The Seven percent Solution

The Seven-Per-Cent Solution is the title of a 1974 novel by Nicholas Meyer. It is written as a pastiche of a Sherlock Holmes adventure, and was adapted for the cinema in 1976. The novel's full title is The Seven-Per-Cent Solution: Being a Reprint from the Reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D.

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 unraveling of a sinister kidnapping plot. It was followed by two other Holmes pastiches by Meyer, The West End Horror (1976) and The Canary Trainer (1993), neither of which has been adapted to film.

The story was adapted for the screen in 1976, starring Nicol Williamson as Sherlock Holmes, Robert Duvall as Watson, and Alan Arkin as Dr. Sigmund Freud. Laurence Olivier played the brief role of Professor Moriarty.

Though Meyer adapted his novel to screenplay form, the film version differs significantly from the novel, mainly by supplementing the book's Austrian baron-villain with an older, Turkish foe. Also, the film departs from traditional Holmes canon in portraying the detective as light-haired instead of the traditional black-haired, and as a somewhat flirtatious Holmes at that. (Doyle's hero never let women see any signs of interest.) Furthermore, the traumatic revelation that affected Holmes in his childhood is heightened; in the final hypnosis therapy reveals that Sherlock personally witnessed his mother's murder by his father, and that Moriarty himself was her lover. (Though even in the original novel, Watson suspects that Moriarty's role was larger than Freud thought.) Meyer's three Holmes novels are much more faithful to the original stories in these regards. Meyer's adapted screenplay was nevertheless nominated for a 1977 Academy Award.

Charles Gray, who plays Sherlock's brother Mycroft Holmes in the film, later went on to play the same role opposite Jeremy Brett in four episodes of Granada Television's The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes series.

The original poster of the film is designed by Richard Amsel.