The Seven Percent Solution

''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) none of which have been adapted to film.

''The Seven-Per-Cent Solution'' was ranked ninth in the ''Publishers Weekly'' list of bestselling novels from 1974 and made ''The New York Times'' Best Seller list for forty weeks between September 15, 1974, and June 22, 1975.

Plot

An introduction states that two canonical Holmes adventures were fabrications. These are "The Final Problem", in which Holmes apparently died along with Prof. James Moriarty, and " The Empty House", wherein Holmes reappeared after a three-year absence and revealed that he had not been killed after all. ''The Seven-Per-Cent Solutions Watson explains that they were published to conceal the truth concerning Holmes' " Great Hiatus".

The novel begins in 1891, when Holmes first informs Watson of his belief that Professor James Moriarty is a "Napoleon of Crime". The novel presents this view as nothing more than the fevered imagining of Holmes' cocaine-sodden mind and further asserts that Moriarty was the childhood mathematics tutor of Sherlock and his brother Mycroft. Watson meets Moriarty, who denies that he is a criminal and reluctantly threatens to pursue legal action unless the latter's accusations cease. Moriarty also refers to a "great tragedy" in Holmes' childhood, but refuses to explain further when pressed by Watson.

The heart of the novel consists of an account of Holmes' recovery from his addiction. Knowing that Sherlock would never willingly see a doctor about his addiction and mental problems, Watson and Holmes' brother Mycroft induce Holmes to travel to Vienna, where Watson introduces him to Dr. Freud. Using a treatment consisting largely of hypnosis, Freud helps Holmes shake off his addiction and his delusions about Moriarty, but neither he nor Watson can revive Holmes' dejected spirit.

What finally does the job is a whiff of mystery: one of the doctor's patients is kidnapped and Holmes' curiosity is sufficiently aroused. The case takes the three men on a breakneck train ride across Austria in pursuit of a foe who is about to launch a war involving all of Europe. Holmes remarks during the denouement that they have succeeded only in postponing such a conflict, not preventing it; Holmes would later become involved in a " European War" in 1914.

One final hypnosis session reveals a key traumatic event in Holmes' childhood: his father murdered his mother (and her lover) for adultery and committed suicide afterwards. Moriarty was the one who told Holmes of the drama, and as messenger of the bad news is now seen as being responsible for their deaths by Holmes. From that point on, his onetime tutor became a dark and malignant figure in Holmes' subconscious. Freud and Watson conclude that Holmes, consciously unable to face the emotional ramifications of this event, has pushed them deep into his unconscious while finding outlets in fighting evil, pursuing justice, and many of his famous eccentricities, including his cocaine habit. However, they decide not to discuss these subjects with Holmes, believing that he would not accept them, and that it would needlessly complicate his recovery.

Watson returns to London, but Holmes decides to travel alone for a while, advising Watson to claim that he had been killed, and thus the famed "Great Hiatus" is more or less preserved. It is during these travels that the events of Meyer's sequel ''The Canary Trainer'' occur.

Publication history

During the 1973 scriptwriters strike, Nicholas Meyer needed a project to occupy his time. Meyer developed an interest in Sherlock Holmes as a teenager and off-and-on over the years had given thought to authoring a story where Sherlock Holmes meets Sigmund Freud, having learned of the founder of psychoanalysis from his psychiatrist father. The strike was the impetus to settle into developing the various ideas he had over the years into a book.

Meyer wrote the book in longhand