Sherlock Holmes

As you’ll be able to tell from my last post, I’ve read a lot of Conan Doyle recently. In a word, these books are spectacular. I’m sure you don’t need my review on that, they’re classics for a reason. Mostly written from the point of view of Holmes’ best friend Watson, the mysteries are great and engrossing, and towards the end of the series the books even explore a softer side of Holmes, who demonstrates care for his friend more clearly.

I heard John Robins say on a podcast that the thing with Poirot, for example, is that he gathers people who are all equally as likely to have dunnit in a room, and goes through how they all could have dunnit, and then reveals who actually dunnit. With Holmes however, there can be only one answer. His logic cuts through any amount of guesswork or conjecture, and as with Benjamin Stevenson’s rules from Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone, there is no magic. You’re given the same facts as Holmes - with the occasional exemption of a details about where a certain tobacco comes from or some such. This leads to a great sense of satisfaction. I’m not a guesser myself, I’m along for the ride, but all the same there’s a lot of “oh yes, of course!”.

I’d like to write just for a moment abut the Hound of the Baskervilles. This is hands-down the most famous of the canon - in fact I have a vague memory of seeing a stage play about it when I was very young - and it’s easy to see why. It stands apart from the others firstly by being a full-length novel, as opposed to a short story, or - sometimes - a half-novel, the other half of which is a semi-tedious backstory for the first half (looking at you, Valley of Fear). It’s sense of tension and drama are gripping - straying even at times into horror. It’s impact on the genre is clear and sweeping, and I’d recommend this book to anybody.

Not all the stories are winners, but none of them are bad, and all of them are worth your time if you like detective fiction at all.