{"id":177,"date":"2002-10-28T21:45:47","date_gmt":"2002-10-29T02:45:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog-test\/?p=177"},"modified":"2002-10-28T21:45:47","modified_gmt":"2002-10-29T02:45:47","slug":"doyle_arthur_co_2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2002\/10\/doyle_arthur_co_2\/","title":{"rendered":"Conan Doyle, Arthur: (02) The Sign of Four"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name=\"85613454\"><\/a> <a name=\"link_85613454\"><\/a> <\/p>\n<p>Read a few things over the weekend. First, I finished <strong><cite>The Sign of Four<\/cite>, by Arthur Conan Doyle<\/strong>. This is the second Holmes\/Watson novel, and considerably better than the first, as it doesn&#8217;t derail in the middle for unnecessary exposition. I&#8217;m a little puzzled by the title, since most of the time the phrase appears in the story, it&#8217;s as the Sign of <em>the<\/em> Four. Doyle definitely likes the sensational; the introduction calls it &#8220;a rousing Grand Guignol of a mystery involving lost treasure, grotesque twins, [and other things that are spoilers].&#8221; My understanding of &#8220;Grand Guignol&#8221; is that it&#8217;s even more over the top than this, but one can&#8217;t dispute the characterization otherwise. I should note that it&#8217;s an ongoing explanation type of mystery, however, not the one-big-revelation sort. (I don&#8217;t think the chase scene is as good as the writer of the introduction does, though.)<\/p>\n<p>In character news: Holmes, still sporadically annoying. Watson, still a pretty good bloke. Mary, Watson&#8217;s eventual wife: does, indeed, possess a name, though barely has a personality, though Holmes does give her something of a compliment at the end (I note that Irene Adler makes her appearance in the very next story). Somehow, it fails to surprise me that Doyle should not do romance well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Read a few things over the weekend. First, I finished The Sign of Four, by Arthur Conan Doyle. This is the second Holmes\/Watson novel, and considerably better than the first, as it doesn&#8217;t derail in the middle for unnecessary exposition. I&#8217;m a little puzzled by the title, since most of the time the phrase appears &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2002\/10\/doyle_arthur_co_2\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Conan Doyle, Arthur: (02) The Sign of Four&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,6,16],"tags":[175],"class_list":["post-177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-mystery","category-sherlock-holmes-mystery","tag-conan-doyle-arthur"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}