Sherlock Holmes

Verdict: This is a different sort of novel to Doyle’s previous
efforts. There is no frantic journey, no quick succession of set
pieces. Instead we have a slow, painstaking narrative with few
major characters and fewer incidents. Holmes is uncharacteris-
tically cast as an avenging man of action (that is, when he actu-
ally appears at all), while the rapport between him and Watson
is strangely lacking. But the atmosphere of menace is almost
tangible, and the moor itself is the book’s most memorable
character. The dreary final explanation, like the one in Psycho,
should have been axed. Overall, much overrated. 3/5
28) The Adventure of the Empty House
UK:The Strand Magazine (October 1903, SP), USA: Collier’s (26
September 1903, FDS),
The Case: A familiar figure returns from his watery grave – but
still in danger of his life…
Date: 30 March–April 1894.
Characters: Colonel Sebastian Moran, Mrs Hudson, Inspector
Lestrade, Ronald Adair, Hilda Adair, Edith Woodley, Mr Murray, Sir
John Hardy, Godfrey Milner, Lord Balmoral, Lady Maynooth, servant,
Watson’s maid, Professor James Moriarty, Mycroft Holmes, Oscar
Meunier, Parker, Von Herder.
Locations: Watson’s house, near Church Street, Kensington;
T H E C A N O N
• 65 •

---

221B Baker Street; Cavendish Square; Manchester Street,
Blandford Street; Camden House, Baker Street; 427 Park Lane,
W1.
Unrecorded Cases: Molesey Mystery, Morgan the poisoner,
Merridew ‘of abominable memory’, Matthews ‘who knocked
out (Holmes’) left canine in the waiting room at Charing
Cross’, Mrs Stewart’s murder in Lauder in 1887.
Holmes: After leaving Switzerland he spent two years in Tibet,
passed through Persia, then spent some months in Montpellier,
France, researching coal-tar derivatives. He quotes from
Shakespeare (Antony and Cleopatra Act 2, Scene 2: ‘Age cannot
wither her nor custom stale/Her infinite variety’). Wears a
mouse-coloured dressing gown.
Watson: In 1904 Watson has a practice and lives in Kensington,
his (first?) wife dying before 1894. Faints for the first time in
his life when Holmes reappears.
Disguises: A book collector and the Norwegian explorer
Sigerson.
Quotable Quote: ‘Well, then, about that chasm. I had no serious
difficulty in getting out of it, for the very simple reason that I
never was in it.’
Problems: Why didn’t Moran shoot Holmes with his airgun at
some point while he was following him to the Reichenbach
falls? In the original Strand version, the Tibetan Lama is incor-
rectly spelt Llama (as in the animal). Holmes could not have
met the Khalifa in Khartoum because he had abandoned it in
1885 for Omdurman. Professor Moriarty bears the same
Christian name as his brother in The Final Problem. ‘Baritsu’
should be ‘Bartitsu,’ a synthesis of Japanese self-defence
methods introduced by W Barton-Wright (1860–1951) in
Pearson’s Magazine of 1899 (and therefore unknown to Holmes
in 1891).
S H E R L O C K H O L M E S
• 66 •

---

Observations: In 1903, American magazine Collier’s made Doyle
an offer he couldn’t refuse – bring Sherlock Holmes back from
the dead and they’d pay him more than he’d ever been paid
before: $25,000 for six stories, $30,000 for eight, or $45,000
for a full thirteen. Doyle plumped for the last, and The Empty
House was the first of the set. At The Strand, Greenhough Smith
offered an extra £100 for every 1,000 words Doyle wrote.
When released in book form as The Return of Sherlock Holmes,
the stories were illustrated by CR Macauley.