Month: May 2023

A series of posts, containing full spoilers, as I make my way once more through the complete canon, picking out points of interest and reflecting on my personal experience of the stories.

The Naval Treaty

• Holmes tells Miss Harrison “You have furnished me with seven (clues), but of course I must test them before I can pronounce upon their value.” Sadly he doesn’t detail what these are.
• Inspector Forbes resents Holmes interest in the case saying “You are ready enough to use all the information that the police can lay at your disposal, and then you try to finish the case and bring discredit on them.” Holmes’ response is “On the contrary, out of my last fifty-three cases my name has only appeared in four, and the police have had credit in forty-nine.”

The Final Problem

• Watson writes up this case as a response to letters in which Colonel James Moriarty has defended the memory of his brother. Later in the canon we learn that the professor was also called James. It would be no surprise if their father were also called James and had done what George Foreman, boxer and lean, mean, fat-reducing grilling machine endorser, would go on to do when he named all five of his sons George (and one of his seven daughters Georgette).
• Despite Conan Doyle’s determination to kill off Holmes, he doesn’t provide a corpse. Subconsciously did he want to leave a way for the character to be resurrected?

Previous posts in this series can be found here.

Although described on the back of my copy as the first book of the Havana Quartet (actually the Four Seasons in Spanish, which makes much better sense as this is set in summer and the heat is a recurring factor), this is the third book in the series featuring Mario Conde, a Cuban police officer.

He is currently spending six months on clerical duties after punching a fellow officer, but his boss reassigns him to full duties to investigate the murder of a transvestite, found strangled to death with two coins inserted up his anus. Conde must enter a world he is unused to, and quite uncomfortable with, to understand the victim’s life and thus understand why he was killed and who the murderer is.

The author has a greater fascination with bodily fluids than Sarah Phelps, just one of the reasons why I can’t recommend this book. The only real thing of interest was the inclusion of a short-story as written by Conde who has dabbled with writing in the past, which would have been a good stand alone piece.

Regular readers won’t be surprised to learn that I only read this as part of my 100 Greatest Literary Detectives challenge.

 

 

Yuzuru Hamura, having survived the events of Death Among the Undead, picks up his pen once more to relate the second case of the Shinko University Mystery Society.

His colleague, Hiruko, has discovered that the Madarame Organisation, who had a hand in the previous book, had done some psychic research years before, and so the pair head off into the countryside to investigate a prophetess whose predictions have recently been coming true. En route they meet Marie Toiro, another student, who sketches a boar being run over by their bus, minutes before it actually happens.

They arrive at a village that seems to be completely deserted, and after meeting a number of other visitors, the whole group makes their way over a rickety wooden bridge to the old research facility where the seer Sakimi still lives. They soon learn that her latest prophecy is that two men and two women will die in the locality on the last two days of November. Today is the twenty-eighth and Toiro starts to sketch a burning bridge…

The next day a man dies in what seems to be an accidental landslide and a woman is almost poisoned before a definite murder occurs. Are the fortune tellers ensuring their predictions come true or do they have genuine supernatural abilities? And if so, can anyone prevent the foretold third and fourth deaths?

And why has the murderer killed under these circumstances? As Hiruko says:

“When the police eventually arrive and they learn that a murder has been committed here, what do you think they will do? It will be clear the murderer must be one of us. We’ll be investigated and they will start digging into our backgrounds. It’s extremely likely, therefore, that they will find the culprit. Which means there is no situation less suitable for a murder than a closed circle.”

There is a brilliant piece of Queenian deduction which explains why the murderer spent time ransacking the victim’s room and this is followed up with some inspired guesswork to fully explain the motive behind the murders.

There is a teaser at the end for the third book in the series. Here’s hoping Locked Room International can get the rights to translate and that Ho-Ling Wong has some availability in the next year or so!

Click here for more reviews of Japanese mystery fiction.

A series of posts, containing full spoilers, as I make my way once more through the complete canon, picking out points of interest and reflecting on my personal experience of the stories.

The Crooked Man

• Holmes arrives at Watson’s house, a few months after his marriage, and makes a number of deductions about his current domestic and business life. Although we are sometimes lead to regard Holmes as a loner, here he actively seeks out the company of his friend.
• Holmes uses one of his “Baker Street boys” to keep watch over a man of interest.
• Holmes relates that he should have solved the case earlier if he had remembered the story of David and Bathsheba.

The Resident Patient

• Dr Trevelyan had won the Bruce Pinkerton prize, a name very similar to that used later in the title of “The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans”.
• Holmes says that catalepsy is an easy complaint to imitate. This may be because he had actually experienced it as it is a characteristic symptom of cocaine withdrawal.

The Greek Interpreter

• Holmes says that his grandmother was the sister of Vernet, the French artist. This would most likely be Horace Vernet (1789-1863) the son of artist Carle Vernet and grandson of artist Claud Joseph Vernet.
• In introducing his brother Mycroft, Holmes says “I cannot agree with those who rank modesty among the virtues. To the logician all things should be seen exactly as they are, and to underestimate  one’s self is as much a departure from the truth as to exaggerate one’s own powers. When I say, therefore, that Mycroft has better powers of observation than I, you may take it that I am speaking the exact and literal truth.”
• Obviously you can’t have a recurring character who is a greater detective than your main character and so Mycroft only makes a second appearance in the canon.

Previous posts in this series can be found here.