The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

There's a lot to like in Adventures of Sherlock Holmes; what particularly piques my academic interest, however, is the vision of Sherlock Holmes. There are a lot of good stories here, but when I teach Holmes, I usually stick to three different stories from this volume, because between "A Scandal in Bohemia," "A Case of Identity," and "The Five Orange Pips," I think you get the whole Holmesian theory of vision in theory and in practice.

For my purposes it actually makes the most sense to handle these stories in reverse order. My scholarly interest is in "scientific sight," in the way that scientific reasoning is often figured as a literal visual power. Doyle makes the connection between Holmes's vision and science its most explicit in show more "The Five Orange Pips," where Holmes compares himself to the paleontologist Cuvier: "As Cuvier could correctly describe a whole animal by the contemplation of a single bone, so the observer who has thoroughly understood one link in a series of incidents, should be able to accurately state all the other results which the reason alone can attain to" (108). Holmes utilizes inductive reasoning (I think; I always get these things confused), moving from a part of the system to understanding the whole of the system, through observation and reason. Like Cuvier, he is a scientist.

Holmes sort of undersells himself there, though, because part of his prowess is that he observes the right thing, picking up on the little details that no one else notices. Holmes might be like Cuvier in that he can go from single bone to whole dinosaur, but the problem of other people isn't that they can't perform that inductive logic, it's that they don't even see the bone to perform induction on it! In "A Case of Identity," Watson complains that Holmes sees what is "quite invisible," but Holmes rebuts him: "Not invisible, but unnoticed, Watson. You did not know where to look, and so you missed all that was important. [...] Watson, you are coming along wonderfully. You have really done very well indeed. It is true that you have missed everything of importance, but you have hit upon the method [...]. Never trust to general impressions, my boy, but concentrate yourself upon details" (61). Holmes then proceeds to enumerate a number of details of sleeves, nose, boots, and gloves that allowed him to induce (deduce?) a whole range of truths about the client.

Oddly, Holmes's ability to observe probably reaches its apex in the very first Sherlock Holmes short story, "A Scandal in Bohemia." To a degree, everything after this is anticlimax. But then, Watson does tell us from the story's first line that it is an unusual case for Holmes. Why Doyle started Holmes's (short form) adventures with an exceptional one I don't know, but it makes for one of the best Holmes stories in terms of entertainment, but also in terms of my interests. Again, the story emphasizes the distinctions between Watson's sight and Holmes's: both see, but only Holmes observes (4).

In this story, we're told that Holmes feels no emotions in this "cold, precise, but admirably balanced mind" and that he is the "most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen" (1). For Holmes, emotions "were admirable things for the observer—excellent for drawing the veil from men's motives and actions. But for the trained observer to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his mental results" (1). Holmes does not experience emotion in his observations because, like a scientist, he must remain objective in his work. But unlike (say) Star Trek's Mister Spock, he understands the emotions that he observes, and accounts for them in his reasoning.

However, something I often see in stories of scientific observation is that the keenest observers are able to observe the observations of others. I have a whole article in the Gaskell Journal actually, as regards Wives and Daughters, called "Observing Observation." That happens in "A Scandal in Bohemia": at the climax of the story, Holmes figures out where the incriminating photograph is by faking a fire and making Irene Adler look to where the photograph is hidden; he observes her observations: "The smoke and the shouting were enough to shake nerves of steel. She responded beautifully" (21).

But! It turns out that she was aware that Holmes was watching her, but he was unaware of this. In her letter to Holmes at the story's end, she tells him, "I followed you to your door, and so made sure that I really was an object of interest to the celebrated Mr. Sherlock Holmes" (24). That is to say, Irene Adler was observing Holmes's observations of her observations! So she ends up winning, and Holmes is awed by her.

At the beginning of the story, like I said, Watson claims that Holmes experiences no emotion. But something I've noticed throughout my reading of stories about observation, is not only are keenest observers able to observe observation itself, but that there is a correlation between this and emotion; my Gaskell Journal article ends with the claim that "to observe others carefully is to love them." Watson claims that Holmes knows no emotion, but we know by the story's end that this is untrue. If to observe others carefully is to love them, then to observe others' observations is the highest form of love, and that is why for Holmes, Irene Adler will always be "the woman" (25). show less

This first collection of shorter Holmes and Watson adventures is massively enjoyable.

Yes, the stories are a touch formulaic in that Holmes and Watson are typically met by a confused or panicked individual who manages to provide a completely coherent and well-observed summary of the mystery. Then Holmes almost always has the answer almost immediately and heads off to confirm his theory, then there is the denouement where certain suspicions are confirmed, and Holmes walks us through his solution.

And yet, for all of that, each one is vastly entertaining and well-written. Holmes is surely one of the pinnacles of fictional characters.

Love this stuff.

I'm borrowing a friend's heap of Sherlock Holmes collections--she read them in three weeks, and my challenge is to read them in less.

Unfortunately I seem to dislike to mildly like the short stories so far. A few stand out to me, like the ones that travel to the countryside or feature a tomboyish woman (traditionally I gravitate to stories featuring independent heroines). Still, those stories I only mildly like. The rest are okay.

Considering the vast popularity of the Sherlock Holmes series and its lead character, perhaps I should address how it's possible for someone to quickly lose excitement when reading:

1) Almost all dialogue. Maybe I'm a big fan of the "show, don't tell" strategy to writing or I'm a big of a misanthrope who wants to show more tell the characters to get over themselves, but I find having almost every sentence within quotation marks exhausting. Roughly half of the stories are three characters (Holmes, Watson, and a client) standing or sitting in a room, the client rattling the backstory. Frequently there are quotes within quotes, like relaying gossip. Sometimes the plot revolves around an almost petty issue so the dialogue sounds like gossip or someone who lacks the spine to resolve their own issues. I never cared for soap opera.

2) Too convenient. The other half of the stories have Holmes explaining step by step the solution to the problem with a deus ex machina quality, like the stars aligned just so that Holmes has everything he needs to promptly reach the right conclusion. Forgo any outliers or natural element of randomness. No one reads this for immersion. Granted, these are short stories, so I can't hold this part against the plot too much.

3) Stiff characters and language. While it is amusing to read with a general, BBC accent and many people love the English elite culture of the Victorian era, I found it all too stuffy. Impersonal. Everyone other than Holmes is colorless and shown next to him as complete imbeciles. Rarely is there someone who is more than an audience in a room. Outside of the round-about aristocratic dialogue, Doyle's writing is of no particular artistry or literary value.

I had to look up what the literary value of the stories were because I couldn't deduce them myself. Apparently Sherlock was popular because Doyle was the first to successfully write a mystery using forensics (others, including Edgar Allen Poe, did it first but didn't rise to main stream success).

It's one of those things where if you're impressed with the main novelty of the story (Sherlock's power of deduction in an era where that was "the" new thing) you'll love the story--most people seem to. However, what's novel to some is often gimmicky to me. I need more depth, even in short stories. show less

“He loved Peace Eagle (Irene Adler) purely, chastely, asexually, exclusively, in a way that put aside the female race most effectively, I dare say; a most proper chap, my imaginary friend—even for the 1890s….”

And yes: ‘Irene Adler’ implies German blood, and a Latin education: the world was the way it should be, (smiles).

It’s amusing…. Adventures are hardly ever about True Liberation (TM), of course, right…. A late Victorian guy dealing with death and murder and moral decay may have actually been unusually beyond-polite for that high noon of repression, you know, actually…. That Lord Dunsany guy’s signature book, for example, came later, a few years into the Jazz Age, right, and he was younger: and they were both show more adventure stories, but LD’s book was more…. Perfunctory; polite and nothing, right: whereas ACD’s first move apparently is to go immediately up to edge of respectability to demonstrate how far it was acceptable to go in ultra-pro-social hero-adventure tales, without straying over into things that should only ever be sung in Italian, rather than printed in English, right…. Which if you think about it, is ALMOST daring, right…. As opposed to just flowery vapid polite nothings, which would have been a dime a dozen back then and for many, many more years, as well, right….

…. (reads a few lines of technobabble discoveries) The adventure-technobabble does seem less stupid, cuter, than “The Martian”, though that’s a three-quarters case of being the difference between my mind-world a few years ago, when I was less sociable and less happy and more susceptible, therefore, to being blown off-course, by seeking fun, but not wanting it, basically: versus today….

Certainly there is that element of ‘a hero for worship’, right: it is curious how you could see one thing and make a few correct sly guesses about it, right—it’s far from impossible…. But sooner or later, you’d make more incorrect guesses than Hero Worship Boy Books would imply, right…. [It is true that, literally speaking, SH does encounter human limitations on a decent number of occasions: but the reader is never made to FEEL a sense that he is limited; it has no emotional meaning in the stories, IMO; it’s just…. I don’t know; it’s put in there for form’s sake, not because you’re meant to take that seriously, SH’s human limitations….], yeah, read poorly as a naive 7th or 8th grader, maybe even several grades earlier than that, whenever it was, this probably wasn’t the best influence on my development, given the context of those times—the 1990s—not that anything too substantial has changed, right…. (shrugs) But I expect it to be amusing…. It’s just so fascinating how the late Victorian times could be the high noon both of sentimental housewives, passive almost to the point of suicide by forgetting when to breathe, and, at the exact same time and place and class/race, the most robotic male super-cyborg intellectuals, right: you see kinda the same thing in the more ‘political/serious’ book ‘Resurrection’ by Tolstoy, although that’s not a book worthy of hero worship, either, really…. [If perhaps it also doesn’t deserve to get put down the memory hole on the sly, which is the treatment it has received, essentially, lol.]

(shrugs) But yeah: I mean, ~EYE~ guess wrong sometimes, why not Sherlock Holmes? I was watching the most putrid propaganda-romance film the other day, “The Proposal” (2009), and although I was taken in by no lie: I did guess incorrectly about what lie Leni Riefenstahl (and I did literally watch it out of curiosity due to the woman-director aspect, lol) had slated for the next scene, lol….

I don’t know. It’s entertainment. Novels are one form of entertainment. I’ll swap out the Dunsany for this, once I’m done: Elf-bride boy didn’t really write anything I’m glad to have read, today, in retrospect, and really nothing in that book rewards the award of time, right; whereas this does promise amusement….

…. It’s amusing how Sherlock both lies and indeed, breaks the law, right. I don’t mean that as criticism, of course. Who doesn’t fantasize about doing just what they like, legal or not? Evidently not people who solve crimes for a living, a-hahaha! 😁

And yeah, it’s funny how being an opera girl was like the next thing to being a high-price….

~”Back then, things were good, children! Women lacked power; men lacked desire! It was the way Jesus intended when he created the world, before there were Democrats!” (rolls eyes) “Yes, Grand-mama[/papa]….”

…. (finishes the Bohemia story) Rather nicely done. It’s very cute, and very aware of the current ideas, in an amusing way. Cute, and yet it could JUST have happened, right…. Sometimes the interpretations of life and society that the characters give are quite questionable: although they’re just what people would have said, at the time, right….

…. (The Red Headed League) I did read this book, I think, as an older-child Millennial 90s youth, right: I guess reading is a good habit to get into, right, but it is amusing how little you get out of it at a certain point in your journey…. (It doesn’t help if people don’t really raise you to see the actual important issues: they just coach you to be loyal—I think that the technical term is, ‘parenting’, lol—and have minimal “improper” behavioral expressions, right…. Although, I got into trouble anyway, because there isn’t a single, one-piece, simplistic sort of system to be loyal to, anymore, right…. Although I don’t know that our way of raising kids has really changed, right….) I thought that a ‘red headed league’ was just the most quixotic, most random thing, right, just take out a coin and flip it random, right: like a club for people whose name starts with A, right…. But this was the 1890s; for us today it would be more like, ‘A club for people whose name is Carlos’, right…. It’s the equivalent of having a Carlos Club, where people who are named Carlos get a chance at a computer programming job, right…. (At the time, encyclopedias were like, technology, right?)…. Although the whole thing wasn’t really what it seemed, right: although I don’t think/I hope that the REAL (criminal) plot wasn’t an ‘ethnic’ one, right; it was the Anglo handlers of the program who were up to a little something something….

…. It’s funny how the first two stories are almost modern, but in the 1890s British way, you know: ‘disreputable’ women, and then one of the ‘disreputable’ ethnicities, and both stories reference the USA, right!…. Not to backtrack, but it is funny, how the gossips talk about opera girls, now vs then, right….

…. “…. and a girl of fourteen, who does a bit of simple cooking, and keeps the place clean….”

Well, I guess that’s the way it should be: the way of the ancestors, right? Wholesome, traditional womanhood, unsullied by feminism, living wholly within its own proper sphere, but not without a certain power, unique to that peculiar sphere, you know…. 😉

👽

…. Sherlock as a lover of music and leisure (and then-legal drugs) is curious. I rather believe it….

I wonder how unusual it was in the 1890s to portray the ‘ethnic’ British man as assimilated and un-harried—a little unimportant, you know….

…. (A Case of Identity) It’s not quite as Freudian as I was expecting; I suppose that even male lovers want more than (failing the other thing), flirting—but that, OTHER, thing, that is relevant to dalliances, right…. [💵….]. I suppose it’s the pre-Freud’s fame, ‘Freudian’ thing, right. It is true that these things do change from time to time, even if the sexy sexist Dr. Sigmund was correct, that they tend not to be ‘respectable’, right. To make a small tangent, Freud himself wanted people to be ‘respectable’, albeit in a non-‘respectable’ way; he wanted to be the superego, reminding people, (especially women, of course), to sacrifice ‘sufficiently’, for ‘love’, right…. But, I digress.

…. Oh, and I’m reading the story on a Kindle, which shows popular lines to underline: and apparently people tend to underline the one line, the callously sexist one, about how, women just love their delusions, right; the cautiously cross-cultural one about how Hafiz is as good as Horace, not so much…. Well, it’s the 21st century, ladies and germs: oppression is over: you can all go home now! That’s right, I said it: scram! Nothing to see here!….

Move along! 🏏 (the ball isn’t as relevant as the bat, lol)

…. (Boscombe Valley Mystery) A little rural murder to investigate…. Good, good: best to get out into the pure air…. ~People always used to talk like that, about country air: and I guess they’re right; I guess during Queen Vicky’s days, people still remembered that their cities produced pollution, right…. Though of course, American (to speak of myself) agriculture grows more and more unnatural every year, I suspect, to speak of only the aspect of society under review…. But yeah: it’s curious; city air versus country air—the thing too obvious to be retained in the popular imagination….

And it is funny how Watson’s wife emerges just long enough to underline her lack of importance, almost like the servant; and Sherlock underlines how they don’t trust country people, it seemed like he was saying, right…. Yes, the urban English male person, with money, right, back in those times…. (smiles, jazz hands)

…. At least there’s a lot of ambiguous woman characters in the story, right. Loads of ambiguous characters, you know: the male characters, you know, are of course not arranged in a hierarchy, right….

It is amusing to think that a man, especially if perhaps not only in the 1890s, (we just wouldn’t have this choice anymore, right), would rather increase his chances of being killed by the state, than disclose the nature of his romantic humiliations, you know….

I certainly believe that part, right?….

…. It is true, that it is amusing, how clever Holmes is.

…. (The Five Orange Pips) A story about the KKK is an unusual choice for 1890s England, so that’s certainly curious; however, ACD seems to have bitten something off without being able to chew and digest properly: he set himself the sort of task he was not adjusted to doing well. [Not exactly a BAD choice, being ‘ambitious’ like that, but it can affect the quality of the work, if you follow.] It’s fascinating, in an idle sort of way, to read these sorts of Technology of the 1890s Sleuthing Stories, but something more is required for an adequate investigation into the story of a white terrorist organization hunting traitors, you know?

…. (The Man with the Twisted Lip) Reading things “from history”, so to speak, can be curious. Nowadays, the “problem” is immigrants—they don’t even look like us! Back then, the “problem” was areas associated with the “emigrant ships”, right: they can’t even make it here!…. The societal attitude towards the districts which peopled emigrant ships, which is echoed, is by no means kind, right….

(smirk) But then, kindness ought to be the attribute of women, right: and not men….

…. And whenever Sherlock has the slightest difficulty with his powers, he is most inhuman with himself—but I suppose that, “all men are like that”, right. [😉]

…. I don’t mean to be precious about the poor—anyone can be greedy; viciousness is here there and everywhere; class lines are blurry; crazy is everywhere, people get used to it, shrug it off—but yeah: the Victorians, the English Victorians~ they told some far-fetched fantasies about the poor, you know. The poor…. They’re rich!…. They’re a real problem!

…. (The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle) It seems like quite a random, circular, goes-nowhere story, thematically speaking, but, here’s a funny line: ‘My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people don’t know’—That’s the character, right: right there. And that’s why his name is a byword for the intellectual-who-stirs-up-resentment-in-us: you know, that vaguely [USA] Midwestern phrase, ‘No shit, Sherlock’, all that sort of phraseology; they resent it—and why periodically people plunge however-many millions into Sherlock Holmes Costume Dramas, you know: because he’s the Grand Old Scientist From the Past, and people look up to him, right. [figure it out lol 🤷‍♂️]

…. (The Adventure of the Speckled Band) Obligatory trashing of the minority ethnic community (Gypsies, as they are sometimes called)….

…. So Sherlock is a strong man: lifts weights, apparently, or: some kind of strength training. Curious. Of course, there’s so little of that shown, as opposed to the (non-romantic) dandyism, and the intellectualism—that there is that possibility of male vanity/beauty; whereas the hero worshipper has even sometimes associated himself with virtue/strength he does not have, out of loyalty, and a sense of the abstract-ideal ‘male’, and fantasy, and all that….

But yeah: that is one of the benefits of a less technological time, (although hopefully one day we will learn the true sort of thought, and not the obsessive sort of thought, and learn to balance the true sort of thought, with the strength of the embodied creature, right): in old times, before powerful technologies—and even the Victorian times was an age of ~~very young~~ technology, right: there was more of a sense of the need of bodily vigor….

People think they can get their bodily vigor back by supporting old-fashioned prejudice: which is a bit like saying…. I don’t know, that learning French will make you a good cook: and I’m not talking about going to Paris, just doing some crazy ass thing like reading Petrarch in French, right; yes, I know where he was from, lol….

…. This isn’t about any of the stories, but, SH isn’t always bad.

~Sherlock in the Future!

“They tell me that this is food, my good man.”
~(examines plastic, then shakes head) An interesting hypothesis, of course…. (returns to him) But, there’s no evidence.

…. (The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb) “…. when the facts evolve slowly before your own eyes, and the mystery clears gradually away as each new discovery furnishes a step which leads on to the complete truth.”

…. (a medical patient to a doctor) “Between your brandy and your bandage, I feel a new man….”

Not that I don’t wonder what some medical historians of the future will think we were on about, with some of these chemicals of ours, and some of our ideas, but: but, yeah…. Progress has certainly been made in our civilization, upon certain lines, anyway. And it’s silly to have hero-worship notions about the past, sometimes, right?

…. ~The Cassandra: The men of the 1890s felt unconsciously guilty for sidelining women, and Christianity encouraged guilt as a positive experience, right. They were also naturally enough afraid of the machine of man, that they were a part of, right….

…. (The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor) “As to his dress, it was careful to the verge of foppishness….”

It’s funny, describing clothing style as ‘careful’, nowadays, at least if we were listening to a song (in the unlikely event that the words were non-liquid enough to describe anything as practical as clothing or even, in a concrete way/in any sort of complete way, appearance, even, right), or watching a movie: in something like that, today, ‘careful’ wouldn’t necessarily tend towards the idea of going for the heart-strings, IMO, right—more like, playing to the nostalgics/parents, etc. (Although clearly there is more overlap between the two strategies than either ‘parents’ or ‘children’ sometimes admit, right.)…. But yeah: in person, I do think that you’d get an idea that a ‘careful’ choice of clothes is going in for the kill, albeit by the very weapon of respectability, right. And in the early 21st century, the notion has indeed survived that pleasant appearance is indeed not suitable to Team Adjutant-to-the-Birth-Giver, right (‘foppish’). I’m not sure I want to seem beautiful myself; I’d rather be more like a practical woman (a drudge, lol), than a beautiful one, in order to be of service ‘to a lady’, right: although here the issue is more class, than gender considered in splendid isolation, right….

…. “We can’t command our love, but we can our actions.”

…. Here comes the crazy man, old chap, said Watson with disdainful glee. I wonder that his relatives don’t keep him locked in the attic or the cellar, with the dogs and the servants who have taken ill.
~I’m going to make money today, so that fate will never be mine, Sherlock declared, rubbing his hands together in material delight. But soft! What light from yonder window breaks! It is the customer, who will be properly serviced, and billed. 👻

~But yeah: I’m always so thrilled when my fellow white men take such a kind and egoless concern with my welfare, right. Aside from old white ladies going to church socials and being, correct-human-beings/helpless invalids, Black people being violent and American, white people being violent and American, and the woke people deciding that I am better off feared than engaged with, that has to be one of my absolute ~favorite~ things, when one of my fellow-white-men looks at me like, Hey Jim! It’s that guy! It’s that white kid who looks just like us! Yes, that random stupid kid with the fucked-up resume! The crazy one—the very same!…. (British gaze, from above) Do you think he can do any tricks? (considers this question with all deliberate consideration)

~(shrugs) I mean, they’re amusing stories, don’t get me wrong…. But they’re not about, me, even, you know…. I don’t know how to describe it….

…. ‘The only disadvantage to the girl, is that she is pretty, and men like her: but really she is a fine servant, truly serviceable and adequate.’

Oh, to be a girl in those times: just to ~live~ in those times!…. And all that has only been slightly changed: everything is loosened from its fixtures and changed, but not healed or at all different in essence: merely dislodged from its security, and risen up, therefore, in wrath!

…. Girl receives suitor, unknown person—get snippy at both of them

Girl has suitor, known felon, runs away—write her off, we have enough problems

But yeah: the information processing is indeed pretty remarkable. It’s the moral values, lol, that are lacking….

…. (The Adventure of the Copper Beeches)

~(SH) To the lover of art for its own sake, sometimes the less-prestigious art is of greater merit or interest….

~I’m surprised to hear him say that, given of what one takes his character to be, and of course the date: but it is true. It is very true. The prestigious things, the sort of things that cannot be avoided because they flow down from on high into everything else, are sometimes well, but prestige, and merit or interest are different things, and sometimes place ought to be yielded to that which also cannot be avoided, the flower of the ever-fertile valley, which abounds greatly, and as the air is clean and true up on high, so too is the earth soft and living down in the valley, wouldn’t you say?

Prestige, and merit or interest are different things, though not many of Queen Victoria’s subjects necessarily agreed, right…. But there was a lot of Aquarian energy on Arthur Conan Doyle’s chart: and God knows we’re strange people, we Aquarius sorts….

…. (SH) “Crime is common. Logic is rare.”

It’s not that he has a perfect personality, or is without a personality, or is never bent on receiving pride of place—a useless sort of location, right. (Though perhaps I don’t know that either; but then, it is hard to forget sometimes that “Sherlock” has entered the folklore memory as, at least in part, the caricature of an intellectual, and I hope I am not THAT, though I am quite sure that I have, some, at least, of the character defects of my general type.)

But yeah, there is, still, a sort of truth to that striking sentence, right: crime is common…. I have never been the logician sort of intellectual, even at the times when I have been most studious and withdrawn, right. But they too, have a certain claim to truth, right: the logic-finders…. Crime is common…. Logic is rare…. You could draw false inferences from that dictum; but it is, itself, true, you know?….

…. A man with money offering you way above the market value of your services is, “a philanthropist or a villain”, that’s so true, and in a book of crime and/or general misconduct adventures, we know which it is, right…. God, sometimes I feel like I’d get in trouble, you know, for tipping a girl ‘too much’, right…. What a world, gentlemen and gentlewomen! What a world! 🤪

…. This last story is wonderful. Obviously there is the issue of upper-class solidarity, and then too, it wasn’t at all uncommon, wouldn’t you say, for Victorian popular opinion to be awake to the issue of sexual abuse, albeit in its own peculiar way, right…. But it does seem to be very tuned in with sympathy to a woman with agency: ACD seems far more touched by needs of the woman with intellectual training, than many men of the 1890s would have been, right…. It seems almost to anticipate the good as well as the bad points, of a Betty Friedan, right….

…. So yeah: it is kinda a story about a polite society man making a fetish out of polite beauty (women’s hair); it’s a very good premise….

…. (SH) “I have frequently gained my first real insight into the character of parents by studying their children.”

It does indeed go both ways…. Not to be laboriously autobiographical, although naturally what I, as well as what everyone else writes or says is under-written by lived experience: but it’s always curious when the parent is “normal” or “successful” or at least, I don’t know, “not too different from everyone else; just another working adult”, and the child, much less so, right: not that individuals are not distinguished, but often a line of thought that leads to madness was pursued in the child until the consequences flowered, that they learnt from the parent(s), as the parents possessed it, but which they themselves, (the elders), in a fit of instinct, extinguished partially just in time, or else by sheer whim did not pursue (their error, that is) in any sort of ‘logical’ way: thereby escaping the lion’s share of the consequences, or the ‘price’, so to speak.

Although it appears that the plot does not bear out my previous supposition, (“a fetish out of polite beauty”), at least, literally, although on psychoanalytic grounds, it would appear (vis a vis politeness and ordinariness) very strange a story indeed, substituting the one idea for the other….

So much of men’s lives is ruined by having power, right…. Our greatest wish, in our moments of bravery, is to show what powers of women overshadow us: but if women are nothing but passive vulnerability only, then our desires themselves are lies, and our lives, though surely spent and worn out, by and by, one way or another, burn out, but only in a half-lived way, right….

…. Yes, a drop of gore is the thing, right. It’s obviously kin—a sort of older cousin—to the sort of ‘crime’ reporting that often fascinates people who in fevers and delusions imagine that the fears it stokes benefits them: not infrequently even by those populations most obviously disadvantaged by that sort of thing, right; drops of gore, and pounds of foolishness…. Still, it is true that there are violences and wars and battles, in our so-called peaceful, unified, and rational society, right….

The themes in the stories are usually almost entirely laid out in their first half: with the second half being largely mechanical and more a matter of ‘cleaning up’, so to speak…. But he’s not a bad writer at all, ACD: competent, and also, amusing. show less

A strong collection of Holmes stories, highlighted by the powerfully creepy “The Speckled Band,” the modestly gothic “The Copper Beeches,” and the delightful “A Scandal in Bohemia.”
The only story that was substandard for me was “The Blue Carbuncle,” in which the plot was too fantastic to be believed. But even that story is full of the late Victorian atmosphere and Holmes at his best.
We tend to forget how much mystery stories and novels owe to Conan Doyle. His ideas and plots are being used even today as inspiration for authors.
If you long for gas-lit London, hansom cabs, fog, and excellent detecting, try this volume, either for the first or fifth time. You’ll be glad you did.

A varied, intriguing collection. My favorites are "A Scandal in Bohemia," "A Case of Identity," "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle," and "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches," because they are fascinating but deliciously plotted mysteries. "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" is suuuuper creepy (and it involves a creature I hate), but it's one of the most suspenseful stories in the collection.

These are the classic Sherlock tales, and they’re probably the best known of all the short stories. I remember my dad reading these aloud to my brother and me when we were children. These stories are distinctive and quite enjoyable, and in my opinion, some of Sherlock’s most memorable moments occur within these pages. I liked that not all of these stories involved traditional crimes, and I also liked that several of them featured strong women. Holmes fails in at least two of these stories, and it really was something to see the great detective in his lower moments as well. He is still a very human character, for all his powers, and he’s very well fleshed-out here. On the whole, a wonderful collection of tales.