The Memoires or Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The Memoires or Sherlock Holmes is a collection of short tales about the feats of Sherlock Holmes written in the form of Memoires by his ever faithful sidekick Dr. Watson. They give what purports to be the most interesting of Holmes’ cases, including his finale with Professor Moriarty and how Holmes came to his death. Fortunately for us, the readers of the day kicked up such a fuss about killing Holmes off, that Doyle resurrected him in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

Having read both works recently, I can see why Doyle did what he did. First of all, there really is no other suitable death for Holmes because his character simply isn’t one that would grow old contentedly. Imagine a old, decrepit Holmes unable to go about his business chasing after criminals. He’s not particularly stable at the best of times, but inactivity would send him over the brink. Death by and with Moriarty was the best possible scenario in my opinion. However, Doyle was a bit premature with killing off his character and was forced to bring him back from the grave so to speak. Since Moriarty really was dead, that particular scenario couldn’t happen twice (that would have been cheesy anyway). I

I can also see why he was so eager to kill off Holmes. The more you read, the more similarities you start to see between the cases and they becoming increasingly easier to solve yourself, or at least to imagine where Doyle will take the reader. I think Doyle might have been afraid that he would become stale and tried to do what so many others before him should have done, i.e. quit while he was ahead.

I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy the book, because I did, it’s only that I can see Doyle’s reasoning. 5 out of 5 for this lot because how could you give Holmes any less!

Elephants Can Remember by Agatha Christie

This is one of my most favouritest Agatha Christie novels. I adore Poirot (although not more than Miss Marple) and I’m quite fond of Ariadne Oliver with all her foibles, so this makes for a comfy, cosy mystery with characters I love.

A bossy, bully of a woman approaches Mrs. Oliver at a luncheon and has the audacity to request Mrs. Oliver to ask her goddaughter who killed whom in her parent’s double suicide some 10 years before. Mrs. Burton-Cox feels she has a right to know since her son will be marrying Mrs. Oliver’s goddaughter. Despite being incensed about such an intrusion, Mrs. Oliver’s curiosity is aroused and she presents the question to Hercule Poirot. Together they set off on a hunt for elephants who can remember back to days past. Their search leads them into a labyrinth of sisters, dead children, travel abroad and absent children. It takes Poirot’s little grey cells to unravel the stories that elephants tell.

This one is clever. Very clever. The clues are all there, but it’s a matter of sorting out which are relevant, what order they come in and what really happened instead of what was perceived to have happened. It’s a case of “when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?” (Sherlock Holmes, The Sign of the Four). Elementary, or not if you’re not Christie or Doyle. I give this one 5 out of 5.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

This is a collection of 12 short adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The narrator is the iconic Dr. Watson who plays assistant to Holmes during his investigations. According to the doctor, he made notes of the cases at the time and only wrote them up after enough time has passed to prevent anything revealed in the telling of the tales from harming innocent people.

What I think is most interesting about these mysteries is contemplating them from the viewpoint of someone reading them at the end of the 19th century. As a modern reader, it’s very easy to think that much of it is just a matter of forensics, which it really is nowadays. However, for those living back then, it must have all seemed quite fantastic and ingenious. Don’t get me wrong, there are elements, which are still quite brilliant today. Some of his deductions and reasoning is nothing short of genius. However, quite a lot of the magic is dispelled when viewed from a modern standpoint.

The question is, do we really want to dispel the magic? I think the answer to this is fairly universally No. Why dispel the enchantment when there’s so much more to be had from suspending disbelief and thoughts of modern day forensics which destroy the romanticism of the age when it’s much more fun to pretend you’re watching the story unfold with no knowledge whatsoever? That’s the point and the relevance of Sherlock Holmes today, in my opinion. He’s there as a mark of progress and genius of the past. After all, was Einstein any less of a genius because much of his work has progressed passed his own developments? Each successive generation always builds on the past generation and without that past, there would be no future. Ergo, Homes and his tales will always be relevant, even if we do find his methods a bit antiquated.

The only criticism I have is that Doyle does paint Watson as an idiot. “Elementary, dear Watson” isn’t just a saying, it is a fact. He misses quite a lot of elementary elements and simply winds up looking like a fool much of the time. I know Doyle did this on purpose to form a contrast with Holmes and make his deductions seem all the more wondrous, but he very nearly overdid it and wound up with an absurd and incredible sidekick.

I enjoyed reading (or listening to) the stories and they get a 5 out of 5 from me.

Challenges:
Classics Challenge 2010
Marple, Poirot, Holmes Challenge
Typically British

A Caribbean Mystery by Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie takes murder and Miss Marple, to the West Indies. I suppose there are only so many murders one little village can absorb without becoming wholly eerie, so Christie solves this problem by removing Miss Marple, as a form of respite after a long illness, to the Caribbean and plonking her down in a setting both unfamiliar and uninteresting to her. She becomes rather bored with the irritating and superficial guests at the hotel, who provide her with little food for thought and no great conversation. Even the weather is irritatingly uninteresting as the climate is so constant. Miss Marple is an old English lady who prefers her old English countryside to the more exotic, yet unvarying, climate of the West Indies. It seems she hardly knows how she will get through the next weeks until her return to her own beloved island.

Then Major Palgrave dies quite unexpectedly. At first it seems above board, but not having anything else to occupy her mind, Miss Marple begins to consider the situation and ultimately realizes that Major Palgrave must have been murdered, the only question is, why? The only visible solution is because he claimed to have a photograph of a murderer. Miss Marple gently eases the local doctor around to her way of thinking and suddenly the whole island seems to be full of danger instead of rest and relaxation.

I’m biased. I love Agatha Christie and I love Miss Marple, especially as played by Joan Hickson, so I’m loath to give this anything other than a 5 out of 5 for being a good, comfortable English murder, for all its being set in another country altogether, in the Christie tradition.