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.
[In February my target is to read all (or at very least most) of the 12 stories in Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes and also the 13 in The Return of Sherlock Holmes.]
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).
This was okay. What was perhaps most entertaining about it is that Holmes pockets, 12,000 pounds, which is, I guess, serious money back in the day, for what is essentially his silence. I am it, I’m not sure, quite sure of the ethics there. And it was funny that the baddie gets sent out to Australia and becomes Australia’s problem. Someone could write a short story about him having PTSD and becoming a criminal in Australia, but I’m not going to do it.
Published: January 1904
Wikipedia here
Online here
Review: I would mostly recommend this. Nice to see the baddie gets to go to Australia!
Best sentence(s):
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“So that three days have been wasted. The affair has been most deplorably handled.”
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Heidegger!!
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His Grace is never very friendly with anyone. He is completely immersed in large public questions, and is rather inaccessible to all ordinary emotions. But he was always kind to the boy in his own way.”
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His eyes shone, and his cheek was flushed with the exhilaration of the master workman who sees his work lie ready before him. A very different Holmes, this active, alert man, from the introspective and pallid dreamer of Baker Street. I felt, as I looked upon that supple figure, alive with nervous energy, that it was indeed a strenuous day that awaited us.
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peasant again!
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“Admirable!” he said. “A most illuminating remark. It is impossible as I state it, and therefore I must in some respect have stated it wrong. Yet you saw for yourself. Can you suggest any fallacy?”
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Never shall I forget the Duke’s appearance as he sprang up and clawed with his hands like one who is sinking into an abyss. Then, with an extraordinary effort of aristocratic self-command, he sat down and sank his face in his hands. It was some minutes before he spoke.
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“I must take the view, your Grace, that when a man embarks upon a crime he is morally guilty of any other crime which may spring from it.”
Comment – joint enterprise!
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You will ask me what was James’s motive in doing such a deed. I answer that there was a great deal which was unreasoning and fanatical in the hatred which he bore my heir.
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. I say that he would have proposed such a bargain to me, but he did not actually do so, for events moved too quickly for him, and he had not time to put his plans into practice
Comment – OODA loops
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“What are promises to such people as these? You have no guarantee that he will not be spirited away again
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The proud lord of Holdernesse was not accustomed to be so rated in his own ducal hall. The blood flushed into his high forehead, but his conscience held him dumb
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The gallows awaits him, and I would do nothing to save him from it.
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“I understand that, Mr. Holmes, and it is already settled that he shall leave me for ever and go to seek his fortune in Australia.”
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Holmes folded up his cheque and placed it carefully in his note-book. “I am a poor man,” said he, as he patted it affectionately and thrust it into the depths of his inner pocket.
marchudson.net 
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