novels . . . well, that's completely different!

I can't help but be reminded of H.G. Wells trying to use "Sherlock Holmes" as an alias in the movie Time After Time, wherein the humor lies in his expectation that no one will know a character from a story a hundred years before. Apparently modern Oregon forgers are a little more clever . . . though this fellow might have still done better with a pre-internet self-published fan novel character than one from a popular writer like Carole Nelson Douglas.

Because, after all, we do have Google now. . . .

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