在这疑神疑鬼的气氛中，1974年8月，一位年轻的美国作家决定探寻福尔摩斯的精神世界，写下了可能是最好的福尔摩斯小说模仿作品。

　　"The Seven-Per-Cent Solution", by Nicholas Meyer, proved a sensation, remaining on the New York Times' Best Seller list for 40 weeks, and winning the praise of PG Wodehouse, who was lost in admiration for the way which the young writer had captured Conan Doyle's style.

　　《百分之七溶液》 作者尼古拉斯·梅耶引起轰动，它雄踞《纽约时报》畅销书榜长达40周，获得PG·沃德豪斯的嘉奖，他对这位年轻作家把握柯南·道尔风格的能力赞不绝口。

　　"The Seven-Per-Cent Solution" was written as a kind of protest against all the Holmes movies and earlier pastiches that I thought...rightly or wrongly, had got it wrong.

　　《百分之七溶液》是种抗议，抗议所有福尔摩斯电影和之前的模仿作品，不论我是对是错，他们都错了。

　　Meyer's story, pretending to be a lost manuscript by the late Dr Watson, promises to solve the mystery of Holmes's missing years after his Reichenbach fall.

　　梅耶假托本书是丢失的华生的手稿，要解决福尔摩斯在莱辛巴赫瀑布后失踪多年的谜题。

　　The solution being that he fetches up in Vienna, where he encounters the father of psychoanalysis, Dr Sigmund Freud.

　　原来他去了维也纳，遇见了精神分析之父西格蒙·弗洛伊德医生。

　　Doyle knew about the life and writing of Freud. And I thought, well, they're both doctors, that's kind of interesting.

　　道尔了解弗洛伊德的生平和作品，我想他们都是医生，这很有趣。

　　Then I realised that Holmes is a cocaine addict and Freud had been an early proponent of cocaine, starting as a use for anaesthetic during eye surgery, but he also was a user.

　　然后我意识到福尔摩斯有可卡因毒瘾，弗洛伊德早期拥护可卡因，将它作为眼部手术的麻醉剂，但是他也吸食。

　　And a lot of people were very angry at my book because it was a book about an addict.

　　很多人对我的书很不满，因为主角是一个瘾君子。

　　It's not really a Sherlock Holmes story, "The Seven-Per-Cent Solution".

　　《百分之七溶液》其实不是一本夏洛克·福尔摩斯小说。

　　It's a story about Sherlock Holmes, not quite the same, and that Holmes's addiction is something that he has to overcome and the fact that he does overcome it and function while chained to it, renders him more remarkable, and not less.

　　这是关于夏洛克·福尔摩斯的，这是两码事，福尔摩斯要战胜毒瘾，他也做到了，虽然继续吸食，却能保持理智，这使他更伟大，而不是卑鄙。