I’ll be uploading rankings of Sherlock Holmes stories from my new book, Wherever Fact May Lead Me: A Ranking of the Sherlock Holmes Stories, every day till we reach the best story. After that, I’ll share my ranking of the best villains in the Holmes canon. You can find the rankings on my website, and you can buy a copy of the book on Amazon.
Ranking the Sherlock Holmes Stories
6. The Adventure of Silver Blaze (December 1892, Memoirs)
One of Doyle’s most subtle mysteries, The Adventure of Silver Blaze is also one of his best. The brilliant idea of setting up the horse as the killer of John Straker, and of permitting Silver Blaze to act in self-defense so that the mistreated equine might not seem culpable, is, of course, a master stroke. But perhaps some of the soft touches on this wonderful story are even finer. For instance, after Holmes reads the note from the milliner, it so happens that he then meets Mrs. Straker. He asks her whether he met her at a garden party; she answers in the negative, and he responds with the remark that he was sure it must be her in the silk, dove-colored dress with ostrich feathers. (This must be a beautiful dress. A quick search on the internet to determine whether such queenly treasures are even sold today reveals that, in fact, they are. There is a gorgeous one hundred percent silk dress with ostrich feather trim listed on Ivan Young’s website for $30,000.) Mrs. Straker denies ever having owned such a dress, and Holmes’ gentle probing proves a remarkable success. He has fathomed that Mr. Straker purchased the dress for another woman.
Later, when Colonel Ross states, “So you despair of arresting the murderer of poor Straker,” Holmes answers with such dry humor as to bring a smile to the reader’s face, “There are certainly grave difficulties in the way.” Indeed there are, as the arrest of a horse would present grave difficulties. Then, of course, there come two of Doyle’s most two zephyr-like yet damning touches: the “curious incident” of the dog in the night-time and the “singular epidemic” of the sheep. Both clues serve to assure Holmes that his theory is accurate and thus condemn John Straker; both clues are indicative of Doyle’s position here: that of a masterful writer at work upon a polished text.
Finally, we have Holmes doing what Holmes does best, and that is empathizing. In wondering where the horse goes, Doyle permits Sherlock to remark, “The horse is a gregarious creature.” Indeed, it is this comment that leads him to calculate as a horse might. Upon finding itself stranded on the moor, the horse (unlike, say, more solitary animals such as the fox or owl) may make for what the horse interprets to be civilization, looking for the company of its brother horses. I do not say that Holmes thinks like a horse, but I believe that here Doyle shows how, more often than not, Holmes uses his great powers to predict what another will do by putting himself, more or less, in that other’s shoes.
It must be noted that Silver Blaze is not the only episode in which Holmes empathizes, and that sometimes his success in cases is contingent upon his ability to do so. He professes to put himself into the butler Brunton’s shoes in The Musgrave Ritual, and he is successful; he does not put himself into Irene Adler’s shoes in A Scandal in Bohemia, and he fails there. The question, it seems, that he asks himself when solving a criminal case, is not so much, “What would I do?” but rather, “What would I do, if I were him?” The dependent clause, of course, is infused with sympathy and togetherness toward the perpetrator, in the spirit of clearing up the matter for the sake of discovering the truth.
With atmospheric touches to the settings, with the subtlety and care that mark the best of all literature, Doyle gallops by lengths to preeminence in penning The Adventure of Silver Blaze.
