Mike S.

Mike S. wrote on September 9, 2003 at 10:45 AM:

Y'know, the Holmes stuff is funny. I tend to bag a lot of detective stuff because the case is solved in the end of the book based on the obscure, arcane knowledge that the investigator posesses and was the only real way of knowing whodunnit ("Based on my extensive knowledge of culinary arts, only someone trained in the Avant Garde school of pastries would put both basil and paprika in that pudding...."), which means that I've spent the entire book with no real shot at figuring out who the actual culprit was other then random guesses, which takes most of the fun out of it.

The two exceptions to that rule on a consistent basis are the Nero Wolfe books (in no small part due to Archie Goodwin's First Person Smartass(tm) narrative style), and the Holmes stuff. I'm not sure why about the Holmes books -- Watson is nowhere near as fun a character over the long haul as Goodwin is. Maybe it's the nostalgia of my youth, where I repeatedly took out the Holmes omnibus my town library had to read it over and over.

Kate

Kate wrote on September 9, 2003 at 10:17 PM:

Nostalgia will forgive a lot. And I do like Watson even if he's no Archie Goodwin.

I found that most of the mysteries, I could guess the solution--probably this is because the stories have almost become the template for a certain kind of mystery puzzle, and so I'm in the right frame of mind to spot the clues. And I rarely try to figure out the puzzle ahead of time in other mysteries.

Outside of a Dog: Doyle, Arthur Conan: (08-09) His Last Bow; The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes

Mike S.

Kate