Жексенбілік шешім: Джон Уотсонның естеліктерінен

1974 mystery novel by Nicholas Meyer

The Seven Per Cent Solution: Being a Reprint from the Reminiscences of John H. Watson, M. D. is a 1974 novel by American writer Nicholas Meyer. It is written as a pastiche of a Sherlock Holmes adventure, and was made into a film of the same name in 1976. Published as a "lost manuscript" of the late Dr. John H. Watson, the book 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 four other Holmes pastiches by Meyer, The West End Horror (1976), The Canary Trainer (1993), The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols (2019) and The Return of the Pharaoh (2021)

The story was adapted for the screen in 1976 in a Universal Studios production, directed by Herbert Ross, scripted by Meyer and designed by James Bond veteran Ken Adam. The all star cast featured Nicol Williamson as Holmes, Robert Duvall as Watson, Alan Arkin as Dr. Sigmund Freud, with Laurence Olivier as Moriarty, Charles Gray as Mycroft Holmes (the role he reprised in the Jeremy Brett TV series), Samantha Eggar as Mary Watson, Vanessa Redgrave as Lola Devereaux, Joel Grey as Lowenstein, and Jeremy Kemp as Baron von Leinsdorf and Williamson's then wife Jill Townsend playing his character's mother (Mrs. Holmes). The film was made at Pinewood Studios with location shooting in the UK and Austria (including the famous Austrian National Library); the tennis match/duel between Freud and von Leinsdorf was filmed on one of the historic real tennis courts at the Queen's Club in West Kensington, London. The chase on the trains was shot with set dressed British steam locomotives and freight cars dressed up as coaches. Meyer adapted his novel to screenplay form, but the film differs significantly from the novel, mainly by supplementing the book's Austrian baron villain (played by Jeremy Kemp) with an older Turkish 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). Furthermore, the traumatic revelation that affected Holmes in his childhood is heightened – the final hypnosis therapy reveals that Sherlock witnessed his mother's murder by his father, and that Moriarty himself was his mother's lover. Finally, the lady whom Holmes saves in the story's climactic chase, Lola Devereaux, appears on his ship as he departs for his sabbatical with the purpose of joining him and Holmes eagerly accepts the offer. Meyer's three Holmes novels are much more faithful to the original stories in these regards.

The story was dramatised for radio by Denny Martin Flinn. The adaptation aired on BBC Radio 4 on 9 January 1993. It was directed by Jane Morga, with Simon Callow as Sherlock Holmes, Ian Hogg as Dr Watson, Karl Johnson as Sigmund Freud, David King as Professor Moriarty, Philip Voss as Mycroft Holmes, Matthew Morgan as Baron von Leinsdorf, Melinda Walker as Nancy Osborn Slater, Geraldine Fitzgerald as Baroness von Leinsdorf, and Wolf Kahler as Hugo von Hoffmansthal. The radio adaptation was more faithful to the novel than the film adaptation.