Author Marie Howalt has written three novels in the science fiction mystery series the Colibri Investigations, and has plans for many more.
But for the moment, Howalt is side stepping things with A Study In Black Brew (paperback, Kindle), a stand-alone side story that actually puts a sci-fi spin on Sherlock Holmes’ first case.
In the following email interview, Howalt discusses what inspired and influenced this story, as well as why they decided to rework one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous novels.
A Study In Black Brew is part of your Colibri Investigations series…
Well, A Study In Black Brew does take place in the same universe as the Colibri Investigations books, but it is not part of the series. It’s more of a stand-alone spinoff, and the narrative style is very different from the Colibri series.
That said, Colibri Investigations is essentially about a retired intelligence officer turned private eye, his snarky spaceship pilot, and their resident tourist guide writer (as well as a few other regular characters) taking on various cases all over the galaxy.
The main characters are human, and cater mostly to the human diaspora, though they do work with people of other species too. In this universe, humans are the latest, and a slightly awkward addition, to a galactic Union of sentient species who are trying to fit in and keep up with everybody else.
Each of the books so far deals with a couple of (related) cases or one case and some of the crew’s personal challenges. They are all fairly lighthearted, diverse space opera crime comedies.
A Study In Black Brew is also a retelling of the Sherlock Holmes novel A Study In Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. For people who haven’t read that book, what happens in it?
A Study In Scarlet is the first Sherlock Holmes story, and it more or less sets the tone of the whole canon.
It is told from the point of view of Doctor John Watson, who has recently had some really traumatic war experiences in the British colonial empire’s service (which he very much downplays because, you know, he’s a “stiff upper lip Victorian gentleman”) that caused him to retire.
He quickly finds himself sharing lodgings in the great city of London with a man named Sherlock Holmes, who is eccentric and mysterious, and Watson is immediately fascinated with him and tries to figure out what he does for a living. They become friends, and Holmes invites Watson along to a murder scene because, it turns out, he is a consulting detective for the London police.
As the story progresses, Holmes demonstrates an amazing ability to observe and deduct and despite his own skills, Watson (and his readers) struggles to keep up with him as he untangles the case.
Which brings us to A Study In Black Brew. What happens in Black Brew, and when does it take place in relation to the previous Colibri Investigations books, The Stellar Snow Job, Assassins & Olympians, and The Wenemak Web?
A Study In Black Brew is told from the point of view of Chemistry Doyen Kellieth ReinAraneinth, who has recently had some really traumatic experiences in the Wendek Planetary Development Agency (which they very much downplay because they have suffered from a chronic illness for a long time and don’t want other people’s pity) that caused them to retire.
They quickly find themself sharing lodgings in the great city of Nantheam with a man called Raithan WeinZalneinth who is eccentric and mysterious, and Kellieth is immediately fascinated with him and tries to figure out what he does for a living. They become friends, and Raithan invites Kellieth along to a murder scene because, it turns out, he is an agent working with the Nantheam peace corps.
As the story progresses, Raithan demonstrates an amazing ability to observe and deduct and though Kellieth ends up contributing to the investigation, they (and their readers) struggle to keep up with him as he untangles the case.
As you might have picked up on, Kellieth and Raithan (as well as most of the supporting cast) are not human; they are wendek which is a species whom I lovingly nickname “space elves.” Wendek are tall and slender, have grey skin and pointed ears. In the interest of Kellieth’s narrative perspective, I won’t call them humanoid, but we could say that humans are wendekoid. What really sets them apart from other species is the fact that they use smells and pheromones in communication and social situations. They pick up on other people’s mood, gender and a lot of other things through smells. And they think humans tend to stink. Kellieth suffers from hyposmia, and sometimes has a hard time navigating society because they have to rely more on other senses.
In the third Colibri book, The Wenamak Web, the main characters go to a wendek planet and work with a wendek agent. This agent is Raithan. Kellieth is also in the book, though they don’t play as big a part.
In terms of internal chronology, A Study In Black Brew is set a short time before the first Colibri book, The Stellar Snow Job.
So, did you set out to rewrite A Study In Scarlet and A Study In Black Brew is what you came up with, or did you have the idea for Black Brew and then realize it would work just as well, or maybe even better, as a reworking of Scarlet?
Ever since I started working on the Colibri books, I’ve toyed with the idea of writing something inspired by Sherlock Holmes. But none of the Colibri main characters have the kind of chemistry that I feel you need to pull off proper Holmes / Watson dynamics, and I never went anywhere with it apart from a few notes.
However, after writing the first draft of The Wenamak Web, I realized Raithan and Kellieth had a lot of potential that I couldn’t explore in the context of the Colibri books, and that their respective personalities and their relationship are very close to my interpretation of Holmes and Watson.
Once the idea that Raithan and Kellieth could work in a Sherlock Holmes-esque story lodged itself in my mind, I read every single Sherlock Holmes story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and it occurred to me that it’s not just those two characters that would work. It’s the way wendek society has a lot of similarities with Victorian society, and how Raithan isn’t part of the police (peace corps) but helps them out, and how Kellieth lives with their disability like Watson does. And so many other tiny details, like in the original stories, there is a large number of references to smell. Holmes is described as being on the scent, like a bloodhound, etc., and that fits so well with how wendek use their sense of smell.
At first, I only set out to test whether Kellieth could carry that kind of narrative and if their first meeting with Raithan could be engaging enough, but it quickly turned out that everything worked exactly how I wanted it to, and the story almost wrote itself.
The title comes from the fact that Kellieth moves back home, to Ganmak, where basic needs are met, but luxuries are expensive, and one of those luxuries is Kellieth’s favorite Earth drink, coffee. Is there a reason it’s coffee and not whiskey or iced tea or Kool-Aid? Or a nice stout? You wouldn’t even have to change the name.
Yes, that is part of the reason for the title. Black Brew also plays a part in the murder mystery that I won’t spoil.
In the book’s universe, coffee is hard to come by, and people (humans) try to come up with local approximations in their planetary settlements. Black brew is an umbrella term for all of that. Wendek don’t usually drink the beverage because it isn’t particularly nuanced and far too bitter for their liking, but because Kellieth can’t pick up on all the finer subtleties of wendek drinks, and because the caffeine helps them fight against fatigue, they enjoy it a lot.
From a more writerly or plot-focused perspective, I needed the drink not to be alcoholic, or very contemporary (to us). And tea was out of the picture because it is much closer to some of the beverages you find in the cuisines of our wendek protagonists.
Also, what kind of coffee are we talking about? Because by calling it “black brew,” I’m thinking it’s cold brew or maybe espresso.
While black brew basically encompasses for all kinds of coffee (approximations), Kellieth drinks theirs black. They have tried a variation called Irish black brew once, though, which is exactly what it sounds like.
A Study In Black Brew seems to be a noir sci-fi space opera mystery novel. Do you see it that way, too?
I’d call it a sci-fi mystery. I feel noir doesn’t go that well with a re-imagined Victorian society, or maybe rather with a Sherlock Holmes mystery. Space operas usually have spaceships or space stations, and while they certainly do exist in my universe and are mentioned, A Study In Black Brew takes place exclusively on one planet.
So, is this the kind of mystery novel where the reader is challenged to solve the murder as they read, or is it one where you tell everyone who did it and it’s more about following Kellieth and Raithan as they try to figure it out?
It is technically the kind where the reader picks up clues and red herrings along with the characters and might still end up not figuring it out until everything is revealed because, quite simply, that is how Sherlock Holmes works. He is a master of deduction, and even Watson (who is intelligent and well-educated) can’t keep up with him. Kellieth is a bit more outspoken about how annoying and arrogant their friend can be than Watson.
However, seeing as a large percentage of readers who pick up A Study In Black Brew will be familiar with the Sherlock Holmes story, some of them will inevitably know what’s going on and where the story is headed, despite the sci-fi twist.
My intention is for A Study In Black Brew to work both for readers who are not familiar with Sherlock Holmes and for readers who are Sherlock Holmes fans. The former group will be more intrigued by the mystery and the plot, and the latter group will pick up on a lot of references and easter eggs and get to see how the original is transformed into something else.
A Study In Black Brew is your seventh novel after the three in your Moonless saga and, of course, the three in the Colibri Investigations series. Are there any writers, or specific stories, that had a big influence on Black Brew but not on anything else you’ve written, and especially not the previous Colibri Investigations novels?
The obvious answer here is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Even though there are crimes to be solved by a private investigator team in the Colibri books, there is no connection between Sherlock Holmes and Colibri Investigations. A Study In Black Brew is very much a retelling of A Study In Scarlet.
What about such non-literary influences as movies, TV shows, or games? Did any of those things have a big influence on A Study In Black Brew?
Not really. After deciding how I was going to structure my version of the story, I did have a look at other retellings and adaptations across various media to see how they handled certain elements of the story.
For instance, several chapters of A Study In Scarlet tell the backstory of the murderer and his victims and take place in the USA. That part of the book has nothing to do with Holmes and Watson, and to a modern reader (or viewer), it’s a strange narrative structure. Every adaptation, mine included, has to find a way to include that backstory in a way that’s engaging to a contemporary audience. It was very interesting to see how others solved that issue, but my version was not influenced by any of them.
And what about your cats, Reid, Dandy, and Oscar? How did they influence A Study In Black Brew?
My cats are moral supports who never complain about my talking about my books all the time.
There are, sadly, no cats in A Study In Black Brew, but there are mentions of an animal common to the wendek homeworld called a syraxh. They are small, furry, flying mammals kept as pets whose behavior is very much inspired by cats in general. Reid, Dandy, and Oscar provide me with endless research material, of course.
Oscar, Redi, Dandy
Now, as we’ve been discussing, A Study In Black Brew is a spinoff of your Colibri Investigations series. But do people have to read the previous Colibri novels to understand, and enjoy, Black Brew?
A Study In Black Brew is a stand-alone work and can be read without any knowledge that Colibri Investigations even exists. None of the main characters from Colibri are in the spinoff, and it takes place in a location they have never been to in the books.
Why was this important to you?
Colibri Investigations is probably going to be a pretty long series, and I hope to write each book so that readers can jump into it at any point. There is character development and some bigger plot threads going through the books, but they should still work separately. It was important to me that A Study In Black Brew would work even more as a stand-alone because its style is very different, and I imagine some of the readers it caters to will mostly be in it for the Sherlock Holmes vibes and won’t necessarily want to read Colibri Investigations (though, of course, I hope they will be curious and pick up those books too).
That said, what do you think someone will get out of A Study In Black Brew if they’ve already read the three Colibri Investigations novels, as opposed to someone who jumps straight into Black Brew?
In general, readers who want to know more about wendek after encountering them in Colibri Investigations will get a lot of answers in A Study In Black Brew.
There are also some remarks about other species and locations that Colibri readers will pick up on as a little bonus.
If they have read The Wenamak Web in particular, readers will already know Raithan and Kellieth and hopefully be curious about them, and then this will be a sort of “how they met” story.
So, are you planning other spin-offs for the Colibri Investigations series?
I am, yes. Like I said, the Colibri series will most likely go on for a while. And like the third book spawned this spinoff by introducing Raithan and Kellieth, the fourth and the fifth books will also introduce some concepts or characters that I would love to explore further and in a way that won’t fit into the main series, so to speak.
While none of those are connected to A Study In Black Brew, I will admit that I already have a sequel outlined loosely because I had such a great time with Raithan and Kellieth and, well, there are certainly more Sherlock Holmes stories that I would love to write retellings of, too. Whether my ideas will turn into an actual book depends on a lot of things, so I’m not making any promises at this point.
I asked earlier if A Study In Black Brew was influenced by any movies, TV shows, or games. But to flip things around, do you think Black Brew could work as a movie, show, or game?
I can imagine both. A Clue-style board game would be really cool. As would an adventure video game. But I definitely could also see it as a TV series.
And if someone wanted to make a TV show based on A Study In Black Brew, who would you want them to cast as Kellieth, Raithan, and the other main characters?
Actually, I think the book would work exceptionally well as an animated series. Once upon a time, animation was viewed as something mostly exclusively for kids, but that isn’t the case anymore, and it’s a medium that has so much potential. Since most of the cast in A Study In Black Brew is wendek, animation has the clear advantage that the cast wouldn’t just be humans in costumes and makeup. It would be possible to create something both alien and familiar that would resonate well what I’m trying to do with the book.
So, is there anything else you think potential readers need to know about A Study In Black Brew or the Colibri Investigations series?
These books have certain solarpunk characteristics in that they portray diverse, queernormative societies that are thriving and in which (most) species have found sustainable ways to live. But even so, everything isn’t rose-tinted. For instance, wendek do have a bit of a superiority complex when it comes to other species, but when issues like these come up in the stories, they are hopefully treated in a constructive way. Without spoiling too much, there is a scene in A Study In Black Brew where an otherwise sympathetic character has to reflect on some of their privileges and how they act based on them. This isn’t the focus of the stories, but there are echoes of themes from the reader’s own world, and certain issues are questioned. I think that’s something science fiction generally should have.
Finally, if someone enjoys A Study In Black Brew, what sci-fi mystery novel or novella of someone else’s would you suggest they read next?
I strongly recommend Malka Older’s The Mimicking of Known Successes and its sequels. They feature a female duo with strong Holmes / Watson vibes in a futuristic academic setting, and the books are simply delightful.
