Murder by Decree

And at a certain point, it occurred to me that, well, Sherlock Holmes, you know, is a famous detective in London while this is happening, if you accept the fact that Sherlock Holmes, you know, was real, right? If the British government were intent on breaking up this conspiracy, why not send Sherlock Holmes to the center of the conspiracy, which is New York? Now, part of my inspiration for that, too, was a movie that came out, oh, wow, quite some time ago, probably 20th century.

called Murder by Decree.

And it stars Christopher Plummer as Sherlock Holmes, and he is trying to find Jack the Ripper.

He's trying to find Jack the Ripper.

And it's really increasing interest in Sherlock Holmes, probably much to Conan Doyle's, you know, annoyance, because, of course, he wanted to get rid of that character.

While you were working on this book, out of curiosity, did you come across a movie called Murder by Decree?

No, what is this?

It is a Sherlock Holmes adventure in which Sherlock solves the Whitechapel murders.

Yeah.

You know, and again, the other link here, you think of Murder by Decree and it taps into all those sort of, as you're right, it's not any version of real London, whatever real London is.

But it's a faithful recreation of, of cinematic and televisual london yeah you know and so it does its job there it very shorthand yeah it establishes the scene and i suppose as a british viewer some of the kind of accents bulk throughout the and the opening is a little bit kind of you know i think they do a similar thing in that film shanghai nights with jackie chan it's almost the same sort of premise where um i think jack the ripper is kicked off the bridge So clearly, terror at London Bridge has influenced the Jackie Chan film.

I think we can

Oh, okay

... is it Murder by Decree? Is that the one that's like-

Oh.

Um, but it's basically what, like-

We're not gonna watch it, but now I gotta go watch it on my own.

In 1979, Clark directed a Sherlock Holmes movie called Murder by Decree with Christopher Plummer and James Mason as Holmes and Watson.

Huh.

Hmm.

[laughs] No, we do not.

No. [laughs]

[laughs] And then after Murder by Decree, his next film was Tribute, which was released in 1980, and that starred Jack Lemmon, Robbie Benson, Lee Remick, and in one of her first roles, Kim Cattrall.

Whoa.