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 the Seven Per Cent Solution, by Nicholas Meyer where Watson has to trick Holmes into going to Vienna to be treated by Sigmund Freud)
Published: January 1892
There’s a caption contest here…
Wikipedia here
Online here
Review: I would recommend this, with reservations. Some of Doyle’s class asshole-ness is showing (fortunately I am absolutely free from this, oh yes). The hat thing is a classic of the genre.
Best sentence(s):
“I can see nothing,” said I, handing it back to my friend.
“On the contrary, Watson, you can see everything. You fail, however, to reason from what you see. You are too timid in drawing your inferences.”
“Then, pray tell me what it is that you can infer from this hat?”
“When the commissionaire had gone, Holmes took up the stone and held it against the light. “It’s a bonny thing,” said he. “Just see how it glints and sparkles. Of course it is a nucleus and focus of crime. Every good stone is. They are the devil’s pet baits. In the larger and older jewels every facet may stand for a bloody deed.”
SO CLOSE to a Marxian appreciation of Nature. Oh well…
“He spoke in a slow staccato fashion, choosing his words with care, and gave the impression generally of a man of learning and letters who had had ill-usage at the hands of fortune.”
Words I didn’t know:
Allusions I had to look up:
“When you see a man with whiskers of that cut and the ‘Pink ‘un’ protruding out of his pocket, you can always draw him by a bet,” said he
The Pink Un??? This is the year before the FT went pink?
So, some betting guide?
- the “Pink Un” – A sporting journal, printed on pink paper, not unlike the Police Gazette- Data! Data! Data! – The Blue Carbuncle | The Fourth Garrideb – Numismatics of Sherlock Holmes
See also:
Hedberg Jr, L. R. Musings Upon the Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle: Unmasking the Story Within the Story or Real Villains Revealed.”. Shoso-In Bulletin, 13, 84-92.
kspot.org/holmes/bluemusings.htm
King, A. 2016. Review: THE MAN WHO NEVER LIVED AND WILL NEVER DIE
Reviewed Works: The Man Who Never Lived and Will Never Die Pat Hardy”The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle” Arthur Conan Doyle”London: The City that Ate Itself” Rowan MooreRefiguring Mass Communication: A History Peter Simonson Victorian Literature and Culture, Vol. 44, No. 1 (2016) , pp. 202-210
Oooh, this looks fun!
Michael Sims. Arthur and Sherlock: Conan Doyle and the Creation of Holmes. New York: Bloomsbury, 2017. x + 246 pp. Cloth $27.0
marchudson.net 
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