The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Where do you start with Sherlock Holmes? The man has to be one of the most popular fictional characters ever. I'll start by clarifying that I haven't seen the new movie starring Tony Stark yet, although I've heard it's good. IMDB lists over 160 Sherlock Holmes movies, though! There have been stage productions, cartoons, spoofs- most mystery writers list Holmes as a major influence. And like a lot of the books I am covering in this blog, Holmes retains every ounce of his popularity despite being older than my great grandma's first bowel movement.
A brief search on Holmes crossover examples pretty much blew my mind immediately. Apparently the super slueth has met every other fictional character. Period. In his own timeline he encountered Doc Savage, Varney the Vampire, the Shadow, etc. In recent media he has met all sorts of other heroes through time travel, as a ghost, via ancestors, you get the idea.
He has also been played by some notable sci-fi actors. My favorites include Peter Cushing (Grand Moff Tarkin), Tom Baker (Doctor Who) and Robert Downey Jr. (Chaplin).
To cover this time period which I set at 1878 through 1903 I picked up a collection of classic stories and tried to hit the best ones which I had not previously read. I was not naive about Holmes occasional drug use, but I was amazed that right out of the gate in the first story I read Watson begins by ragging on Holmes for overdoing the cocaine and slumming in his room for weeks at a time in a druggy haze. Wow! Homie don't play around. Most interpretations of the stories downplay or ignore this facet of Holmes but I find it integral to the myth. Perhaps I'm just intrigued by drug-infused literature (as upcoming reviews of Bill Burroughs will prove), but I think Holme's drug use, whether a habit or addiction, probably was intended to be a counter-point to someone who's brain is always on. Sherlock probably wanted to turn the bloody thing off sometimes and just chill! Perhaps the crime solving career was simply a way for him to occupy himself long enough to stay off the junk, although in the stories I read one gets the impression that many of his clients were a bother and interruption to him, he didn't need the money per se, but simply found himself getting caught up in the details and challenge of anything he couldn't solve off the top of his head.
Cliches and incorrect misnomers play a part in Holme's history as well. I believe the famous hat and pipe style was created in the theatrical stage version. The bowed stem pipe was simply a way of opening up the actor's face more to the audience. In the original books Holmes had a straight stem pipe- like Popeye, another hero Holmes probably met at some point.
I'm not going to review any of the stories directly, or Doyle's writing beyond telling you that I love Sherlock Holmes and think that anyone who enjoys mystery and action stories with just a hint of the supernatural should pick up a short SH story at least once a year to re-acquaint themselves and fall in love again with the most famous detective ever. Sherlock Holmes IS the Man.
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