In the end, after six months of research, consultations with Ripperologists such as Stewart P. She wanted to read a different book, in her words, “Sherlock Holmes versus Jack the Ripper: ‘The Alienist’ version.” She wanted a book like Caleb Carr’s, one “where psychoanalysis and modern sensibilities of psychology didn’t even exist yet.” She knew part of the key was the difficulty of tracking down this type of killer, because it was senseless violence, “where the crimes were not of benefit to anyone.”įaye had made note of the literary voices of previous pastiche writers - noting how close, or rather far away, she felt they were from Arthur Conan Doyle’s.
The unnamed novel suffered from what Faye calls “the kitchen sink syndrome” that variety of Sherlock Holmes and Jack the Ripper fiction that includes not just the detective and one of the most notorious serial killers of all time, but Freemasons, the Royals, Satanists, and/or Transylvanians.
Finding acting work was, she told me, “very, very daunting.” During a lunch break at her day job in a restaurant, Faye picked up one of the many Sherlock Holmes and Jack the Ripper pastiches. Faye, 33, who is from Longview, Washington, across the Columbia River from Portland, Oregon, had moved to New York City from the San Francisco Bay Area in 2005 to take her acting career to the next level.
Faye’s first novel, Dust and Shadow, is a Holmes-Watson pastiche that pits the consulting detective and his Boswell against the terrifying serial murderer Jack the Ripper, who was eviscerating the “unfortunates” of Whitechapel at the same time Holmes would have been detecting, were he real.ĭust and Shadow was an audacious undertaking for someone who, in spite of a dual degree in performance and English, had never written so much as a short story. She frequently contributes to Sherlockian journals and often writes Holmes-Watson short stories for The Strand Magazine. She is a Baker Street Irregular and a part of the 11-member Baker Street Babes collective. On the recommendation from her dad for some post-Nancy Drew reading, Faye fell hard for Sherlock Holmes at age 10 and continues to be an active part of the Sherlockian community. I also spoke to some notable critics about her work. Late last month I spoke with Faye at her home in New York City by phone. ON THE CUSP of the publication on September 17, 2013, of Seven for a Secret (the second installment of the trilogy that began with the Edgar Award–nominated The Gods of Gotham released in 2012), you might be tempted to ask author Lyndsay Faye: “What’s a nice Sherlockian girl like you doing with the dark goings-on at the dawn of the NYPD in New York City circa 1845?” And so, in fact, I did.
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