Free Book Review from A Reader - The Forever Sherlock Holmes

Notice: as I have only read the original Japanese version of the work I citied, the translation may not be perfect.

As we all know, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is not the most outstanding detective novelist in the history.  There appeared numerous detective novelists who wrote even better stories after him: the Golden Age with Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen and John Dickson Carr – they created extraordinary stories, impeccable reasoning, and fantastic locked room mysteries; also there is Gaston Leroux, a French author, who became a master of mystery novels with the ‘The Mystery of the Yellow room’; also there is Raymond Chandler, Josephine Tey and Georges Simenon, who turned mystery into literature; and Japan offered the world with Edogawa Rampo, Seicho Matsumoto, Yokmizo Seishi and many more …… if you wish, I can probably list it from my home to your home.

However, before the arrival of the great, the excellent works, we first need to remember this one sentence: all of these come from Sherlock Holmes.   In the United States, when the mystery writers voted for the world’s best 100 mystery novels, the Sherlock Holmes series ranked the well-deserved Number One.  Then, why would we love someone who “is boastful, has no common sense, and the British who sometimes can’t distinguish between reality and illusion, because of the cocaine addiction?” even more than ourselves? In Soji Shimada’s debut novel ‘The Tokyo Zodiac Murders’, after the protagonist Kiyoshi Mitarai criticized Mr. Holmes with such merciless criticism, his partner asked him angrily, “I am so shocked by the way you describe him.  Isn’t there anything of Sherlock Holmes that you can feel moved?” Then, Mr. Mitarai answered, “Who said that? Would anyone be moved by a flawless computer? The reason that I like Holmes is that he is a human, but not a part of a machine.  I like him, the person that I like most in this world, is him.” These words spoke out the thoughts of every fans of Sherlock Holmes: Because he is a human, not a part of a machine.

From when Edgar Allan Poe published ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ until now, around one hundred and fifty years, countless number of detective have walked into our view – with the exception of Mr. Trent, detective Maigret, Father Brown and a few others – most of them performed nicely when the murder happened: their sharp eyes looking for footprints, buttons, pince-nes and burned debris in the fireplace, questioning every possible suspects, and after 80 sentences or 600 sentences of boring dialogues, finally shouted out: You are the murderer! Dr. Ray! Now, let me tell you how I know it! – No one will be touched by this at all; I don’t even bother to make a yawn.  Nothing more than this: carefully and cleverly executed plan, dead bodies, panicked family members, and well-hidden traces, and an intelligent detective, explaining everything to the reader in the end.  If you just want to enjoy the logic reasoning, take it all as a game – with the goal of competing with the author, then you will meet your expectation.

But, is that enough? Is that all? Anyway, in these novels, the truth was warped layer by layer, and clues are hidden in places that you can never find, the explanation is far-fetched, the reasoning process is long and complex, and of the dull dialogue – “Mr. John, where was your maid in the hour from 10 to 10:30  last night? And where was your butler from 10:10 to 12:09?” – was shown to the readers times after times.  Compare to the Sherlock Holmes story one hundred years ago, everything is so repetitive, boring, and make the readers sleepy.  But we still remember, those great moments that Author Conan Doyle created: we saw Sherlock Holmes fell into the Reichenbach Falls with Professor Moriarty, we saw his figure standing alone in the fog of Baskerville. Yes, I still remember in ‘The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans’, he said coolly, “Colonel Walter, that to treason you added the more terrible crime of murder.” – It was my earliest acknowledgement of the great importance of one’s life – much more than a country.

In this way it helps us to acknowledge this fact: Why the image of Sherlock Holmes is still vivid today, like an old friend? He was proud, and he would be glad with the genuine praise; he was calm, yet he soaked his eyes in front of the injured Watson; he rejected love, yet he is a gracious gentleman; he had principles, yet he might break them because of compassion and sympathy. In all of the stories, the scenes that I appreciate and admire most, is the one in ‘The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot’ and ‘The Adventure of the Abbey Grange’, where Sherlock Holmes stood against the law in the end – he let go of the murderer.  In most of the detective stories, the great detectives always caught the criminal, and turned him or her over to the law.  The readers cheered for the justice, the law.  In these old-fashioned plots, I didn’t see one part of human.  On the other hand, Sherlock Holmes became a symbol because of those stories.  He symbolized that there is something else other than the law and the logic.  And what is that? Around one hundred years later, today, when Sherlock Holmes meets us in this civilization, many he will ask us this question:  what is justice? What can lead us on the right track? The law? The God? The ration?  At this moment, we seemed to see that Sir Holmes is saying to us, “Do not judge so quickly.”

Someone who is good at thinking can find many things worth his time on Sherlock Holmes, and this qualities don’t fade when they are on an fictional character.  As a matter of fact, after you read it for a dozen times, you will find that it is much more understandable than the masterpieces and the theories.  I remember when I stood in the famous Baker Street, Room 221, London, read through the letters all around the world; I saw one most memorable sentence.  It comes from a 15-year-old boy from Switzerland. In the end of the letter, he wrote, “Thank you, Mr. Holmes, you brought me the philosophies of life.”

Who says not?