Tag: Moriarty

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

23.  The Boscombe Valley Mystery (October 1891, Adventures)

A supremely well written story, The Boscombe Valley Mystery is remarkable for its shrewdness.  While notable for being the story which features Watson’s best quote (a compliment to his wife, Mary: “I should be ungrateful if I were not, seeing what I gained through one of them.”  The remark is an understated and delightful reference to his meeting of his wife in The Sign of the Four.), The Boscombe Valley Mystery’s particulars are more interesting than Holmes’ case.  For instance, the story gives insight into Watson’s philosophy as an old campaigner, “My experience of camp life in Afghanistan had at least had the effect of making me a prompt and ready traveller,” and the story provides a striking and memorable description of Holmes as a “tall, gaunt figure made even gaunter and taller by his long grey travelling-cloak and close-fitting cloth cap.”  As a mystery, Boscombe’s form is one that later stories, such as Gloria Scott, draw upon: seemingly respectable and aging Englishmen whose pasts, when these Englishmen made their bones, return to haunt them.  This story, however, comes before many of the others, and, again, in its particulars, it shines more brightly. 

For instance, it is in Boscombe that Holmes states his solidly logical, simple, and (for those reasons) all the more remarkable quote: that it is the simplest cases which are the most difficult.  “Singularity,” says Holmes, “is almost invariably a clue.  The more featureless and commonplace a crime is, the more difficult it is to bring it home.”  The maxim is true today; the more outré and extraordinary a crime is, the more clues a detective will have to latch onto.  Holmes also proposes that, “Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing.  It may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different.”  Indeed, this incisive remark about circumstantial evidence is still very true today, and a good deal of society—of whose members I of course include myself—would be wiser if the counsel was remembered and applied more often.  It is in Boscombe that Holmes also provides the quote, “Don’t you see that you alternately give him credit for having too much imagination and too little?”  This quote exemplifies sharp-witted acumen, acumen that I have often recalled ever since reading that passage as a young man, and which I have, from time to time, put into practice when thinking things over. 

The strong writing, however, does not end with these remarks, but continues on with Holmes’ driest jibe at the ferret-faced Lestrade (who, it should be noted, seems to be a rather amorphous figure with regard to his physical appearance, but is here described as a very foxlike and suspicious figure).  Lestrade makes a stab at Holmes, saying that he (Lestrade) finds it hard enough to tackle facts without flying off about deductions and inferences, and Holmes ripostes, “‘You are right,’ said Holmes demurely; ‘you do find it very hard to tackle the facts.’”  The nettlesome remark strikes home, and Lestrade surely feels it, for he replies, Conan Doyle writes, “with some warmth.”  Perhaps the rivalry between the official police and the private detective has never been so obviously on display, for, time and again, the police in Doyles’ stories seem to be more than satisfied with Holmes’ ingenious but unlikely methods, and Holmes, for his part, is often more than willing to give credit to the official force.  Finally, the description of Holmes as a hound upon the scent, when he arrives to Hatherly Farm, is exquisite prose.  The writing shows Doyle at his peak, and, at this lofty pinnacle, I believe Doyle is equal to nearly any other great prose-writer.  Doyle’s exposition, here in the places where Holmes looks for footprints in Boscombe, is equal to that of John le Carré, to Robert Louis Stevenson, to Harper Lee, and to Ursula Le Guin: men and women who conjure scenes with such fantastic lucidity as to galvanize the reader’s interest. 

Finally, Boscombe ends with Holmes and Watson in judgment, and it is one of their better moments as self-appointed deciders.  They hear out the old diabetic’s story, make him sign papers which shall be used to acquit the young accused if necessary, and then let old Black Jack follow his natural course.  All turns out well, and the young lovers live in prospects of happily ever after.  The ending is apposite, one well suited to a story well told, as is The Boscombe Valley Mystery.

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

24. The Devil’s Foot (December 1910, Last Bow)

While The Devil’s Foot has elements of originality, it also features familiar tropes.  As in The Reigate Squire, Holmes has been ordered to take a vacation for the sake of his own health.  He heads out to the Cornish cliffs.  When called to a vicarage, Holmes and Watson find two men in the throes of madness and a woman dead, an expression of horror upon her face.  Enigmatic though it is, Holmes soon solves the crime.  A toxic west-African herb, mostly unknown to Western medicine and called The Devil’s Foot, has killed Mortimer Tregennis’ sister, Brenda, and driven their two brothers insane.  The Devil’s Foot will, shortly after, kill Mortimer as well. 

As in The Abbey Grange, a hearty, manly, and virtuous Englishman takes revenge, while Holmes and Watson act as judge and jury.  In both cases, they declare the vengeful perpetrator, “Not guilty,” since he killed for the sake of protecting or avenging loved ones.  In both cases (in The Devil’s Foot and The Abbey Grange), Holmes and Watson release the culprit, and, again in both cases, I believe that they acted properly.  Underrated and overlooked like The Lion’s Mane, The Devil’s Foot is both deserving of greater critical attention and a good choice for a pleasure-reader’s bedtime story.

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

25.  The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb (March 1892, Adventures)

Poor Mr. Hatherly, the engineer who makes his dreary start on Victoria Street, is subject to the most Gothic and grotesque tale of the Holmes collection.  Hatherly’s grim narrative is reminiscent to stories of Edgar Allan Poe and of Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, though without the latter’s surrealism.  Invited to a country house by Colonel Lysander Stark—a thin, powerful, murderous German, one who could be an early template for the Nazi mold—ostensibly to fix a hydraulic press made for smashing bricks of Fuller’s earth, our ill-fated engineer proceeds into this hellhouse against his better sense.  His forebodings strengthen; he receives fair warning of danger; still he goes on.  We take a taciturn witching hour coach ride, enter a decrepit and sinister house, find the pale-faced maiden with warning signals writ clearly across her face (and later expressed fairly and clearly), and finally we enter into the colossal machine itself.  For the huge hydraulic machine’s press is a chamber large enough to fit three men, and, when Mr. Hatherly begins to understand the scope of the miscreant’s occupation, his taut host snaps.  Hatherly is shut into this chamber, and the machine is turned on.  Its vise-like walls begin to close upon him, and he is so close to death that he begins to wonder, in his fervency, how best to face it: upon his back, facing the closing ceiling?  Balled up, that he might be crushed like a grape?  The unfortunate man saves his own life at the last moment when he sees that, across the way, there is a second door that leads from the deadly chamber.  Hatherly slips through it, only just in time, and the machine crushes his lamp, which later sets the whole building on fire, and brings down the rogues’ operation.  In effecting his escape, Hatherly loiters long enough to ensure that the lady is not badly treated by Colonel Stark.  Stark pushes past the girl, and Hatherly, who is now (and once again) attempting to escape, finds himself hanging by his fingers from the window-ledge, whereupon Colonel Stark brings down a massive cleaver upon the engineer’s thumb.  Mr. Hatherly falls, makes his way across the moonlit garden, and faints.  He’s spirited away by the girl and a morose Englishman, the one whose stout frame so wholly fills his waistcoat.  Hatherly makes his way to London, is treated by Watson, then leads Holmes and Co. back to the scene of the extraordinary affair.  The house’s occupants have bolted, and the house itself is halfway to ashes.

The Engineer’s Thumb must be one of the most divisive in the canon, thanks to its gory nature.  No other story, save The Cardboard Box, which features the discovery of a pair of human ears salted in a box, is so grisly.  As a result, The Engineer’s Thumb revolts some of Doyle’s readership.  One needs a bit of a taste for horror and the Gothic to appreciate this tale, but, if one has those things, then readers can sometimes find the right moment and mood to read The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb.

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

26.  The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane (December 1926, Case-Book).

In The Lion’s Mane, Doyle chooses to allow Holmes to narrate the story, and I think that his decision to do so ought to be put into perspective.  The Lion’s Mane is the ninth story in the fifth collection of Holmes stories, and the fifty-third out of fifty-six stories that Doyle wrote about Holmes.  The Lion’s Mane was published in December of 1926 when Doyle was sixty-seven years old.  (He was born 22 May 1859.)  He published his final Holmes story less than half a year later, in April of 1927, and, with so many excuses for literary exhaustion available, Conan Doyle could be excused if the legacy of this story, like its antagonist, ended in a watery grave.  That this story succeeds is an occurrence that happens against all odds, and it is my belief that The Lion’s Mane is Doyle’s most underrated and overlooked Holmes story; it is a brilliant literary achievement that would be on par with Silver Blaze, if only The Lion’s Mane’s solution weren’t so improbable.

Doyle had lived during the Victorian age, and he did his best writing during those times.  (Queen Victoria ruled from 20 June 1837 till 22 January 1901.)  After her death came King Edward VII, a man of worldly tastes who still represented The Empire: colonies, the army, and international intrigue.  After the Edwardian era, which ended with the king’s death in 1910, George V rose to the British throne, and King George V was faced with a tumultuous world: one influenced by rapidly improving technology, manifestos on socialism and fascism, and the Irish’s strident demand for an independent state of their own. 

Then from 1914 to 1918, World War I came and went. 

With the war, many Kiplingesque views on the romantic side of war were blown away in drafts of mustard gas.  Now poets, like Wilfred Owen, wrote of haunting flares and old lies: dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.  Weapons changed.  Firearms designers become household names whose semi-automatic and automatic creations, more than a hundred years later, are still studied, copied, and adapted: Paul Mauser made the Gewehr 98, and Hiram Maxim the Vickers gun; the Lee-Enfield Mk I appeared; and John Moses Browning designed the M1895, the Ma Deuce, and the 1911.  For a man born to Victorian crown and country, Sherlock Holmes, like his friend, Dr. Watson, may have felt unnerved and displaced by the world’s abrupt changes.  Watson, after all, fought in the Second Anglo-Afghan War which lasted from 1878 to 1880, and his Pashtun enemies used the jezail, a type of matchlock musket.  Watson himself, if he were not serving as a surgeon, probably would have carried the Martini-Henry, a breech-loader that took long seconds to reload, and which fired but a single shot at a time.  By contrast, the Vickers machine gun could fire up to 600 rounds a minute, a staggering figure that might have flabbergasted and horrified both Holmes and Watson—though, as loyal servants of The Crown, they would likely have been rather glad to have the gun on the British side, instead of the other way around; Doyle might have quietly felt the same.

So, to me, The Adventures of the Lion’s Mane seems to be representative of Doyle’s search for a solid foundation for Holmes to stand upon in this unsettling time of upheavals.  And in changing the narrative structure, as well as in providing for a fresh plot—that thing which most makes Sherlock’s pretty little problems such a pleasure to read—Doyle’s search succeeds.  Doyle allows The Lion’s Mane to be told by Holmes himself, and our faithful chronicler Watson is excluded from the story.  And though Watson is normally to Holmes as roots are to trees, in this case he proves dispensable.  The political landscape that Doyle is writing in has changed so much from the early 1890s when Doyle first wrote—and he’s already invented so much for Holmes, and he’s already been taxed so dearly for his creation—that Doyle needs to take radical action to animate Sherlock’s adventures.  Here the narrative shift, coupled with the original plot, leave us with a story that is richly deserving of such a regal name as The Lion’s Mane.

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

The Fourth Tier: The Greats

These nine titles are each great in their own way.  Well-written with strokes of genius, they consist of works that are traditionally thought of as great and others which are not often as well known.  Stories like The Musgrave Ritual with Brunton the butler certainly belong to the former category while others, such as The Case-Book’s Lion’s Mane may belong to the latter.  There are a great many writers whose literary careers could have been made based upon any story in this tier, and there are a great many writers who achieved literary fame who never wrote a story as good as any of these: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Greats.

27.  The Adventure of the Three Garridebs (January 1925, Case-Book)

One of the best stories from The Case-Book.  Though The Three Garridebs drafts off The Red-Headed League, Killer Evans is a more violent villain than John Clay, aka Vincent Spaulding, and Evans nearly succeeds in offing Watson.  Our constant scribe is saved only by Evans’ faulty aim, for the American killer draws suddenly and unexpectedly, and Watson gets shot for the second time, though now in a third place.  (In The Sign of Four, Doyle states that Watson was shot in the leg.  In A Study in Scarlet, Watson was said to have been shot in the shoulder.)  

The Three Garridebs also benefits from the brief tour that Doyle gives us of Nathan Garrideb’s eclectic, museumesque home.  A collector of relics, the reclusive Mr. Garrideb’s unusual interests serve two purposes for the plot.  They provide a red herring to the reader, permitting us to wonder whether Mr. Garrideb has some exotic and valuable piece among his collection of whose worth he is ignorant.  The collection also serves to occupy all of Mr. Garrideb’s interest and time, thus keeping him at home, and necessitating Killer Evans’ brilliant but outré solution of inventing the Three Garridebs inheritance scheme.  Perfectly extraordinary in its conception, Doyle stokes the Victorian mania for viewing extremophiles and the habitats that they dwell in while also providing readers with locomotion for the mystery’s plot.  The end product is a success, one bolstered by the dash of brutishness that Evans provides and by the glimpses of Holmes’ asexual love for his friend, Dr. Watson, when Watson is injured. 

There are times when I wonder whether certain stories have been overlooked in the public eye thanks to the stories’ inclusion in later story collections, and I have wondered how the fame of some stories would have fared had they been published (in their exact same form) at different times in Conan Doyle’s career.  What if, for example, The Lion’s Mane and The Three Garridebs had been included in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Doyle’s first collection, and better known stories such as The Engineer’s Thumb, The Red-Headed League, and A Case of Identity had been published in The Case-Book?  At least in the case of The Lion’s Mane, I think that critical regard for it would have been higher.  In the case of The Three Garridebs, if it had been published when The Red-Headed League was published (and if The Red-Headed League was published when The Three Garridebs was published), I wonder whether The Three Garridebs would have become the more famous of the two, rather than the other way around.  Perhaps some of The League’s fame is due to the relative novelty of its story.  In The Red-Headed League, the plot was new, original, and inventive.  In The Three Garridebs, the plot, as stated before, was derivative.  Still, in keeping with this train of thought, if a late story with entirely original aspects, such as The Problem of Thor Bridge, had been published in place of, say The Five Orange Pips, I think that Thor Bridge might have been anthologized many times over, instead of being consigned to a place frequented primarily by Holmesiophiles.  The point is that I think that the worth of some Holmes stories is undervalued for no other reasons than the time of the story’s publication and the collection that the work was compiled in.  So while a slight lack of novelty may be partly to blame for this story’s relative obscurity, nevertheless there is a strong attractiveness to The Adventure of the Three Garridebs.

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

Fifth Tier: His Last Bow, The Unique Adventure

Exactly halfway through my ranking of the canon lies a tremendously unique story.  His Last Bow was published four years after The Dying Detective and four years before The Mazarin Stone, the next two temporally closest tales.  Written during the first World War, His Last Bow is not a mystery in the typical Holmesian vein.  Rather, His Last Bow elects to represent a zeitgeist of the era through symbolism, confident patriotism, and poetic prose.  Fairly well-written and with a plot that panders to John Bull, His Last Bow is a sui generis story, the canon’s platypus: a handsome creature ill-fit with its peers and deserving of a tier all its own.     

28.  His Last Bow: The War Service of Sherlock Holmes (September 1917, His Last Bow)

An espionage story published during WWI—before the Cambridge Five existed and before Kim Philby ever got his ugly mug printed on a Soviet stamp—, His Last Bow: The War Service of Sherlock Holmes tinged a John le Carré-esque passion for deep-cover-spycraft with nostalgia.  This is Doyle’s transition story as he acknowledges the end of an era.  The honorable traditions are being attacked, he realizes.  Good form and honor, the foundations of the Victorian age, are becoming passé.  The staid nation of England is slumbering and naïve, while, without its borders, the Continent shifts ever higher through its gears of war.  In the days before such ridiculous phrases as “the military-industrial complex” ever came to exist, before “shell shock” became an acronym, before that awful fiend with the hideous toothbrush mustache did what he did, contemporary readers found themselves immersed in a global war over the death of a faroff Archduke and the byzantine tangle of treaties that bound Western Europe together.  The guns changed; the mores changed; the social structures changed.  The defragmentation of a seemingly monolithic society into a pluralistic and seething mass of populism happened (despite its forewarnings) seemingly overnight, while the winds of change promised bitter storms.  For, as Holmes says, “There’s an east wind coming, Watson.”  Indeed, but one month after the publication of this story, in October of 1917, St. Petersburg was shaken by revolution.  This October Revolution marked the beginning of the Russian Civil War, while the Bolshevik known as Vladimir Lenin rose to power: a man who sought to sweep away capitalism and replace it with his own famine-inducing brand of Marxism.

Holmes and Watson stand at the frontier.  They mark the verge between the familiar, traditionalist England and the new unknown where seemingly no authority is held sacrosanct and no revered custom is above reproach.  They face the new while upholding the old.  If they are consigned to obsolescence it will be with their backs straight, their chins up, and with stiff upper lips.

The story itself is a profusion of dialogue.  To a larger degree than any other Holmes story, the dialogue feels weighted, didactic, and allegoric.  While reading, I cannot help but feel that the German villain is less a human than he is a representation of the enemies’ armies and governments.  Nor, in this story, do I particularly mind.  That Von Bork stands for the Central Powers is fine; he is a symbol, and symbols nearly always must be stereotyped and flattened to be recognized as such.  They can serve a purpose, and here that purpose is to convey a message.  In this case, the symbol stands for a coalition of nations that is trying to destroy and subdue England and the other Allied Powers (France, Russia, Italy, Romania, Canada, Japan, and the United States).  The message is that England, though apparently somnolent, is awake and has aces of her own up her sleeve; that she will fight; that she will not lay down and die.  So while symbolism, allegory, and jingoism are often criticized, in a setting when the two sides are mustard-gassing each other, mowing one another down with automatic rifle fire, and blowing each other to bits in glacially-paced trench warfare, a stereotype such as that of Von Bork is either of de minimis offense or, more appropriately, none at all. When the smoke clears after this war to end all wars, Doyle has only The Case-Book left to write.  Three years after the last story in the Case-Book is published, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle lies dead.  Nine years after his death, the rifles cock and fire again, this time for The Second World War, or, as it is often simply called: The War.  But before the Waffenamt are stamped—even before the tsar abdicates, and the Bolsheviks take power, and the samovars are tipped and spilled, there stand Holmes and Watson, resilient and intrepid before the oncoming, purging winds. 

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

29.  The Adventure of Black Peter (March 1904, Return)

A sensational story that would have benefited from involving our faithful chronicler Watson earlier in the case, The Adventure of Black Peter is a harpooning story with a whale of space for improvement.  As the story is written, Watson is aware that his friend, Sherlock, is on a case, for Watson is able to see the ripplings of one of Sherlock’s alter-egos, Captain Basil.  (Basil, by the way, was the name of the lead character in The Great Mouse Detective, a Disney story about Holmes, where Holmes and Watson, or facsimiles of them, are mice.)  Watson is introduced into the case only a week after the murder happens, but, by then, a great deal of the most interesting sleuthing has already been completed.  How much more captivating this case would have been if we, as readers, were summoned to the scene of the crime!  How much more fascinated would we be, if we had seen the bluebottles buzzing “like a harmonium,” and if we (along with Watson) were able to see Holmes in disguise as the persuasive and believable Captain Basil in the sailors’ smoky and treacherous dens!  We would have liked also, I believe, to see Holmes at the butcher’s, attempting (with minimal explanation to Watson) to thrust the harpoon through the pig.  (Though, it must be said, it was also very pleasant to see him returning to Baker Street, harpoon in hand, and to hear Watson’s ejaculation of disbelief, and his astounded demand to know whether Holmes had actually been carrying that monstrous weapon through the civilized streets of London.)  Other points of the story, such as the discovery of the notebook, could have been accounted for in other fashions.  For instance, the notebook could have been found by the ill-used wife or daughter, who kept it (for a time), fearing that it would incriminate the man who killed their hated father, then the notebook could have been turned over to Holmes and Hopkins a week later, with repentant apologies.  However, as the case stands, we have only the whiff of Holmes as he spirits in and out of Baker Street after the case has begun, and we have, furthermore, some fairly confusing timelines. 

For instance, Holmes, who is in fact investigating the case, nevertheless chides Hopkins for not inviting him to review it earlier.  Why Holmes needs this invitation, and when, exactly, he became involved in the case (if not from the very beginning) is a bit confusing.  The reader is meant to assume that Holmes becomes intimately involved in the case, I suppose, when Hopkins appears at Baker Street, but the reader must also assume that Holmes has been investigating it seriously since the murder happened (after all, Holmes has been dressing up as Basil and throwing a harpoon into a pig with every intention of clearing the matter up).  

Still, the case does not fail to pierce and pin our interest.  The horror stories of Black Peter’s domestic life are morbidly magnetic; the grim tale of the securities “borrower” and his ill-fated luck in the seas off the frozen Norwegian coast supply necessary backstory; the fantastic way in which Peter Carey meets his death is thrilling; and the apprehension of Patrick Cairns is gripping.  That said, if Conan Doyle had but embarked with Watson a little earlier, readers might have had an even more exhilarating voyage in The Adventure of Black Peter.

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

30.  The Adventure of the Six Napoleons (May 1904, Return)

I feel like I must begin my remarks about The Six Napoleons by first calling attention to the ostensibly commendable state of Victorian bookkeeping.  In the story, the Napoleonic busts were sold for fifteen shillings, the modern equivalent of about one hundred and forty-five U.S. dollars.  Accordingly, the Napoleonic busts are not items of extreme value, but neither are they worthless.  Throughout the tale, Holmes and Beppo use sales records of these busts to locate where they are.  Now, I do not believe that it is impossible that records were kept so well that Holmes and Beppo were able to track, from receipts and ledgers, the tortuous paths of all these busts, but I do say that it is highly, highly improbable, and if the Victorian Londoners were truly that careful with their record-keeping, then I confess myself ruefully shocked, yet I applaud them. 

Setting aside the suspiciously flawless paperwork trail, we get to the business of hiding the pearls in Napoleonic busts.  The idea is a brilliant one, and one can imagine how such a scenario could actually occur in real life.  It is more than doubtful, however, that Beppo, when seeking to regain the first Napoleonic bust after being released from prison, would steal it.  Probably, he would purchase it, thereby avoiding attracting attention to himself and risking getting sent, at once, back to the slammer.  

But, by story’s end Beppo must indeed return prison, and this time with likely a far more intense feeling of frustration than when he left it such a short time before.  After waiting a year to be released—presumably gnashing his teeth in impatience all the while—the Italian finally is set free, only to be hounded by some scourge of his own underworld, whom Beppo inadvertently kills.  In killing this man, Beppo raises his own profile, the very thing that he does not want to do.  Furthermore, Beppo must feel dashedly unlucky in that he does not actually ever find the pearl.  The pearl—fortunately for Holmes, Watson, and Lestrade—is in the sixth (and final) Napoleonic bust.  If Beppo had but found the pearl in the first bust, the one which he should have purchased, then he would have gotten away with the treasure, presumably fenced it for a princely sum, and likely lived out the rest of his life sleeping on silken sheets, riding in carriages drawn by magnificent horses, and being waited on hand and foot.  That circumstances turn out otherwise is quite fortuitous for Holmes, whom we last see bafflingly securing the black pearl in his own safe, rather than handing the pearl over to Lestrade the Scotland Yard representative in The Adventure of the Six Napoleons.

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

31.  The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax (December 1911, Last Bow)

A story with a good deal of inventiveness, and one that depends more heavily than most on its outcome, The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax is one of those exceedingly lovable stories, like The Abbey Grange and The Man with the Twisted Lip, where Holmes is temporarily flummoxed.  Holmes sends Watson to Switzerland to track down the wealthy and vulnerable Lady Frances Carfax, and Watson does yeoman’s work, which Holmes, upon his sudden arrival, immediately outclasses.  The situation is nearly singular, however, for rarely is Watson sent to do his master’s bidding (Watson is also sent as a proxy in The Solitary Cyclist, but he bungles the assignment so badly that it’s worth disregarding), and the reader is treated to a scenario in which the seemingly most reasonable conclusion that can be drawn is in fact drawn by the good doctor, viz.: that a tropically tanned, densely bearded fellow, one Honorable Philip Green, is on the trail of a fleeing Lady Carfax.  Holmes, of course, suspects something different, and we readers may recollect the sagacity of Holmes’ advice in Boscombe when he counsels us on how circumstantial evidence can seemingly point very clearly in one direction, but, when looked at it from a slightly different angle, may just as certainly seem to point in another.  In this case, the fact that a fraudulent missionary’s ear was torn tells Holmes that he’s on the trail of a degenerate Australian, a country which, despite its youth, “has turned out some very finished types.”  Thus the first part of this idiosyncratic story transitions to the second, and readers, as we transition along, find that the tale changes from a Whodunnit (for now we know who the miscreants are that have abducted Lady Frances Carfax), to a Howdunnit (we are treated to the pleasure of following Holmes as he discovers what has become of the poor wealthy woman). 

And, at first (and not for the last time in this story), Holmes is stumped.  He feels strongly that Carfax is in London in the captivity of her malefactors.  However, he can’t find her, and all his fishing expeditions into her whereabouts lead to empty-handed returns.  Not till Peters, or Dr. Shlessinger, or whatever the con man is calling himself at the moment, pawns some of Carfax’s jewelry does Holmes get a lead.  Holmes sends Green to wait at the same pawn shop, and the second time that a piece of jewelry is pawned, it’s done so by Peters’ partner in crime, who then toodles off to the undertaker’s where the clue to Carfax’s fate is left.  Holmes and Watson, in hot pursuit of the lead, fly to Peters’ house, where they force admittance, and they search the coffin, only to discover that the corpse is not Carfax.  Stymied but unbeaten, Holmes returns to Baker Street to lick his wounds and mull the case over, feeling that he’s missed some significant detail.  Indeed he has, and, early next morning, just before the funeral, he and Watson rush to the funeral and are just in time to save the Lady Frances Carfax from a horrendous burial alive. 

Lady Frances’ story is remarkable for its clinically professional narration, its employment of Watson as an irregular, and its double mystery (whodunnit and howdunnit).  The wily cunning of Peters fools Holmes, and, not only that, when Peters is first confronted by Holmes, Peters plays his role as suavely as can be, insisting not only that he’s clueless as to the whereabouts of Carfax, but going so far as to have the gall to insist that she owes him money, and that she’s paid him a fraction of what she owes him with her nearly worthless jewels.  The likeness of Peters to some of society’s most unrepentant fraudsters is admirable.  One has only to think of the snake-brained, selfish, and odious behavior of such fiends as H.H. Holmes, Elizabeth Holmes, Naasón Joaquín García, Peter Popoff, and Keith Raniere to know that Doyle’s Dr. Shlessinger is less a figment of Doyle’s imagination than a representative of our environment.  Yet, despite all the narrative grace that blesses the story, it is Holmes’ role as savior of Carfax’s life that gives this story the miracle treatment that it needs to ultimately succeed.  If Holmes had arrived too late, the entire story would have fallen down, for this tale was never set up to be a tragedy.  However, Holmes does arrive in time to save the diamonded damsel, and all’s well that ends well in The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax.

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

32.  The Adventure of the Resident Patient (August 1893, Memoirs)

One of those mysteries which Holmes can deal with mostly during his client’s visit, The Adventure of the Resident Patient is a tale that is so suffused with the narration of events by Holmes’ client and later by explanatory backstory that we, the readers, have very little opportunity of seeing Holmes employ his most remarkable powers.  At present, I cannot recall whether on my first reading of The Resident Patient (which was, I believe, on a holiday to Martha’s Vineyard during my teenage years to celebrate my grandparents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary [although I can recall that I ate five pounds’ worth of Jelly Belly’s sour jelly beans on that trip while reading, for the first time, The Adventures, The Memoirs, and The Return of Sherlock Holmes]) I was able to deduce that Blessington was lying.  I only know that now, after many years, and after many re-readings of the story, Blessington’s ruse seems to be a rather transparent one.  I can only hope that, as a young man and a first time reader, I felt surprised. 

The plot is no more than middling.  A deus ex machina benefactor arrives to provide financial backing, in the form of an investment, to a penniless doctor with potential.  The benefactor’s real hope is to secure for himself a regular income while also providing himself with a comfortable, discreet retirement, as he is a bank robber whose gains are ill-gotten.  This bank robber has ratted out his confederates, one of whom was hung, while the others were jailed.  Now that the prisoners have been released, they’ve conceived of the idea of faking catalepsy before the doctor with the hopes of gaining access to Blessington, the rat who is quartered at the doctor’s office.  Why the prisoners feel that they must fake catalepsy is a little unclear.  In the first place, the idea seems dangerous: men who have just been released from prison would not likely try to fool a specialist at his own field (nor is it likely that the specialist, no matter how infrequently he’s actually seen catalepsy, would be duped by such amateurs).  Furthermore, the staging of catalepsy seems unnecessary, for, in the end, the former prisoners simply use their inside man, a young page, to let them into the house at night.  Once inside, the ex-convicts judge Blessington, then they hang him.  Why, if they needed to identify Blessington or where he lived, would they have placed the page at Dr. Trevelyan’s office?  Why, if they needed to see Blessington, would they break into his quarters with only a single man, as they did prior to hanging him?  Finally, why would Blessington, who has means and money, stay in London after he knew that his former confederates were out of prison and looking for him?  If I had done what Blessington had done, and I knew what Blessington knew, I would gather my assets, sail at once from London to France, travel to Paris, and then go on to Vienna or Geneva or Milan—or even further, to India or to Australia, if I thought that my pursuers could track me to the Continent.  At the very least, if I were Blessington, I would take a few days’ holiday to Scotland or Wales.  Instead, even after receiving a debilitating fright, Blessington stays in the one place where he knows his enemies can find him, and his inaction enables him to pass into an oblong box as a resident patient.

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

33.  The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter (August 1904, Return)

A moving and melancholy mystery, The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter is one that is saved from utter cheerlessness by the mischievous, amusing way in which Holmes handles Lord Mount-James, as well as by the appearance of the handsome dog, Pompey, whose faultless tracking of an aniseed scent leads Holmes and Watson to an isolated cabin amid wildflower laden fields.  The story is one that is rife with pathos, yet it refrains from being mawkish or overly sentimental, while the good doctor, Leslie Armstrong, is the character in the canon who retreats most quickly from the shadows of suspicion into the brilliant beams of loyalty and honesty.  The Missing Three-Quarter begins with a rather enigmatic message that emphasizes how Sherlock’s powers of study are not all-encompassing; he is completely clueless as to the fame of one of England’s most famous amateur athletes, for sport does not fall into Holmes’ bailiwick.  The story progresses rather quickly, leading readers first to the Bentley Hotel (constructed in 1880, eight years before the famed automotive engineer, Walter Owen Bentley, was born), then off to Cambridge where we meet Dr. Armstrong. 

The case turns out to be one of those in which no crime is committed, and, to The Missing Three-Quarter’s credit, it shows that not every mystery needs a murder, or—more extreme yet—a serial killer.  Rather, what makes mystery literature work is the same as what makes all literature work: quality characterization, atmospheric setting, believable and invigorating dialogue, and an enthralling plot.  That the tone of the Holmes stories is so often polite, in accordance with the Victorian standards of the day, is more helpful than otherwise; and that the entirety of the Holmes canon can thrive for more than a hundred years without relying on the gratuitous use of curse words to flimsily indicate strong emotion, is a feather in the cap of those who inhabit polite society.  Thus some things, such as the elements that make up good storytelling, never truly seem to change.  We see these elements predominate the Holmes canon, and we find them present here in The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter.

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

34.  The Adventure of the Yellow Face (February 1893, Memoirs)

“All’s well that ends well,” goes the Shakespearean title and dictum, and with, the child in his arms, and on his lips the words, “I am not a very good man, Effie, but I think that I am a better one than you have given me credit for being,” Mr. Grant Munro saves this ultimately heartwarming story from any number of tragic endings.  Lucy Hebron finds a home, one with a mother who will presumably never leave her again, and with a father who cares so much for the mother that he’s willing to adopt a child and face head-on whatever stormy social stigma may come.  As readers, we may hope with some basis that little Lucy grows up to live a fulfilling, healthy, happy, and productive life—the sort of life we may well desire for all our children. 

That Holmes is mistaken in his earliest theory is no mark against him; his theory is a theory only, and he must travel to Norbury to prove it, one way or another.  Such is the purpose of theories and of tests: The scientific thinker must postulate, then check that postulation against the facts.  That Holmes’ initial theory covered the facts was sufficient to make it tenable, and, in checking it, he did what every empirical observer ought.  Any criticism that he might make of himself ought not be too stringent, for he was doing his job to the best of anyone’s ability: crafting a surmise that covered the available information, then setting out to verify the actuality of that surmise.

Whether or not Grant Munro actually needed Holmes’ services is immaterial.  People who feel desperate sometimes take action based upon their emotion, and that’s what Munro does here.  The fact that he’s applied to someone respectable, and that someone has listened to his tale, affirmed his concerns, and sent him home with a promise to visit, at the latest, the next day, is sufficient.  Munro actually does all the work himself, while Holmes and Watson serve as no more than spectators, but there are so many other stories in which Holmes plays the most active part in reaching the mystery’s solution that here, when circumstances dictate that Munro takes the lead role, the lack of productivity by Holmes and Watson is perfectly reasonable. 

While Effie makes deplorable choices that leave her open to criticism—specifically her decisions to leave her child in the South (where the Emancipation Proclamation [1863], American Civil War [1861-’65], and Reconstruction Era [c. 1865 – c. 1877] were none-too-distant memories, and where the Jim Crow Laws [c. 1880s –  c. 1960s] were still very much in effect) while she began a new life in England, and to mask the child—the actions of her strong-willed, faithful, and honorable husband, Grant Munro, promise a better, more secure future for the child and save from ignominy The Adventure of the Yellow Face.

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

35.  The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter (September 1893, Memoirs)

Though definitely made eminent by its introduction of Holmes’ elder brother, Mycroft, readers should not forget that it is also The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter that provides us with Holmes’ timeless precept: “‘My dear Watson,’ said he, ‘I cannot agree with those who rank modesty among the virtues.  To the logician all things should be seen exactly as they are, and to underestimate one’s self is as much a departure from truth as to exaggerate one’s own powers.’”  The wisdom of this precept is as relevant now as it was then, and the precept shall retain its relevance a hundred years from now, without its shine ever succumbing to so much as a blemish.  One of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s hallmarks is that he often graces his pages with sagacity, expressed tightly in easily memorable mots justes.  Some phrases have become, perhaps unjustly, more famous than others over the years.  For instance, “The curious incident” quote, which arises from Silver Blaze in reference to the dog in the nighttime, seems to me to have become vogueish in pop culture for reasons that I cannot quite fathom.  (That said, I have no strong emotion either for or against such popularity, and, if pressed on the matter, would admit to being slightly in favor of Holmesian expressions achieving popularity, even ones that, to me, seem to achieve that popularity without substantive cause.)  Simultaneously, other quotes in the Holmes canon seem not to have achieved the popularity that they seem due.  For instance, I have long thought that the above remark on the proper estimation of one’s powers ought to be more famous than such a remark as, “Elementary, my dear Watson!” (which fails even to appear in the canon), yet fame is fickle and mercurial, seemingly bestowed more often like a lottery prize than as a merit.  Well, well, well: One cannot right all the wrongs of the world, and one must take them in, more or less, happy stride if one wishes to live in pleasant harmony with the chaos of life.

Back to the story.  In The Greek Interpreter, we are also introduced to The Diogenes Club, which has spawned imitations, and understandably so.  No other club in literature seems to me to be so attractive.  Having unintentionally simulated the Diogenes Club myself in the course of spending many long nights in university libraries reading coursework, I can attest that there is something breathtaking marvelous about the act of reading while surrounded by one’s silent peers.  One is left to one’s thoughts and to literature, while retaining the pleasure of remaining in society.  (It often helps, in increasingly noisy university libraries, to study deep into the night, so that the more raucous and less dedicated/less desperate students go to bed or to party.)

With respect to the story, it is very lucky for Holmes (and for the unfortunate Greek interpreter, Melas) that there is an answer to the advertisement.  If no one had answered the advertisement, Holmes would not have had the slightest clue of where to find Sophy and Paul Kratides, and the case would have taken on an entirely different aspect.  As it stands, the criminals get away, only to be found stabbed to death in Budapest (“Two cities: Buda and Pesht”— an inside joke that at least one reader may find humorous), and the supposition by Holmes is that Sophy Kratides has had her revenge.  The plot is no more than fair, and Doyle’s inclusion of Mycroft and the Diogenes Club are perhaps the most distinguishing features of The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter.

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

36.  The Adventure of the Stock-Broker’s Clerk (March 1893, Memoirs)

They say that when it rains, it pours, and this maxim applies not only to salt but to Mr. Hall Pycroft, the down-on-his-luck clerk who, after glimpsing a ray of professional hope, finds his name besmirched, his clerkship taken by a criminal, and his prospects muddied in The Adventure of the Stock-Broker’s Clerk.  As in The Red-Headed League, Holmes’ client is kept from his workplace while completing a mundane task, although, in The Clerk’s case, Mr. Pycroft is clever enough to begin to peer through the veil of deception to determine that something’s seriously awry.  Since it is the distinctive gold tooth that ultimately gives the brothers away, one wonders why the two brothers (who are the villains in this mystery) did not, in fact, appear separately to Mr. Pycroft.  If the first brother were to “hire” Pycroft, then the second could appear in Birmingham, ostensibly as the office manager, while the first went ahead to Pycroft’s new station at Mawson’s.  One also wonders how, exactly, the two brothers learned of Pycroft’s appointment, but there could be a ready explanation for this that is simply never provided by Doyle.  One of the criminal brothers might, for example, have a friend within Mawson’s who apprised the criminals, unwittingly or otherwise, of Pycroft’s hiring.

These little peccadillos notwithstanding, the story remains enjoyable, even if its solution is mostly foreseeable.  There is nothing foreseeable, however, about the attempted suicide at the tail end of the story; the Beddington brother who has escaped the clutches of the police excuses himself into the next room, and he makes the grave decision to hang himself.  With his feet kicking on the walls, and the rubber of his noose digging into his neck, Holmes, Watson, and Pycroft are only just in time to save him, even if they are only saving him for the hangman’s noose. 

The case is one of those that Holmes solves instantly, and, in fact, he and Watson spend only moments in Birmingham before springing into action.  Holmes, we may gather, has solved the case either nearly or completely while upon the train, and he is only missing the details that the newspaper article, which tells of Beddington’s brother’s capture, supplies.  As regards this solidly written tale, readers can hope for better days for come for Mr. Hall Pycroft whose hopes were dashed by the misfortune visited upon him in The Adventure of the Stock-Broker’s Clerk.

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

37.  The Adventure of the Crooked Man (July 1893, Memoirs)

“You may talk o’ gin and beer  

When you’re quartered safe out ’ere,  

An’ you’re sent to penny-fights an’ Aldershot it;

But when it comes to slaughter  

You will do your work on water,

An’ you’ll lick the bloomin’ boots of ’im that’s got it.”

So writes, of Aldershot, Rudyard Kipling, and, many years later, George MacDonald Fraser—who was one hell of a good writer—used with well-intentioned irony Kipling’s line as the title of his book, Quartered Safe Out Here.  Conan Doyle’s story is set in Aldershot: place of gin, beer, and safe quarter, where dirty, underhanded Colonel Barclay lives with the wife whose hand he so treacherously took. 

This is one of those Holmes stories where Watson and the readers are brought in too late.  How much better would it have been to be with Holmes throughout his two day investigation?  As it stands, Holmes appears, just before midnight, at Watson’s home, where he outlines the case, and the pair travel to Aldershot where they interview Henry Wood who explains everything.  We do not actually see any of Holmes’ detecting.  Imagine if we (with Watson) had been brought in at the beginning of the case.  Holmes could have appeared at Watson’s home, as before, at midnight, and we could have visited Aldershot in the morning.  We could have seen the curious collection of weapons in Colonel Barclay’s home, and we could have followed along as Holmes became ever more puzzled by the mystery before finally making headway after his interview with Miss Morrison.  In this scenario, Holmes would not have had to return to London to fetch Watson, and they could have gone straight to Mr. Henry Wood, late of India.  (In fact, the idea of Holmes’ returning to London from Aldershot is preposterously weak; Holmes declares that he returned in order to get Watson as a witness.  But any witness would do; Holmes need not return to London for Watson, and, in the unlikely eventuality in which only Watson would suffice as a witness, Holmes could have remained in Aldershot and wired for Watson to come.)  Had we started with Holmes from the outset, readers would have been treated to a far better version of The Adventure of the Crooked Man, a story which is most interesting for the mongoose, the Biblical reference to David, for the horrible way that Colonel Barclay dies, and for the sensational and double-crossing story that Henry Wood relates.

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

38. The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place (April 1927, Case-Book)

A rather macabre and fascinating story, partly cloudy in its resolution, and novel in some respects, The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place is the last story that Doyle ever published for Holmes, and it ends the canon on a good note.  Originally titled The Adventure of the Black Spaniel, its name was changed before publication.  But the title might have been better in its unpublished form, for Shoscombe Old Place sounds much like Boscombe Valley, and the lady’s beloved Spaniel plays an important (though not conclusive) role in this story.

More than once has Doyle used the idea of dogs in his stories to useful effect, and the most famous of these, Silver Blaze, like Shoscombe, also involves horse-racing, gambling, and a desperate need for money.  Here in Shoscombe, the dog’s sense of smell confirms that Holmes is on the right scent.  Still, Holmes must take further measures, and his hunt leads him to a creepy crypt.  Like in The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax, in Shoscombe, a pair of the dead will be concealed by a single grave.  But though there’s some evocation of old plots, Doyle’s storytelling is nevertheless impelling enough to carry readers on.  The description of Sir Robert Norberton appearing at the entrance to the crypt is powerful, and the prose shows that good writers—even in the twilit, less motivated stages of their careers—can still write well. 

For instance, John Mason’s account of the Shoscombe matter, when he brings it before Holmes, is really exemplary.  Mason starts off upon the subject of madness, wondering whether his irascible employer has gone out of his mind.  Mason’s recital becomes ever more intriguing as it goes on, for not once but twice does Mason succeed in making Holmes start with surprise.  First, Mason introduces us to the crypt: a weird and attractive place.  Once we are entranced by this locale, Mason tells us of the presence of ancient bones from an unknown human skeleton, remains that have appeared in the crypt without explanation.  Certainly the case is fantastic enough for Holmes to investigate at once; it is just the thing he lives for. 

And though the reader can quickly approximate the story’s final resolution, there are some points that need Holmes’ help in clearing up.  It seems apparent, for instance, that the dog is aware that its mistress has vanished; still it is not clear what has caused her demise—perhaps, as Holmes suggests, Sir Robert Norberton has murdered her.  Perhaps, as it turns out, she has died of natural causes.  Holmes establishes the truth, refers the matter to the police, and Norberton’s story ends well.  Sir Robert is guilty only of a “delay in registering the deceased,” and, like the modern story of Hans Kristian Rausing (the real-life Swedish billionaire who lived with his wife’s corpse in their Belgravian apartment, and whose sister owns Granta magazine), Norberton was let off with a slap on the wrist by the British authorities.  Thus, in imitating life, even some of Doyle’s farthest-fetched stories, like The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place, chime with truth.

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

The Sixth Tier: The Enjoyables

While some satisfaction may be gleaned from reading the stories in the seventh tier, the overall effect of each story is vexing.  Beginning here, with The Enjoyables, each story has places of satisfaction, and each is ultimately redeeming.  From Wisteria Lodge with its sensational premise of a man waking up to find the occupants of the country house all vanished, to The Yellow Face with its optimistic ending, these eleven imperfect Holmes stories leave me feeling more or less contented.

39.  The Adventure of the Wisteria Lodge (September – October 1908, Last Bow)

While perhaps one of the most middling stories in the canon, Wisteria Lodge has an extraordinarily sensational premise: a creditable Englishman is invited for an overnight stay in a country mansion for the purpose of providing an alibi for vengeful Central Americans who wish to murder a tyrannical former dictator.  Our Englishman, Eccles, does stay the night, yet when he wakes in the morning, the house is abandoned.  Eccles seeks out Holmes, and, in the course of ascertaining Holmes’ advice, Eccles and Holmes learn that Eccles’ host, one Garcia, was murdered in the night.  We are introduced to Inspector Baynes of the Surrey Constabulary, far and away the greatest of any of the policemen with whom Holmes works.

Wisteria Lodge is well-written, and its mystery is fairly unique.  And though we are afflicted with the burden of reading through the backstory of the deposed tyrant, and though we never see The Tiger of San Pedro (or even his equally fascinating underling Henderson), the story is redeemed by Baynes and the presentation of voodoo.  Baynes succeeds in mystifying Holmes with his misleading and intentional arrest of the wrong man.  Baynes matches Holmes’ sleuthing skills every step of the way, and, in fact, learns the true identity of the villain before Holmes does.  His success is brilliant.  It is no wonder that Doyle does not employ Baynes again in any other Holmes story.  To have a second star who shines as brightly as Holmes would bedazzle the reader so greatly that they would not know which protagonist to focus upon.  Baynes’ luminosity might prove confusing.  With regard to the plot, the slaughtered chicken, the zinc bucket of blood, and the burnt animal bones constitute a diverting red herring.  I remember, during the first time that I ever read Wisteria Lodge, that I pondered deeply over the significance of these things as I sought to work out the mystery’s solution.  On reaching the story’s end, I felt pleasantly surprised that the chicken, blood-bucket, and burnt bones were merely red herrings, for I felt their inclusion was artful.  The voodoo element is neither overdone, nor is it unnecessary.  It serves its purpose—that of misdirection—perfectly.  Still, as with the case of Black Gorgiano, I would have liked to meet The Tiger of San Pedro, and, if Conan Doyle had sent Watson and Holmes to Madrid to capture him there, I would have been delighted to read many pages more about the pursuit in the bizarre adventure of The Wisteria Lodge.

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

40.  The Adventure of the Gloria Scott (April 1893, Memoirs)

The Adventure of the Gloria Scott is one of those Holmes stories in which backstory replaces mystery.  Like A Study in Scarlet and The Five Orange Pips, readers are given a long tour through a history that ties Holmes’ contemporary conundrum to its actors, and, at the end of the account, the Holmes story concludes with a short commentary from Holmes that serves to comprise an ending.  Unfortunately, these types of narrative structures, the ones which are so heavily indebted to backstory, are cumbersome and painstaking to read.  The reason for this is that the Holmes mystery in these sorts of Doyle stories is mostly solved.  The reader is not permitted to puzzle or speculate; instead, the reader is told what is, essentially, a tale to plod through.

One may wonder whether Gloria Scott was written after Holmes read such stories as Kidnapped and Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, because Gloria Scott seems to share motifs with both.  In Kidnapped, David Balfour and Alan Breck find themselves defending a stronghold aboard a ship against mutineers, much as is the case for the characters in Gloria Scott.  Also in Gloria Scott, the character of Jack Prendergast—domineering, intelligent, and murderous—seems, in these ways, to be derivative of Long John Silver.  Both Prendergast and Silver secretly controlled a powerful faction of those people aboard the ship, and both Silver and Prendergast were Machiavellian and merciless in implementing their plans’ executions.  Neither seemed to regard human life as much more valuable than a grain of rice, and both seemed to value, above all, self-preservation.  The books by Stevenson (Treasure Island, 1883 and Kidnapped, 1886) were very much popular at the time, and it is not unlikely that Doyle read them over the course of some evenings and then was inspired to write The Adventure of the Gloria Scott.

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

41.  The Five Orange Pips (November 1891, Adventures)

A well-written but unconscionable story, The Five Orange Pips is the Holmes tale that leaves me most at odds with Conan Doyle.  Conan Doyle ranked it as one of his best twelve stories, saying that it has a “certain dramatic quality of its own.”  And indeed, the story is dramatic in its own way.  The descriptions of weather when John Openshaw enters 221B Baker Street, the picturesque madness with which Openshaw describes his uncle tearing around the garden with a revolver, and the petite menace of the dried orange pips themselves are all dramatic.  However, Holmes’ advice is remarkably opaque, and that opacity probably costs Openshaw his life. 

After hearing Openshaw’s account, Holmes advises Openshaw to return home and to place the pips in the box at the sun dial.  This advice, if not for the omission of Holmes’ conjectures, would be sound.  But because Holmes leaves so many of his deductions unarticulated and unelucidated, a fair-minded reader cannot help but wonder whether Holmes was inexcusably unforthcoming.  Holmes understood that there was immediate peril for Openshaw, because he remonstrated Openshaw (who’d only received the pips the day before) for the delay in consulting him.  Nevertheless, Holmes sends Openshaw away, then, after sitting “for some time in silence” with his pipe, deduces that there is “deadly urgency” and proceeds to outline to Watson nearly the entirety of the circumstances which surround this lethal matter.  He begins to play the violin, and one cannot help but think of the quote that paraphrases 17^th century playwright George Daniel: “Nero fiddled while Rome burned.” 

Had Holmes, who felt a great measure of the pips’ gravity, instead asked Openshaw to remain a little longer while he mulled over the case’s features (and not sent Openshaw out into the storm), then Holmes would have been able to detail to Openshaw the same conclusions that he shared with Watson.  Such information could have saved Openshaw’s life, and there is every reason to suppose that Holmes ought to have requested that his visitor stay awhile, and to allow him to fully cogitate on the mystery of the pips. 

This is an instance where I believe that Conan Doyle would have been better served by making Openshaw into a character who, like his father, was rash and headstrong.  If Openshaw were reckless, then Holmes could have advised Openshaw to wait awhile, but Openshaw would have refused, saying that he would not be intimidated.  Openshaw would have gone into the storm against Holmes’ advice, and so met his death.  Such an ending for Openshaw would have cast Holmes in a blameless light.  As it stands, Holmes’ undue reticence and failure to urge greater restraint are reprehensible, and they leave me far from agreement with Conan Doyle in regard to the sentiment that The Five Orange Pips is one of his best.

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

42.  A Case of Identity (September 1891, Adventures)

What a devilish fellow is Mr. Angel!  The story of this demon opens with Holmes opining that truth is stranger than fiction, and it finds Watson debating him—an eminently more welcome circumstance than those situations in which Watson is a slave to Holmes’ opinions.  In this case, the fiction seems stranger than the truth, for it seems highly improbable to me that a young woman such as Miss Sutherland, even with her short sight, could fail to conceive that Mr. Hosmer Angel—though he has whiskers, glasses, and speaks in a low voice—is not the same man as her stepfather.  They meet at a ball; they take walks together; they meet at the church before they are to marry.  I suppose that a request for readers to suspend their disbelief is implicit here (of that same species of disbelief suspension that disables Clark Kent’s peers from identifying him as Superman), but this request does make me want to snort with dissatisfaction and roll my eyes.  More vexing still is Holmes’ perplexing decision not to inform Miss Sutherland of her stepfather’s duplicity.

The situation is that Miss Sutherland comes to Holmes in a state of anxiety; Holmes solves her case, and he sends her away with the advice that she must forget about Hosmer Angel.  The pitiable young woman says that she cannot forget about him, and she leaves.  Holmes then confronts Mr. Windibank, aka Mr. Hosmer Angel, with the facts of the deception, and Mr. Windibank confesses.  Holmes releases him, and he tells Watson that he shall not tell Miss Sutherland what has happened, because she will not believe him.  But this solution is quite unacceptable.  It leaves the vulnerable Miss Sutherland as continual prey to Mr. Windibank’s current deception, and, what’s perhaps worse, Holmes’ reticence to speak the truth will allow her unscrupulous stepfather to make further plans against the poor girl and, ultimately, may lead to the ruin of her life. 

All this uncertainty, of course, could be avoided in any number of ways.  Holmes could have asked Miss Sutherland to remain hidden behind a curtain and to listen while Mr. Windibank confesses his misdeed, and, through such means, she would have heard the truth from her stepfather’s own lips, and she would have believed it (or at least been given a golden opportunity to believe it).  Holmes could have shown Mr. Windibank’s letter to Miss Sutherland, a letter which has the same typewritten peculiarities as those that Mr. Hosmer Angel’s letters has, and, in this way, Holmes would have presented her with proof of the stepfather’s chicanery.  Holmes could have asked that Miss Sutherland set an elaborate trap for Mr. Hosmer Angel, declaring that, if Mr. Angel would but appear again, she would give all her inheritance to him.  Such a trap would likely have drawn the phony character out, and he’d have been liable to exposure by Holmes and Watson.  These three outcomes I have thought of offhand, and Conan Doyle—who brilliantly plotted many stories in accordance with a high moral code—certainly had the wits and rectitude to do better by Miss Sutherland in A Case of Identity.

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

43.  The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor (April 1892, Adventures)

This is one of Doyle’s stories which displays to the reader those endearing qualities of organization and care that so often the movies about Holmes (to their discredit and to their disservice) frequently ignore.  The Noble Bachelor opens with Holmes returning from an afternoon stroll to find a letter from Lord St. Simon waiting for him, and, to learn more about his client, the famous detective consults his reference books.  Screen adaptations about Holmes (especially those aimed at a popular audience, such as those starring Robert Downey, Jr. and Benedict Cumberbatch) very often conflate Holmes’ wild and ecstatic moments of genius with a chaotic and disorganized environment, but Conan Doyle is careful not to permit this.  Holmes may have his oddities (he keeps his tobacco in a Persian slipper and decorates the wall by punching “V.R.” with bullets [a pastime that I also would thoroughly enjoy, albeit shooting out a bald eagle design rather than a Victoria Regina]), but he is, on the whole, methodical and organized. 

Holmes’ reference books must have taken many days to compile and to maintain.  His chemical pursuits are studies in precision.  And the hours which he devotes to the study and writing of his many monograms (some, for instance, on the differences between one hundred and forty types of tobacco, as outlined in Boscombe) are long.  While it may seem to Hollywood as though a sensational individual who absorbs the intricacies of the world as if by magic is most attractive, the opposite is in fact true.  Like The Rocky film series which is improved by its training scenes, the sedulous study, meticulous organization, and almost paralyzing exactitude of Holmes’ regimen make the man more human, more relatable, and more empathetic.  When Holmes is laissez-faire in his treatment toward others, indifferent toward humanity, and careless in his method, then he is less endearing than when he shows his emotion for Watson, his empathy, and his painstaking organization.  When adaptations, especially popular ones, replace his mindful nature with the purported frenzy of genius, these adaptations weaken Holmes’ character—although they may think they are strengthening it.  Better to show, as in The Noble Bachelor, how willingly Holmes listens to Watson’s brief and how his hard-won knowledge is actually won.  The driest, most solitary aspects of Holmes’ study are captivating.

Bearing this in mind, in The Noble Bachelor, the case that Lord St. Simon brings to Holmes is a trivial one for our detective, thanks to his rigorous study of crime.  Holmes has solved the problem before St. Simon has even left the room, and Holmes confides to Watson how he reached the solution so quickly.  Holmes says that he has, “knowledge of pre-existing cases which serve me so well.  There was a parallel instance in Aberdeen some years back, and something on very much the same lines at Munich the year after the Franco-Prussian War.”  Again, this apparently sorcerous ability to solve cases at the drop of a hat comes from Holmes’ preparation.  He never misses the agony or crime columns in the paper.  He tracks cases from around the world.  He is deeply immersed in his field, more so than any official policeman or any other amateur detective.  The work that he does behind the scenes is what makes him appear so extraordinary, though, as he explains time and again, there is no real wizardry behind the results that he conjures; any perceived magic is an illusion; his only resources are logic, deduction, and hard work.  In The Noble Bachelor, Holmes has only to locate the bride, and, with the aid of a few well-informed guesses and some legwork, he speedily finds her.  Once reunited with Lord St. Simon, Hatty explains herself and her position, and she goes off with the man whom she truly loved, while Lord St. Simon remains unmarried, the deflated but still noble bachelor.

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

44.  The Adventure of the Cardboard Box (January 1893, Memoirs)

Along with The Engineer’s Thumb, The Adventure of the Cardboard Box is one of the two goriest stories in the Holmes canon.  The Cardboard Box is also, perhaps, one of its emotional: jealousy, lust, and rage dominate this story like no other that Holmes investigates.  The primal urges of man are on full display here, and they lead to senseless, murderous tragedy. 

When a docile, retiring, elderly lady receives a box with a pair of severed ears, Inspector Lestrade suspects a revolting prank that was pulled by some medical students whom the lady had turned out of her premises a few years before.  Holmes, after some scrutiny, understands that a hideous crime has been committed: a double murder, in fact, and one perpetrated by a sailor with poor spelling, an ability to tie knots, and access to tarred string.  The conclusions that Holmes draw are, for him, relatively trivial, and he soon deduces that the cardboard box was received by the wrong sister in the family.  As he interviews the elderly lady, he gains an accounting of her personal history, and he is left with a tenable theory and a second, less tenable one, which he immediately discards.  He takes a carriage to the sister’s house (the sister for whom the package was meant), discovers that she lies prostrate in the throes of brain fever, then lunches with Watson while waiting for the response to a telegram that he’s sent.  The telegram confirms his hunch, and Holmes communicates with Lestrade that the man for whom they are looking for, the prime and only suspect in the case, is the husband of the third sister—Mary, a woman who is now, presumably, deceased.  Indeed, Mary and her lover, Alec, were murdered by Mary’s husband, a man who beat them to death, cut off their ears, and sank them at sea.  Jim Browner, the culpable husband, is arrested by Lestrade at Browner’s next port of call.  This penitent man confesses everything, and he finds himself awaiting punishment in the dock.  Holmes and Watson are left to speculate on what purpose such senseless violence can serve, and they discover, like the rest of us, that they have no good answers. 

Because most of the particulars in this severed ears story are supplied by the confession that Jim Browning gives, and because the story is one of such hopelessness, I find little redeeming merit in The Cardboard Box.  The story is well written, but not spectacularly so; it does not contain the sparkling precepts that readers can find in such stories as Boscombe Valley, nor does it possess the admirable and likeable breakfast scenes of such gems as The Blue Carbuncle.  The content of this story is much more visceral than is usual within a Doyle story.  While there’s no description of blood and guts, there nevertheless exists a gruesomeness to the very notion of an innocent old woman receiving a cardboard box filled with preservative salt and lopped off human ears.  With so many other deserving stories in the Holmes canon to choose from, it’s hard to find reasons to read and re-read a tale like The Adventure of the Cardboard Box.

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

45.  The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist (January 1904, Return)

The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist is one of those stories, like The Five Orange Pips and The Dancing Men, in which more ought to have been done to prevent the client’s unhappy ending.  Where The Solitary Cyclist differs from those others is in Watson’s culpability, for in this story, Watson ought to have been more proactive than he was.  Sent to the scene of the mystery by Holmes, who is working another case, Watson performs in remarkably substandard fashion.  He does, as Holmes notes, nothing of use, and Watson’s greatest strengths—his tenacity and bravery—are left by the wayside.  Watson, if he were but performing up to his own standards, ought to have rented a bicycle of his own, waited in the shrubbery, and confronted the man who was following Violet Smith.  At the very least, Watson ought to have positioned himself in such a fashion as to be able to follow Carruthers (the South African desperado whose heart was melted by the beautiful lady) and so been able to better identify him.  As it stands, Holmes’ indignation with Watson’s efforts is not misplaced.  Watson does little more than to verify the story that Smith put forth, though her story was never in doubt.  Holmes does little better, though he does succeed in satisfactorily sending, with a straight left, the “slogging ruffian” Woodley home in a cart.  (That Holmes later chides Carruthers for not keeping his pistol holstered seems absurd to me; Carruthers seemed to have honor on his side, and I, for one, was as displeased as Carruthers that that hound Woodley survived the gunshot.) 

All in all, Violet Smith has every right to give Holmes and Watson a one star rating for their support.  She engaged Holmes’ services, and she sent him regular updates.  He did very little himself, and he blundered (his own word for his own action) in arriving too late to the scene of the crime.  She was mauled, illegally married off to a brute, and her concerns—though articulately and appropriately expressed—did not stimulate Holmes’ anxiety sufficiently.  He suggests that all will be well once she calls up her new boyfriend and has a change of scenery, and, perhaps, he is right.  But, in reality, she has already undertaken significant, preventable damage, and Heaven only knows what the lingering results of it might be.  Violet might find it hard to trust her next employer, and she might feel skittish in the company of strangers for years to come.  Who is to say what deleterious effects such a sensational event can have upon a person’s life?  At the very least, she will likely be disinclined to recommend Holmes’ practice to her friends, while being inclined to ride bicycles with her partner, Cyril, so that she will never again be a solitary cyclist.

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

The Seventh Tier: The Hodge-Podge

For a variety of reasons, some stories in the Holmes canon were relegated to the seventh tier.  For instance, in The Three Students, the story’s outcome is so low-stakes as to make it uninteresting; in Five Orange Pips, Holmes’ failure to be more forthcoming costs his client his life, an inexcusable blunder; and in A Case of Identity, it is impossible (for this reader) to believe that Miss Sutherland would not recognize her stepfather.  It is likewise impossible, in that story, for this reader to believe that Holmes had no recourse other than to simply let Mr. Windibank go, particularly when he believes that Mr. Windibank will re-offend in continually worse ways.  These seventh tier stories feature better writing than those of the eighth tier, but the seventh tier stories are frustrating, in one way or another, for me to read, and I cannot help but think that they could all have been improved if they’d been substantially revised.

46.  The Adventure of the Three Students (June 1904, Return)

In The Three Students, Holmes is confronted with a sort of riddle: one of three students is alleged to have copied exam proofs on the day before a test is to be given, and Holmes must identify which student is the cheater.  This is one of Holmes’ lowest-stakes mysteries, and it is also the one in which I find some of the greatest fallacies in Doyle’s plots and Holmes’ logic. 

The professor states that he receives the proofs from the printer at about 3:00, and that he must read them over carefully.  He does so till 4:30, when he goes to take tea, and he states that he is out of the room for “rather more than an hour.”  In the time that he’s gone, he suspects a student of entering his office and of copying the proofs.  However, anyone who has ever read proofs (or tried to copy a document’s text with a pencil) knows that it takes far longer to copy a text than to read it, even if the reading is done carefully and the copying haphazardly.  If the text is so long that it takes an unrushed professor more than an hour and a half to read it, what hope could a passing student have of copying it?  A cheater would likely not have tried to copy the text at all, such a task being far too time-consuming and risky.  Instead, even the rawest, most unskilled cheater would have likely read through (or, at most, copied) a few lines, then pranced off to the university library to retrieve the passage.

Holmes arrives on scene, and he makes some permeable deductions that he relies upon as if they were watertight.  He divines that the papers must first be observed in order to attract someone to enter, and he supposes that only a person with adequate height could see the papers.  Holmes singles out Gilchrist (the tallest suspect) as the only student who would have been able to walk past the door, see inside the professor’s office, and notice the papers.  Therefore, Gilchrist must be the culprit.  But I feel that such height-related deductions are a stretch.  There are simply too many other plausible scenarios in which another student might have seen the papers.  It seems possible, for instance, that a student who walks to the professor’s office might knock upon the door, and, needing an answer to an urgent question about the exam, might turn the key (with the intention, once within, of returning the presumably forgotten key to the professor), then open the door, see inside, and discover the exam proofs lying on the professor’s desk.  It is equally possible that any student taking the professor’s Greek exams could venture over to the professor’s office on the day before the big scholarship test.  So, although the three suspected students in the story are “in the habit of using the stair and passing the professor’s door” (so, therefore, they are our only suspects), it seems very possible that, because the test is an important one, other students might break from routine to visit the professor.

Finally, it is stated that the exam cannot be postponed without causing “hideous scandal.”  This I find hard to believe.  While I have no evidence to back my assertion, it is my belief that, for as long as exams have been given, exams have been postponed.  Student complaints, unprepared proctors, unexpected location changes, administrative failures, precipitate weather, and all other sorts of problems can and do crop up.  Accordingly, a postponed exam seems unlikely to cause hideous scandal.  In the event that a professor finds postponement necessary, the students can be informed that there was an issue (without specifying the nature of the issue), a new exam date can be set, and the students—though grumbling—will have a few extra days to study while new proofs are set by the printer.  Such an outcome (rather than hideous scandal) would likely be the result of this unhappy matter.  So though there is the postulation of a handsome little riddle, for the most part I feel that we are given a lesson on dubious plotting in The Adventure of the Three Students.

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

47.  The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier (November 1926, Case-Book)

Like The Retired Colourman, The Blanched Soldier features a mystery whose outcome is easily guessed.  Although unoriginal, The Blanched Soldier is saved from a lower placement by Doyle’s characteristically masterful writing.  Still, it cannot rank more highly due to the fact that Holmes has no need to exert his strongest powers in arriving at the solution.  Indeed, Holmes is so sure of his result that, before he makes any inquiries into the case, he brings with him a leprosy specialist to treat poor Godfrey.  So many times before (in The Yellow Face, The Missing Three-Quarter, and Copper Beeches) has Doyle used the concept of shunting an individual away, that the discerning reader cannot help but arrive at this result as the story’s most probable conclusion.  Perhaps the tale’s greatest twist lies in the specialist’s diagnosis.  Godfrey’s disease is not leprosy but ichthyosis.  Although this is a happy discovery, it does not substantively alter the etiolated character of The Blanched Soldier.

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

48.  The Adventure of the Retired Colourman (January 1927, Case-Book)

A rather transparent revenge story in the style of The Norwood Builder, The Retired Colourman suffers from the same issue that The Red Circle and Wisteria Lodge do, viz.: that of putting the cart before the horse and explaining how Sherlock solved the mystery without showing us what happened.  How fascinating it would have been to actually see Josiah Amberley’s house!  Many macabre readers would have loved to see the Lewisham estate with its air of overgrown dilapidation, its sense of mismanaged grandeur, and, most of all, its hermetically sealed vault that doubled as a murderous gas chamber!  Many of us would have cheerfully followed Holmes and Watson into this place, if only Holmes would have accompanied Watson on Watson’s first visit, and we might have felt intrigued by Holmes’ rising suspicions as he cast his eye over the unsavory place.  Instead, there is little doubt, even from the beginning, what has happened.  It is the old story: A jilted, miserly husband—Josiah Amberley: whose name, character, and crime echo that of Jonas Oldacre of the Norwood Builder—has been ostensibly left by the lady of the house, along with her putative lover, and she has allegedly stolen Amberley’s things.  Really, there being no other suspects and few other hinges on which the plot may turn, the interpretation of events is fairly straightforward, and the reader can easily guess the mystery’s solution.  Amberley has killed his wife; he’s killed her lover; and he’s hidden his own valuables to make it appear as though he’s the victim.  We may chalk up this gauzy attempt at ambiguity to Conan Doyle’s waning, strained interest in Holmes, as this is the third-to-last of his Holmes stories, and he has already utilized many of his most unique plots.

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

49.  The Adventure of the Illustrious Client (February-March 1925, Case-Book)

A ho-hum story in The Case-Book.  Strong in spots, but a tendency toward stereotyping and hasty prose ultimately undermines The Adventure of the Illustrious Client.  This reader feels that the prose’s troubles occur mainly when—in 1925, when this story was published—Doyle recasts his character motifs into a mold from the 1890s, and the result is that the characters in The Illustrious Client become play-acting caricatures of people, rather than appearing to be genuine.  The typecasting is so persistent that The Illustrious Client’s characters lose the whiff of authenticity.  Here Doyle presents us with the sneering, aristocratic villain and the piteous, misguided maiden, and he writes of them in terms so facile and cliché that his characterizations create (rather than complex individuals) inferior imitations of men and women.  Instead of floating the story, the characterizations scuttle it.

That said, there are strengths in The Illustrious Client.  It introduces us to the “scorbutic” Shinwell Johnson, a denizen of the underworld, through whose seamy channels he collects scraps of information for Holmes.  Johnson, like Toby the dog and Langdale Pike, has potential.  Imagine how different The Case-Book might have been if a character like Johnson had been used in one or two other stories in the collection, and if that character were more complexly textured.  We might have found someone who transcended to the status of a Mycroft Holmes.  I would have been fascinated to read a Case-Book adventure about Holmes and Johnson, artfully disguised and deep undercover, nearing the discovery of a villain’s secret in some sordid London lair.  Instead, we have flatness: Baron Adelbert Gruner, a character who is a sort of shallow precursor to a Bond villain, a precursor who inhabits a glassy plot that is told in trite prose.

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

50.  The Adventure of the Red Circle (March – April 1911, Last Bow)

It’s worth noting what makes Doyle’s writing so powerful, and what makes even pedestrian Holmes stories, such as The Red Circle, eminently readable.  Doyle shares with Charles Dickens an ability to paint the atmosphere of his scene’s settings in an Impressionist way, almost as if he were a literary Claude Monet or Camille Pissarro.  Just as Charles Dickens described the graveyard at the beginning of Great Expectations with broad, blurry language (e.g.: “At such a time I found out for certain that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard; and… that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dikes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond was the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing was the sea; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip.”), so does Doyle render his settings’ atmospheres with a very effective smudginess.  To wit, “When we returned to Mrs. Warren’s rooms, the gloom of a London winter evening had thickened into one grey curtain, a dead monotone of colour, broken only by the sharp yellow squares of the windows and the blurred haloes of the gas-lamps.”  In the painting world, the Impressionist period ran from about the 1860s to the late 1880s, a run of a little more than twenty years, and the French painters’ influence would have extended to England by Doyle’s time.  Dickens died in 1870, and other Victorian authors (such as Tennyson, Stoker, and the Brontë sisters) had published major works by, or during, the time that Doyle was writing.  The works of these painters and authors must have permeated the literary scene, thereby reaching a Londoner like Doyle.  Doyle’s Impressionistic approaches to atmosphere—in The Red Circle, and throughout his best writing—vivify the weather, the city, and the country.  Sometimes, Doyle gives the weather a personality trait; we read that the weather is “bitterly cold” in Milverton; that there is “fierce weather” in The Five Orange Pips, and there’s “a dull, foggy November day” in Sussex Vampire.  Doyle strikes a fine balance in describing his places: there’s not too much setting, not too little, and what’s there is put in adroitly.

That said, due to its structure, The Red Circle cannot grade out better than mediocre.  Among the strongest Holmes stories are those with a Eureka moment.  And, in my opinion, those adventures that are less adequate are the ones in which Holmes quickly solves the mystery while the reader is left thumbing through pages of backstory.  This is the situation that the reader finds himself in in stories like The Red Circle.  After Black Gorgiano’s hideous and sensational death, Watson spends the majority of Part II providing the reader with Emilia Lucca’s story.  So though the mystery was solved by Holmes almost at once, and though the drama has unfolded, still the story continues on as a two part exercise.  And because we only meet the monstrous Black Gorgiano after he is dead, we are deprived from seeing this burly and iniquitous villain skirmish with Holmes.  Thus, though Doyle’s Impressionistic writing impresses, we cannot help but wonder how much better this story would have been if only the plot had been recast in a way that permitted Holmes and the authorities to ring the black leader of the Red Circle while he was still alive.

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

51.  The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger (February 1927, Case-Book)

A story in the Holmes canon that is unique only in that Holmes does nothing in the way to solve it.  Holmes does no theorizing, nor any detective work, so he cannot be held accountable for interpreting, correctly or not, the answer to the riddle of how the circus master’s death came to pass, or how the circus master’s wife was so grievously injured.  Watson hazards a guess (a reasonable one), and then they apply to the lady herself for the matter’s elucidation.  She explains everything, and the rather unlively story comes to a end.  Holmes’ contribution is that he dissuades the poor sufferer from committing suicide with prussic acid, and thus he saves another life. 

Perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of The Veiled Lodger is in the particulars of its opening statements: Conan Doyle reaffirms his commitment to confidentiality.  Here we can see how the medical life of Conan Doyle communes with his literary life.  The Hippocratic Oath—a cardinal rule, an almost sacred law amongst ethical physicians—was in place during Victorian times, and Holmes’ and Watson’s adherence to it is admirable.  They promise strict confidentiality to their clients, as doctors ought, and this promise is not breached when prised upon even by statesmen, whose influence perhaps carried greater weight in stratified Victorian society than it does in modern times.  Only, Watson and Holmes assure us, when affected parties are lost to the grave (and their relatives lie free from possible injury), or when clients’ consent is given, may secretive and potentially damaging affairs be made public.  At the beginning of The Veiled Lodger, Watson writes to those parties who are writing “agonized letters.”  Watson declares that “no confidence will be abused” and that these parties “have nothing to fear.”  Indeed, he is quite sincere in this pledge, and Doyle’s stories are, subtly but markedly, much better for it.

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

52.  The Adventure of the Dying Detective (December 1913, Last Bow)

Dr. John H. Watson—a medical man, and one who over many years has become familiar with Holmes’ extraordinary acting ability and his penchant for disguise—is purportedly fooled by Holmes’ artifice in The Adventure of the Dying Detective.  Holmes is ostensibly wasting away from a rare disease unknown to Watson; Holmes refuses all help, and, when Watson goes to fetch a specialist, Holmes “tiger-springs” from the bed, locks the door, then “staggers” back to bed.  Watson, apparently and incredibly, doesn’t suspect a thing.  That longtime readers are expected to unquestioningly accept this state of affairs is at once a little insulting and more than a trifle absurd.  Written in the year 1913, Holmes has already played a bibliophile, pretended to be Captain Basil, worked undercover in an opium den, acted as a drunken groom, taken falsely ill on numerous occasions, and, most substantively, faked his death.  Readers have long since stopped trusting any of Holmes’ disguises and sham maladies, and Watson does know the detective too well to be fooled (particularly after Holmes leaps out of bed).  Upon seeing a hopping Holmes, Watson’s professional and personal experience would have led him irrevocably to the conclusion that Sherlock was on a case, and that he was faking his illness.  Still, in The Adventure of the Dying Detective, Watson sets aside all his critical thinking, blathers sentimentally, and acts with such blind idiocy as to render him unrecognizable from the competent doctor whose chronicles we have come to trust.  In a series of stories in which Conan Doyle relies heavily on verisimilitude, this plot is poorly marketed snake oil that we cannot trust.

Furthermore, the premise that Holmes’ dying-detective-deception will be a successful indictment tactic is very much open to question.  Indeed, our villain, one Culverton Smith, confesses to his crime, and Smith’s confession is overheard by Watson.  However, one may reasonably wonder whether the British criminal justice system, in prosecuting the case, would not look askance at a confession whose only means of substantiation is via the great detective’s best friend and well-known chronicler.  If I were Culverton Smith’s lawyer, I would be screaming about bias and entrapment from the rafters, and Smith (who is flush enough to afford a butler) must be presumed to have sufficient financial means to secure competent, aggressive, and wily legal counsel.

The typical Doyle story is one with the spice of originality and one or two twists that make the story delightful.  Here we have a fairly straightforward plot premise: Holmes pretends to be dying and so greatly mistrusts Watson’s ability to dissemble that he must fool even him with the fakery.  The purpose of the deception is to entice a confession out of Culverton Smith (who, it must be noted, was not obliged in any way to give one, and who could very easily have thwarted Holmes’ tenuous fasting plan by simply taking the poisoned box and leaving).  If Holmes’ frail plan succeeds, then Holmes’ testimony will be supported by little more than the testimony of his nearest and dearest friend.  Suffice it to say, Doyle has certainly reached more heavenly heights than the laid-low example produced by The Adventure of the Dying Detective.