James Benn: Full Circle to Sherlock
Well, almost, but I’ll get to that.
Sherlock Holmes was my gateway to crime fiction. I started reading Arthur Conan Doyle’s work in high school and moved on to Dorothy L Sayers in college. Before I knew it, I was reading Dick Francis and Tony Hillerman. But it was Holmes who brought me to the dance.
In 2002, while working on the manuscript of my first novel in the Billy Boyle WWII mystery series (Billy Boyle), my wife and I went on a research trip to London to take in World War Two sites. Walking to Regents Park, the map took us down Baker Street.
That Baker Street.
We stopped in front of the Sherlock Holmes Museum and gazed at the plaque above the door . . .
221b Baker Street
Sherlock Holmes
Consulting Detective
1889 – 1904
. . . but didn’t go in. Visiting a museum with fictional recreations of fictional characters was off-putting. It was enough to stand on the street and see the world created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as I’d imagined it for so many years. I was so awestruck that, when I returned home, I made sure Billy took the same route along Baker Street.
I shifted over towards Harding to get a good look out his window. There it was, a sign above a door that said 221b Baker Street. My mouth hung open. I looked around at the everyday street and the white-painted buildings, looking clean in the morning rain. Where was the fog, the streetlights, the gray atmosphere? The horses pulling carriages, bringing troubled clients to Watson and Holmes? I had to admit I had been impressed with Big Ben and all, but for a kid who had devoured the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, this was really something. I was on Baker Street, driving by the rooms of Holmes and Watson! I sort of wished it was all in black and white and gray, like in the movies.
It was a thrill to see those lines in print. But except for the occasional reference to Holmes and his deductive techniques, I never came up with a way to draw Sherlock Holmes into the series.
Until the twentieth book, A Bitter Wind.
Researching this novel, I learned about the critical role radio interception played in intelligence in World War II. Interception of enemy radio traffic involved specialized units, like the British Y Service. They listened for and recorded enemy transmissions, including Morse code and voice communications. They also used electronic equipment to disrupt communications with much more sophisticated hardware than I’d realized.
But it wasn’t only the technical work and advanced electronics that caught my eye.
It was the human element.
The British brilliantly used German Jewish refugees, with their native language skills, to “spoof” German ground-to-air instructions and vector German night fighters away from the Allied heavy bombers flying into the Third Reich. Most were very young during the war, having made it out with their parents as children in the 1930s.
Female radio interceptors worked on the ground, as part of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF), mimicking German female air controllers. They would issue orders to pilots, telling them to return to base or go off on a false heading. Sometimes, arguments would erupt as the real German controllers tried to convince their pilots about the ersatz voices in their communications. Once, a Luftwaffe pilot grew so frustrated with the competing demands that the two women simply burst out laughing at his response.
But it wasn’t fun and games, especially not for the men who were sent to do their job in the air. The male interceptors added to bomber crews came to be called Jonahs. Aboard ships, a person whose presence is believed to endanger the vessel is called a Jonah. On British bombers, this extra crewman broadcast phony orders and conducted electronic jamming from the aircraft. Since radio silence is maintained over enemy territory, these planes announced their presence with blasts of electronic signals. By protecting the squadron of bombers they were flying with, their individual plane became a target.
Since these men attracted fire and were German born as well as Jewish, they were often treated as unwelcome outsiders. Jonahs.
This was paydirt. A volatile situation, highly complex, but also reduced to basic human emotions. I had what I wanted for plot development and continued with my research.
I found a website which detailed the experiences of some of the German Jewish refugees. One woman mentioned the commanding officer of her WAAF unit, Squadron Officer Conan Doyle.
What?
Jean Conan Doyle, to be precise. Daughter of Sir Arthur, she joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force in 1938. When war came, she served in intelligence and soon commanded a detachment of WAAFs working in radio interception. Top secret stuff.
Jean Conan Doyle stayed in the military after the war, eventually rising to air commandant, the highest rank in the renamed Women’s Royal Air Force, serving until she retired in 1966.
Now I had more than I dreamed of. In the twentieth novel in the series, A Bitter Wind, Billy gets to work with Jean Conan Doyle on a case requiring her intelligence skills and deductions. Although when they first meet, Squadron Officer Doyle demonstrates to Billy that she is not interested in questions about her father.
“Conan Doyle?” I asked. “Any relation to . . . ?”
“Sir Arthur was my father, Captain Boyle,” she said, her voice flat and her eyes fixed on the papers in front of her. She gave off an air of weariness at explaining her connection and accepting the usual praise with sufficient enthusiasm. Finally, she folded the papers, tucked them away, and looked me straight in the eye. “So, it seems we are bound by our more famous relatives, are we not?”
“Sir Arthur was my father, Captain Boyle,” she said, her voice flat and her eyes fixed on the papers in front of her. She gave off an air of weariness at explaining her connection and accepting the usual praise with sufficient enthusiasm. Finally, she folded the papers, tucked them away, and looked me straight in the eye. “So, it seems we are bound by our more famous relatives, are we not?”
“We are,” I said. “I’ll try not to pepper you with questions about Sherlock Holmes. But I am a great fan of your father’s work.”
“And I will refrain from asking you about your uncle,” she said. “I happen to be a great fan of General Eisenhower, but I will not presume upon our working relationship for gossip and personal tidbits, however interesting.”
Soon Billy and Conan Doyle are working together as they search for a killer who threatens the entire secret operation. Billy is thrilled to work with a partner one degree of separation from the creator of Sherlock Holmes.
So was I. The game was afoot.
James R. Benn is the author of the Billy Boyle World War II mysteries. The debut, Billy Boyle, was selected as a Top Five Book of the Year by Book Sense and was a Dilys Award nominee, A Blind Goddess was longlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, The Rest Is Silence was a Barry Award nominee, and The Devouring was a Macavity Award nominee. Benn, a former librarian, lives on the Gulf Coast of Florida with his wife, Deborah Mandel.
