Story Profile: “The Man in the Maroon Suit”
For my second entry in The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories, Part XIX, in this collection of general stories with no linking theme save for traditional Holmes stories, I wrote “The Man in the Maroon Suit.”
I have always been interested in art, and I have long believed that there aren’t enough mysteries focused on art, whether it’s art theft, art forgery, or mysteries where a piece of art is connected to the central crime, such as in Agatha Christie’s Five Little Pigs. I wanted to set this crime in an art gallery, but I didn’t want to focus on a traditional painting theft, or have the initial investigation center around a dead body found surrounded by artwork… though there could be a murder occurring or discovered later in the story.
I decided to switch my focus to vandalism. After mulling over some possibilities, I decided to tell a tale about an art gallery where many of the paintings had been defaced by the addition of a little man in a maroon suit. The man in the maroon suit would be doing different things in different paintings, and his presence was sometimes too subtle to notice at once. Who painted him? Why would all of these paintings be altered? I developed the vandal’s motives as I wrote the story, but I knew from the beginning I wanted the defacement to be more than a mere practical joke…
–Chris Chan
Chris Chan’s first book, Sherlock & Irene: The Secret Truth Behind “A Scandal in Bohemia” will be released on August 27th from MX Publishing, and is available for sale at Amazon.com and the MX Publishing website, as well as at Book Depository (with free worldwide shipping there).
“The Man in the Maroon Suit” can be found in The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories– Part XIX, and is available from MX Publishing in hardcover and paperback, and from Amazon.com in hardcover, paperback, and Kindle editions.
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