In 2026 I plan to read all the Conan Doyle “Sherlock Holmes” works – 56 short stories and 4 novels (here’s why and how). If you haven’t already read it, Michael Green’s “undiscovered letter” from John Watson is fricking hilarious.
I may also read various Holmes homages/pastiches etc. Who knows? (btw I’d recommend theSeven Per Cent Solution, by Nicholas Meyer where Watson has to trick Holmes into going to Vienna to be treated by Sigmund Freud).
Published: December 1891
Wikipedia here
Online here
Review: I would recommend this, but not perhaps as a work of art, more to do with what it reveals about what readers of the Strand were willing to believe about the poor!
Best sentence(s):
“He found, as so many more have done, that the practice is easier to attain than to get rid of, and for many years he continued to be a slave to the drug, an object of mingled horror and pity to his friends and relatives. I can see him now, with yellow, pasty face, drooping lids, and pin-point pupils, all huddled in a chair, the wreck and ruin of a noble man.”
“There is nothing so important as trifles” (Sherlock Holmes.)
“I confess that I cannot recall any case within my experience which looked at the first glance so simple and yet which presented such difficulties.”
“It has been in some points a singular case,” said Holmes, flicking the horse on into a gallop. “I confess that I have been as blind as a mole, but it is better to learn wisdom late than never to learn it at all.”
Words I didn’t know:
| Wrack (as relates to sky/clouds) | (archaic)Remnant from a shipwreck as washed ashore; flotsam or jetsam.The right to claim such items.Any marine vegetation cast up on shore, especially seaweed of the family Fucaceae.Weeds, vegetation, or rubbish floating on a river or pond.A high, flying cloud; a rack. |
| Mousseline de soie | a thin, stiff silk or rayon fabric. |
See also:
Robert Louis Stevenson 1886 novel Jekyll and Hyde – another “professional man with dark dark secrets”
Jaffe, A. (1990). Detecting the Beggar: Arthur Conan Doyle, Henry Mayhew, and” The Man with the Twisted Lip”. Representations, (31), 96-117.
Karnizs, K. (2013). Eternal Children Playing Roles in The Picture of Dorian Gray and” The Man with the Twisted Lip”.
Eternal Children Playing Roles in The Picture of Dorian Gray and “The Man with the Twisted Lip”
Marck, N. A., & Hewitt, M. (2001). Drugs, Doubling, and Disguise: Sherlock Holmes and ‘The Man With the Twisted Lip.’. Unrespectable ReCreations, 107-116.
marchudson.net 
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