Review: An expensive, but also expensively produced is the first book from la Société Sherlock Holmes de France... the collected Sherlockian caricatures, cartoons and illustrations of Jean-Pierre Cagnat is rightly described as a de luxe edition. There are 160 pages of drawings and paintings, with illuminating comments by the artist’s wife Christilla, translated into English by Wladimir & Nissa Bogomoletz.
Jean-Pierre Cagnat is a leading illustrator and political cartoonist and his wonderful drawings have featured widely in Sherlockian and other magazines over the past 15 years. It’s a revelation, though, to see them in full colour. Here are the images he captured in New York, California, London, Dartmoor, Meiringen, Santa Fe, Tokyo, Montpellier, Paris and his own home of Barbizon. A quick flick through the pages shows the faces of Albert Kunz, Tom Stix Jr, John Farrell, Frank Allen, Vosper Arthur, John Bennett Shaw, Bob Thomalen, Hirayama Yuichi and - er - Mickey Mouse among many others.
It Is Always a Joy . . . is the most handsome Sherlockian volume I’ve seen since Bill Blackbeard’s Sherlock Holmes in America. It really is worth the price.
Reviewed by: Roger Johnson, [District Messenger 208, 2000] ( )