The Seven-Per-Cent Solution

The Seven-Per-Cent Solution: Being a Reprint from the Reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D. (1974) is a Sherlock Holmes pastiche by Nicholas Meyer.

Published as a "lost manuscript" of the late Dr. John H. Watson, it recounts Holmes' recovery from cocaine addiction (with the help of Sigmund Freud) and his subsequent prevention of a European war through the unravelling of a sinister kidnapping plot. It was followed by two other Meyer pastiches, in chronological order, The Canary Trainer and The West End Horror.

Plot summary

Meyer's revisionist novel purports to replace two of the canonical Sir Arthur Conan Doyle short stories: The Adventure of the Final Problem, in which Holmes apparently died at the hands of Prof. James Moriarty, and The Adventure of the Empty House, wherein Holmes reappeared after a three-year absence and revealed that he had not been killed after all. This novel presents those tales as fabrications, published by Watson to deceive the public about the truth behind Holmes’ temporary disappearance.

According to Meyer's account, Holmes’ view of Moriarty as the "Napoleon of Crime" was nothing more than the fevered imagining of his cocaine-sodden mind; Moriarty was actually the childhood mathematics tutor of the two Holmes brothers (Sherlock and Mycroft). Furthermore, the teacher meets Watson, denies that he is a criminal and reluctantly threatens to sue Holmes for slander unless the accusations cease.

The heart of the novel consists of an account of Holmes’ recovery from his addiction. Watson and Holmes’ brother Mycroft induce Holmes to travel to Vienna, where Watson introduces him to Dr. Freud. Using a treatment consisting largely of hypnosis, Freud helps Holmes shake off his addiction and his delusions about Moriarty, but neither he nor Watson can revive Holmes’ dejected spirit.

What finally does the job is a whiff of mystery: one of the doctor's patients is kidnapped and Holmes’ curiosity is sufficiently aroused. The case takes the three men on a breakneck train ride across Austria in pursuit of a foe who is about to launch a war involving all of Europe. (Holmes remarks during the denouement that they have succeeded only in postponing the war, not preventing it; presumably World War I was the delayed conflagration.)

One final hypnosis session reveals a key traumatic event in Holmes' childhood. His father murdered his mother and then committed suicide because she had a lover, Moriarty, who then became a dark and malignant figure in Holmes’ subconscious. Freud and Watson conclude that Holmes, consciously unable to face the emotional ramifications of this event, has pushed them deep into his unconscious while finding outlets in fighting evil, pursuing justice, and many of his famous eccentricities, including his cocaine habit.

Watson returns to London, but Holmes decides to travel alone for a while, and the famed "Great Hiatus" is thus more or less preserved. It is during these travels that the events of Meyer's sequel The Canary Trainer occur.

Note: on the train to Vienna, Holmes and Watson briefly meet Rudolf Rassendyll (of The Prisoner of Zenda fame), returning from his adventures in Ruritania.

Film adaptation

The story was adapted for the screen in 1976, starring Nicol Williamson as Sherlock Holmes, Robert Duvall as Watson, and Alan Arkin as Dr. Sigmund Freud. Laurence Olivier played the brief role of Professor Moriarty. Though Meyer adapted his novel to screenplay form, the film version differs significantly from the novel, mainly by substituting the book's young Austrian baron-villain with an older, Arabic foe. Also, the film departs from traditional Holmes canon in portraying the detective as light-haired instead of the traditional black-haired, and as a somewhat flirtatious Holmes at that. (Doyle's hero never let women see any signs of interest.) Meyer's three Holmes novels are much more faithful to the original stories in these regards. Meyer's adapted screenplay was nevertheless nominated for a 1977 Academy Award.

Charles Gray, who plays Sherlock's brother Mycroft Holmes in the film, later went on to play the same role opposite Jeremy Brett in four episodes of Granada Television's The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes series.

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