24 June 2014

A Review: The Return of Sherlock Holmes by A. Conan Doyle

4/5 stars

I have been reading books so slowly this year but after starting the third series of the BBC's “Sherlock” I decided to go back to my near-omnibus collection of Holmes tales and finish the third short story collection to be published. How does one review Sherlock Homes stories? If you are already a fan of the consulting detective these stories are more of the same. Watson is as wooden and clueless as ever. Holmes is as brilliant and manic as ever. The details of Victorian London with its trains, hansoms, calling cards, telegrams, retired soldiers and women caught by social conventions are all part of the fun. However, if you are planning to start reading the Holmes stories, there are better places to begin (I suggest A Study in Scarlet, which is the beginning). Doyle killed his creation off in 1893 because of his own declining interest in writing the stories. The stories in this collection began appearing in 1903 and though Holmes is back by popular demand, it seems the break didn't help Doyle rekindle any interest in the character.

I think mystery stories should be a game the author plays with the reader. Many clues are given by the author and the reader has a chance of sifting through them all to guess the solution just ahead of the author's revelation of the truth. If mysteries are that game, in these stories Doyle often cheats. More so than in other Holmes collections the adventures in Return rely on tiny clues which only Holmes observes (that's fine, he's the genius detective) and which Holmes doesn't tell anyone about (come on!). The adventures of the Priory School, the Golden Pince-Nez and the Abby Grange all strike me that way. That said, they aren't all cheaty. The Missing Three-Quarter, the Six Napoleons and my favorite Sherlock Holmes short story, The Solitary Cyclist are each about initially mistaking a character's motivations rather than missing subtle trace evidence.

I'm sure others have looked into this, but I also notice what I assume is a change is Doyle's view of the law. Much more often in this collection Holmes looks the other way or denies knowledge of the truth in the face of the law because he is enacting his own sense of justice. In one story Holmes declares no one else is better suited to serve as judge of an impromptu court than himself! More than one murderer and it seems several thieves are let off by Holmes because they acted as they did in self-defense or to help a friend or because they were put to by love. In many of these “outside the law” stories the real killer or the blackmailer or general jerk ends up dead anyway. I have a friend who says “The universe tends to unfold as it should.” I guess Doyle thought the same way.

As with previous stories, there is a disturbing amount of fear of the foreign to Holmes' cases. It seems there is no truly English crime. The source of the trouble is always some outside influence. It always turns out that if an actual crime has occurred it was an Italian plasterer, an Australian sea captain, a whale fishermen who sent too much time in Norway, a fortune made in Rhodesia, a jealous Creole wife, or a Russian revolutionary who sets the plot in motion. That could be a reason to read these second-rate mysteries. The fin de siecle zeitgeist was powerfully suspicious. That sentiment is part of what lead to the horrors of the Great War, now one hundred years old. Thanks, Conan Doyle.

One last thing, for fun. Since I started with “Sherlock” let's return there. Here's my match up of the series three “Sherlock” episodes and the original stories which inspired them, several of which are in The Return of Sherlock Holmes.
The Empty Hearse – The Empty House (title and a few scenes).
The Sign of Three – The Sign of the Four (title and almost nothing else).
His Last Vow – Charles Augustus Milverton plus little bits of His Last Bow and The Second Stain.