That makes sense. It's a fine line, I guess, but Holmes seems pretty unconcerned with how anyone feels about anything, on the whole.

I think I'm partial to Irene because I read the Carole Nelson Douglas books featuring her (and Holmes, from time to time), and she was a lot of fun in them. In the actual story, I think it's both Holmes's and Watson's reverence for "the" woman that resonates.

Another difference that occurred to me was my surprise when there was no dead body in "The Red-Headed League". When I hear "mystery" I expect it, at least in a modern novel. And we all know TV is littered with corpses.

Who are the modern detectives to whom we're comparing Holmes? I think most of the other detective fiction I've read is involves Marlowe or the Continental Op (or, sadly, Mike Hammer, when I was a teenager). There's also tv detectives like Monk, McNulty, Pembleton, and, more systematically, Lenny Briscoe, and, a little further back, Columbo and Rockford.

CI, I think all those you mentioned are valid for comparison, considering the fact it unlikely the creators/writers of all those detectives weren't in some indirect way influenced by Doyle's work.

In a way, Holmes is predictable because of all the emulation. I knew where he was going in "Red-Headed League" once the scam was laid out for us because modern tv/movies has jaded me. Someone in Minearverse, while commenting on Tim Minear's then-running show (sob) The Inside, said something similar - that she's rarely surprised by twists and turns in plotting anymore. In the two stories we read so far, Holmes solves the cases in a pretty straightforward manner, with no unexpected twists or turns, and by my sensibilities it's almost too easy. I'm sure the 19th and early 20th century readers enjoyed it much more.

You're right, Wolfram -- modern viewers/readers *expect* not only the twists and turns, but operate under the "all people are evil" theory (or at least "lots of people are evil"). To the original Holmes reader, a peek into the criminal mind must have been a novelty, because while they certainly understood there was a bad element, one didn't associate with them or generally care to know what they did, or why they did it.

Imagine the difference between that audience, who most likely felt most sympathy for the guy who was fleeced by the League, and the modern audience, who actually likes (or enjoys watching) Hannibal Lechter, and doesn't feel one way or the other about many of his victims.

that she's rarely surprised by twists and turns in plotting anymore.

That was probably me, or at least, I was participating in the conversation.

Interesting factoid: Edgar Allen Poe is credited with inventing several conventions of the mystery genre, including the locked-door mystery, the mystery that depends on the solution of a coded message, the armchair detective, the most unlikely person being the criminal, and the theory that when all other possibilities have been discarded, the one remaining, however improbable, must be correct.

Holmes is often likely to let a criminal get away with the crime if he believes it was justifed. At least one murderer gets away because the victim is an abusive swine and the killing happened in a fit of rage. I like the later revenge plot stories, like "The Dancing Men" because everyone involved is being a slave to emotions and passions, and Holmes is bringing is dispassion to bear.

Imagine the difference between that audience, who most likely felt most sympathy for the guy who was fleeced by the League, and the modern audience, who actually likes (or enjoys watching) Hannibal Lechter, and doesn't feel one way or the other about many of his victims.

That's so true. I almost felt contempt for the red-headed guy for being such a gullible mark, and some level of admiration for John Clay for devising and executing such a cunning scheme.

I might be a little bit twisted.

...and the theory that when all other possibilities have been discarded, the one remaining, however improbable, must be correct.

I always thought this was Doyle/Holmes. But that is really interesting about Poe, he's not really thought of as a mystery writer. Just out of curiousity, where is that factoid from?

The birth of the detective story is usually dated to 1841, the year the first of Edgar Allan Poe's three Auguste Dupin tales was published. In Poe's tales of ratiocination, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt," and "The Purloined Letter," Dupin exhibited the combination of observation and reasoning ability that became the staple of the mystery novel, and Conan Doyle said that these tales were one inspiration in creating Sherlock Holmes.

The first "whodunit" novel is considered to be L'Affaire Lerouge (1866) by Emile Gaboriau. His detective, Lecoq, is fashioned after the popular memoirs of the real-life French detective Vidocq.

Holmes was aware of his fictional counterparts:

"Now, in my opinion, Dupin was a very inferior fellow. That trick of his of breaking in on his friends' thoughts with an apropos remark after a quarter of an hour's silence is really very showy and superficial. He had some analytical genius, no doubt; but he was by no means such a phenomenon as Poe appeared to imagine."

"Lecoq was a miserable bungler. He had only one thing to recommend him, and that was his energy. That book made me positively ill. The question was how to identify and unknown prisoner. I could have done it in twenty-four hours. Lecoq took six months or so. It might be made a textbook for detectives to teach them what to avoid."

There is a whodunit subplot in Charles Dickens' Bleak House (1853), and Inspector Bucket in Bleak House is probably the first police detective to investigate a crime in fiction. Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White (1860) is generally consided to be the first significant mystery novel, and it brings together a number of aspects that were to become staples in the British mystery novel, including a country house, bungling local police, a reconstruction of the crime and a final plot twist.

Conan Doyle borrowed from all of these, but Sherlock Holmes was the first to really capture the public's attention.

Imagine the difference between that audience, who most likely felt most sympathy for the guy who was fleeced by the League

Do you really think so? I thought he was represented as venal (Holmes questioning him regarding not having to pay his employee full wages, etc.) and stupid (not recognizing there was a reason for it); and I assumed readers of any age would recognize that. I sometimes wonder if part of the attraction of Holmes is that he can be so dismissive, almost (sometimes more than almost) rude, about unattractive foibles, thus letting the reader be rude as well.

Do you really think so? I thought he was represented as venal ... and stupid...

I don't think readers would have necessarily *liked* him, but as a more or less upstanding British citizen, he would have elicited their sympathy, I think. In that "but no one should *do* those sorts of things to us!" way.

I still need to read The Woman in White.