David’s Holmes and Hawke fascination is elementary

Mar 6 2008 by Andrew Baldwin, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

SHERLOCK Holmes has kept Huddersfield writer David Stuart Davies very busy over the last decade or so.

His award-winning play about Arthur Conan Doyle’s Victorian sleuth is still touring, nine years after its premiere at Salisbury Playhouse in 1999 with Roger Llewellyn.

Now he has another Holmes play about to delight theatregoers.

The Death and Life of Sherlock Holmes, once again starring Roger Llewellyn, premieres at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford tonight.

It then goes on tour, including a trip across the Irish Sea to Belfast, and will have a two-week season in Edinburgh during the city’s festival in August.

It’s a subject which has interested David since he was a student at Leeds University and wrote a guide to films featuring the fictional detective.

But he also has another hero to focus on – Johnny Hawke, better known as Johnny One Eye.

Sure enough, he’s a detective and a private one at that. But the time period has moved on to the Second World War.

David’s third book featuring the character, Without Conscience, was published by Robert Hale last week.

Set against the grim backdrop of bombed and blacked-out London, it’s a complex tale involving the murder of one of Johnny Hawke’s clients.

David, who lives near Greenhead Park in Huddersfield, decided to become a full-time writer 10 years ago after teaching English at Mirfield Free Grammar School.

He has never regretted the move and has become a noted expert on Sherlock Holmes, being in demand as a speaker on the detective.

David is also a member of the national committee of the Crime Writers’ Association and edits its monthly magazine, Red Herrings.

With the new book and play coming out at more or less the same time, he’s got even more to do at the moment.

He admits to being not very hands-on with his play, although he did travel to Surrey to see a rehearsal.

“My work is with the words. Once the script is finalised, it’s over to the actors, although I might be asked for comments from time to time,” says David.

He has vowed in the past to move away from Sherlock Holmes – but it is a subject which keeps returning.

“When I was asked to write another play, my initial reaction was, ‘Oh my God, I thought I said it all in the first play’, but then I thought of the idea of how he has lived on despite Conan Doyle’s own tussle to kill him off and have written it around that.

“Sherlock Holmes has supplied me with a lot of material and I have met a lot of people through him, for instance travelling to New York every January for a convention over there.

“He’s a character that fascinates people, so I suppose I shall never give him up completely.”

Talking of the USA, David’s Johnny One Eye stories seem to have struck a chord on the other side of the Atlantic.

Without Conscience is due out there at the end of the year and a paperback of the first of the series will be published in May.

David is currently working on the fourth, but will break off to do an appearance in Huddersfield at the New Street branch of Waterstone’s next Thursday (March 13) at 7.15pm.

Sadly, the nearest the Sherlock Holmes play will come to Huddersfield is in May when it is presented in Scarborough.

It’s just one of those things to do with schedules, but David would very much like audiences in his hometown to get a chance to savour the work.

“I’d be delighted to see it on at the Lawrence Batley Theatre,” he confesses.

Without Conscience, by David Stuart Davies, is published by Robert Hale at £18.99 (hardback).