{"id":192,"date":"2003-01-04T15:53:35","date_gmt":"2003-01-04T20:53:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog-test\/?p=192"},"modified":"2003-01-04T15:53:35","modified_gmt":"2003-01-04T20:53:35","slug":"doyle_arthur_co_5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2003\/01\/doyle_arthur_co_5\/","title":{"rendered":"Conan Doyle, Arthur: (06) The Return of Sherlock Holmes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a id=\"link_return\" name=\"link_return\"><\/a>The other short stories I read were those in <strong><cite>The Return of Sherlock Holmes<\/cite><\/strong>, which were collectively somewhat disappointing. Also, the <cite>Strand<\/cite> put frontspiece illustrations with these, frequently spoiling the entire story.<\/p>\n<p>The first is &#8220;The Adventure of the Empty House,&#8221; in which Holmes is revealed to be Not Dead after all. This one has a mystery that is unfortunately no mystery at all from a modern perspective; it actually took me a minute to realize why the killing was perplexing to the characters. The other stories of note are &#8220;The Adventure of the Priory School,&#8221; in which Holmes does something extremely out of character regarding money; &#8220;The Adventure of Black Peter,&#8221; in which Holmes, harpoon in hand, tries to transfix a dead pig in a single blow; &#8220;The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton,&#8221; in which Holmes and Watson go a-burgling; and &#8220;The Adventure of the Abbey Grange,&#8221; which is the first time I remember Holmes telling Watson that the game is afoot. Many of the other stories are unremarkable, either predictable or somewhat repetitive.<\/p>\n<p>Two other things I noticed. First, Lestrade hardly appears, and the police officer role is largely filled by young Hopkins; cynically, I think that&#8217;s because Lestrade&#8217;s been around long enough that Holmes can&#8217;t show him up as easily. Second, Watson (or Doyle, really) takes an inconsistent approach to confidential or embarrassing client information: sometimes making a big deal about changing names, sometimes ignoring the problem completely, sometimes writing stories that, if they were really true, couldn&#8217;t be written no matter how many details were obscured. This happens in the occasional Wolfe story, as well, and it always ruins whatever suspension of disbelief I&#8217;ve managed to build up. These stories worked well enough as bedtime distractions, but they are definitely not the best of the lot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The other short stories I read were those in The Return of Sherlock Holmes, which were collectively somewhat disappointing. Also, the Strand put frontspiece illustrations with these, frequently spoiling the entire story. The first is &#8220;The Adventure of the Empty House,&#8221; in which Holmes is revealed to be Not Dead after all. This one has &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2003\/01\/doyle_arthur_co_5\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Conan Doyle, Arthur: (06) The Return of Sherlock Holmes&#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":[6,16,117],"tags":[175],"class_list":["post-192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mystery","category-sherlock-holmes-mystery","category-short-fiction","tag-conan-doyle-arthur"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192","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=192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}