Though ice cold logic was ever his bread and butter, Mr. Sherlock Holmes had a talent and taste for histrionics. While skilled as an actor, as “The Sign of Four” and “A Scandal in Bohemia” proves, Holmes was also a dramatist, as demonstrated in “The Naval Treaty” and “The Six Napoleons.” The great consulting detective … Read more
Reading in the dog days should never be dogged reading. Just as summer is for recreation, so also is it for recreational reading. Light reading material, however, should not be lousy reading material. The aim of reading is for enrichment even when it is for enjoyment. It is always preferable to engage in reading that … Read more
Eastertide, 1894 marked the resurrection of a famous figure besides Jesus Christ. Sherlock Holmes, supposed dead for three years following his agony with the Napoleon of Crime, reappeared suddenly to his friends in London—heralded not by an empty tomb, but by an empty house. There are very few literary giants with so perfect a resurrectional … Read more
“Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.” — from A Case of Identity Recently I came across a headline—the US Supreme Court rules against the estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: no longer able to control the author’s most famous character, Sherlock Holmes is finally free! As well … Read more
“Sherlock Holmes was a drug addict without a single amiable trait,” wrote George Bernard Shaw—and he was absolutely right; but such vehement condemnation betrays the irresistability of Sherlock Holmes. In 1886, a struggling physician named Arthur Conan Doyle made a fateful decision which was intended simply to pay the bills, but which would end up enriching … Read more
The world reeled in disbelief and grief. Sherlock Holmes was dead. But not for long. His resurrection—or resuscitation, to use a more practical term instead of such a mystical one out of reverence for the Master—his resuscitation brought with it a matchless struggle between logic and magic. Out of the tomb, a hero and a … Read more