The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

I have just finished reading the Sherlock Holmes short stories, most recently ‘The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes’.  The book is full of fantastic tales of amazing adventures, all narrated by Sherlock’s forever-loyal friend, John Watson. John plays an extremely important part in Holmes’s stories. The adventures could have been written by Sherlock himself, but they would have had to have been filled with how the case was solved to the most minute of details, and would have focused on the strangest angles of the story, and there would have been no drama. With Watson narrating the stories, you get the tale as it was for him, there is the suspense he feels when Sherlock is hot on a trail, and there is the thrill when there is action.  Though John is always a step (or two) behind Sherlock, he still manages to capture the tales wonderfully (or more, Arthur Conan Doyle depicts them wonderfully).

Some of my favourite stories from ‘The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes’ are ‘The Yellow Face’, ‘The Resident Patient’ and ‘The Final Problem’.

‘The Resident Patient’ is a great example of Sherlock’s character. He does numerous things that seem completely out of his character to solve the case. These things upset John hugely, for he thinks his friend is losing his mind. Sherlock suspects two observers of a murder to actually be the murders, and are lying when they say they saw it happen from inside the house. The policeman involved in the case nearly tells the men the key to Sherlock’s discovery and so Sherlock has a fake stroke or seizure to draw the attention away from the conversation. John is distraught, thinking that his friend is on the brink of dying. When Sherlock ‘recovers’ he makes a major mistake when going over on of the men’s statements. He does this so the murderer will write down the correction and then Sherlock will know what his handwriting is like, but to John it looks like Sherlock is losing it and is extremely embarrassed for him. It actually pains him, and Sherlock sees this. Then, when upstairs in the suspect’s room Sherlock purposely bumps into a table near the door and smashes all of the contents onto the floor. Holmes takes the opportunity to slip his hand into a dressing gown on the door, grabbing a letter from the murderer to prove the culprits of the crime. But he also turns around and blames the accident on Watson, telling him to look where he was going. John is depressed, until the murders are in jail and Sherlock explains himself. It’s a great story, and a perfect example of Sherlock and his little ways of doing things. It also shows how he keeps Watson in the dark, until the great reveal at the end, which makes it more fun for the readers.

All the Sherlock Holmes stories are fantastic to read. I think one of the things that makes them so exciting is the mixture of characters presented in the stories, and how they deal with situations. There are hardly any characters in the adventures who are just plain bad. They have made mistakes, or lost there temper, or joined the wrong gang, or have just made a bad choice somewhere, and these variations of characters make them great stories. The characters, and the drama created by Watson's story telling and Sherlocks way of deducing. Like in 'The Yellow Face', they set up the new characters (who you find out aren't actually bad), then Sherlock goes to investigate, they discover the great secret behind it all, and through the whole story Watson is building up the tension for the final moment where everything is revealed. 

‘The Final Problem’ is a thrilling adventure, but also very sad. Watson starts off the story explaining that, “It is with a heavy heart that I take up my pen to write these the last words in which I shall ever record the singular gifts by which my friend Mr Sherlock Holmes was distinguished.”  Watson writes about how Holmes came to his house one day with a bleeding hand and his nerves in a wreck. Sherlock has met James Moriarty, and now his life is at stake. So the next day, Sherlock arranges John to meet him on a train which will take them out of England to Europe where they will stay for a week or so until it is safe to return. But Moriarty is Sherlock’s match, and when Holmes and Watson are taking a stroll to look at the Reichenbach Falls, and Watson is called away for an hour or two, the two friends never see each other again. John runs back, suspecting Moriarty for drawing him away in the first place, and he finds nothing of his friend, or his foe, except a letter explaining that Sherlock has disposed of the most evil man in London, or possibly the world, but at the price of his own life. Or so it would be if Conan Doyle didn’t subdue to popular demand, and bring Sherlock back after a few years. The story is still sad for me though, even if I know Sherlock didn’t leave for good. I tried to read it as if it was the last one, as Arthur Conan Doyle had originally written it, and as his character John thought it was.

The story is intense and exciting, but also depressing, for obvious reasons. I like it though because it really shows Watson and Holmes’s relationship, how Watson will do anything for his best friend, and Holmes will do anything to bring justice. It also shows that Sherlock doesn’t want his only friend hurt.  Holmes knows Watson is called away only so he is left alone with Moriarty, but he doesn’t tell John this because he doesn’t want him hurt, and so John doesn’t stop him from killing Moriarty at the risk of his own life.

I am also a big fan of the series ‘Sherlock’, the modern take on the famous stories, where Sherlock Holmes texts, and John Watson blogs. It is an amazing version, the writing is brilliant, the look is awesome, the music is thrilling, the adaptation of the stories are extremely clever, and they have the best actors for the parts. I was excited to read the scene in ‘The Final Problem’ when Sherlock is retelling John the meeting between himself and Professor James Moriarty. The way it is described is very dramatic, because the readers have never seen Sherlock scared before, but in his meeting with Moriarty, he is definitely this. He holds a gun at the Professor through his dressing gown pocket, and even when Moriarty points this out and Holmes sets it down on the table, and he recalls to Watson that, “He still smiled and blinked but there was something about his eyes which made me feel very glad that I had it there.” When the Holmes and Moriarty meet, not much needs to be said for they are both equals intellectually and know nearly every move each one will and has made.  I was excited because as I read I realised they quoted this scene in the modern adaption, in the third episode at the very end. Moriarty says “All that I have to say has already crossed your mind,” and Sherlock replies, “Then possibly my answer has crossed yours.” It is a very tense moment, and I think I was just as excited reading and watching it now as the readers were back in the 1800’s. That’s the great thing about the Sherlock Holmes stories, they were extremely popular back in the day (and quite up to date), and are still thrilling adventures for the modern audience today. The TV series, ‘Sherlock’, is releasing a new series next year in England. The three part mini series will re-tell three of Conan Doyle’s most well known Sherlock adventures, ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’ (with Irene Adler), The ‘Hound of the Baskerville’ (a thriller where Watson is left alone to discover the mystery behind a supernatural beast), and finally ‘The Final Problem’ (the story I just described with the Reichennach Falls).