Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1890)

With “The Copper Beeches,” we come to the end of the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and the first third of the canon. I’ve heard stories that this was the first time that Doyle allegedly grew tired of writing for Holmes, but since the Memoirs was released only a couple of years later, I don’t know if that’s the case. Regardless, it’s a good point to pause and reflect on the past nineteen essays a bit.

In reviewing them, I notice that I’ve been pretty hard on Doyle, particularly on his continuity. Part of the reason for this is the fact that I am an obsessive fanboy, and like all obsessive fanboys, I get frustrated by continuity errors, missed details, or anything that might potentially break me out of the conceit that this is all one universe. Some readers over the years have pointed out that many people when they write down events well after the fact can muddle and mix up details, and therefore it is plausible that Watson would do so as well, which means the inconsistencies aren’t immersion-breaking. I would rebut that people generally wouldn’t forget things like where they’ve been wounded or when they were married, and I’m in the “no, they’re really errors” camp.

A couple of times, I also criticized Doyle’s earlier writing techniques. I don’t regret that, if only because even during the course of The Adventures you can see his writing style evolve and grow into the much more confident and masterful storyteller that he’s known as. Every writer has a rough period, and turning a blind eye to that downplays the level of quality a writer attains in later life.

Whether it’s his continuity or his style, I’m hard on Doyle because I love every aspect of his work. I enjoy picking apart the problems and examining them under a harsh microscope just as much as I love being swept away into the pure joy of watching two close friends bicker and reason their way to unraveling a mysterious case. I relish sitting down and critically analyzing these stories as much as I enjoy rereading them for pure enjoyment for the trillionth time. Each hits a different part of the enjoyment, but it’s all part in parcel of my love of Doyle and his characters.

So please do not interpret my harsh remarks as hatred. Even stories that I find generally frustrating like A Study in Scarlet I have still read more times than other books I have claimed to thoroughly adore. I do it because I love every brilliant, wonderful, irritating, misplaced word of the canon. It is why I cannot and will not be objective in my review of these stories – they are written onto my very soul as a person.

Plus, dead people are less likely to get mad at you or try and sue you.