Today we have two stories by Arthur Conan Doyle dealing with the “death” and “rebirth” of Sherlock Holmes. In The Final Problem, Holmes has his first and last encounter with master criminal and his intellectual equal, Professor James Moriarty. After a pursuit across Europe, the pair are believed to have perished when they tumbled off the Reichenbach Falls during a struggle. In the Adventure of the Empty House, Holmes miraculously returns to bring three remaining members of Moriarty’s criminal network to justice. In capturing the first, he solves an important murder investigation. Themes include justice, pursuit, deception, courage, sacrifice, death. More…
Archives
Philomel Cottage
This romantic story with a deadly twist is one of Agatha Christie’s lesser-known tales. Shortly after newly-weds Alix and Gerald move into secluded Philomel Cottage, Alix hears some disturbing news from the gardener. Gerald’s angry reaction when she asks him about it makes her realize how little she really knows about him. She sets out to fill in the gaps and discovers a trail of bigamy, swindling, murder, and escape form prison. Sensing danger, some quick thinking and a terrible-tasting new brand of coffee save her life. Themes include love and romance, manipulation, isolation, innocence, curiosity, fear, and the supernatural. More…
Noise Level
The major theme of this Science Fiction mystery by Raymond F. Jones is unlocking the hidden potential of the human mind. A government research laboratory gathers America’s leading scientists to replicate an “antigravity belt” that seemingly defies the fundamental laws of physics. The secretive young inventor died in an accident demonstrating the belt. He left no notes, and the only prototype was destroyed in the crash. To complicate matters his areas of research included not only the sciences, but also the occult with a special interest in levitation. Other themes: scientific dogmatism vs. open-mindedness, the scientific method, deception. More…
Carmilla
This 1872 novella by Sheridan Le Fanu was ground-breaking in several ways. It is not only one of the first examples of vampire fiction (pre-dating Bran Stoker’s Dracula by 25 years), but also the first to infer a lesbian element to vampiric attraction. This vampire seems to have a taste for blue blood. Peasant victims die quickly; two young aristocratic women enjoy her seductive company for longer. Could Carmilla have something else in mind for these two, such as spending eternity together? Themes: class differences, patriarchy, the supernatural, female sexuality, life and death. More…
The Minister’s Black Veil
In this Nathaniel Hawthorne story, a church minister frightens and intrigues parishioners by spending most of his life hiding his face behind a black veil. themes include uncertainty (Why the veil?), alienation and loneliness, hidden sins (for which the veil may be a symbol), moral superiority, guilt, fear, and death. Most readers consider the story from the parishioner’s side. However, it is interesting to contemplate how dark the world must look to the minister. Is the veil the equivalent of the dream by a character in another Hawthorne story (Young Goodman Brown): a reminder of the evil in every man? More…
The Adventure of the Speckled Band
This story, considered by Arthur Conan Doyle to be his best Sherlock Holmes mystery, features one of his most creative (and unlikeliest) murder plots. Thirty-year-old Helen, Holmes’s client, is a victim of Victorian attitudes towards women. Fearing for their future, her dead mother had decided that she and twin sister Julia would not receive their inheritances until they married. Their violent stepfather, who manages the money, will become destitute should either of them wed. After announcing her engagement, Julia dies under mysterious circumstances. Helen fears that she will be next. Themes: decay, isolation, fear, murder, class, greed, hasty judgement, justice. More…
Suspicion
Although Dorothy Sayers is best known for her mystery stories featuring amateur sleuths Lord Peter Wimsey and Montague Egg, this story features neither. Real estate agent Harold Mummery fears for his ailing wife. Police are hunting for a cook suspected to have poisoned several of her employers. His wife has recently hired a new cook, someone has been tampering with the arsenic-based weed killer in his garden shed, and he is beginning to feel ill. When a chemist identifies arsenic in some hot chocolate the new cook prepared, he rushes home. Themes: fear, suspicion, deception and betrayal, appearance vs. reality. More…
The Elephant Vanishes
The major theme of this surreal mystery by Haruki Murakami is how commercialism and modernization have upset Japan’s traditional social order. Other themes include unity, perception, disillusionment, alienation, paralysis, isolation and connection. An aging elephant and keeper symbolize the old ways, destined to vanish when displaced by urban development. The city’s absurd responses to the disappearance signify the uneasiness and confusion brought about by the changes. The narrator, a loner used to unity and balance in his life, becomes so disoriented by what he saw on the night of the disappearance that he is unable to make important decisions. More…
The Adventure of the Dancing Men
In this mystery by Arthur Conan Doyle, an English squire from a highly respected family asks Sherlock Holmes for help. His new bride has been receiving messages written in a strange code that appear to terrify her. The woman, an American, refuses to discuss her past, and a condition of her marrying him was that he must promise never to ask about it. Holmes takes on the case and easily cracks the code, but doesn’t move quickly enough to prevent a murder. Themes include honor, shame, secretiveness, fear, unrequited love, obsession, crime and justice. More…
Don’t Look Now
This Daphne du Maurier story opens with a British couple dining in Venice. The holiday, through which they hope to rebuild their relationship following the death of their young daughter, takes an eerie turn when a fellow diner claims to be able to “see” the spirit of the dead girl sitting between them, and issues a grim warning that they should leave Venice immediately. When a family emergency calls them back home later that day, they take this as the meaning of the warning. The wife leaves the next morning; the husband never does. Themes: grief, the supernatural, scepticism, suspicion/paranoia. More…
The Purloined Letter
Edgar Allan Poe is famous for his horror stories. However, only about fifteen of his sixty or so stories are of this kind.He is also widely recognized as the “father” of modern detective fiction thanks to his three tales featuring the Chevalier [Sir] Auguste Dupin. In a manner later emulated by the likes of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot, Dupin succeeds where eminent policemen fail… in this case, simply by recognizing that the best place to hide something important is in plain sight. Themes: blackmail, political manipulation, deception, linear (scientific) vs. lateral thinking. More…
The Red-Headed League
A common theme in most detective stories is superior observation skills and deductive reasoning. A defining feature of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Red-Headed League is the way the facts presented by the gullible Wilson appear so bizarre to Watson as to defy interpretation. This prompts Holmes’s to quip: Omne ignotum pro magnifico [we exaggerate the importance of the unknown]. Once he dismisses the Red-Headed League as a distraction, identifying the crime in progress becomes a straightforward matter for the great detective. Other themes include deception (appearance vs. reality), gullibility, greed (of both the criminals and Wilson), crime and justice. More…
Pomegranate Seed
In this suspenseful mystery by Edith Wharton, a young woman marries a recently widowed man who admits to having been intensely in love with his deceased wife of twelve years. Everything seems perfect until a series of strange letters arrive, addressed to the husband in obviously feminine handwriting. The letters deeply disturb the husband, who refuses to disclose the sender or the contents. When the husband disappears and the secret of the letters is revealed, it appears that his dead wife may have won a ghostly contest. Themes: love, family, jealousy, honesty and mutual trust in marriage, alienation, he supernatural. More…
The Learned Adventure of the Dragon’s Head
Lord Peter Wimsey, Dorothy Sayers’s eccentric amateur sleuth, is saddled with his ten-year-old nephew while his parents are away overseas. As the two browse an antiquarian bookshop, the boy is attracted to the maps and pictures in a badly damaged copy of Cosmographia Universalis, an early description of the world. He buys the book, and shortly afterwards a strange man visits and offers Wimsey two hundred times what the boy paid. This leads to a “Boys Own” type adventure involving attempted robbery, Scotland Yard and a riddle leading to buried pirate treasure. Themes include curiosity, greed, mystery, deception, and philanthropy. More…
The Pale Man
This is a short horror story by little known author Julius Long. A doctor tells a man suffering from nerves to have a long holiday somewhere quiet. The man checks into a hotel in a small town. However, the townspeople are unfriendly towards him and he finds it a lonely, dreary place. His only hope for stimulating conversation appears to be a tall, pale man staying in another room of the hotel. The pale man has some very strange ways, so the man asks the hotel room clerk about him. The room clerk tells him there is no such guest. More…
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
Written in 1841, this rather unlikely story by Edgar Allan Poe is considered one of the world’s first modern detective stories. In a seemingly insoluble locked-room mystery, the wrong man is arrested for the violent murder of two women. In an effort to find the truth, Poe’s amateur detective Dupin demonstrates the importance of “mental analysis” in problem solving and, in the process, shows how an “Ourang-Outang” was able to make a monkey out of the police. Themes include ingenuity (inventiveness) vs. mental analysis (critical thinking), violence, the pursuit of truth, justice. More…
A Scandal in Bohemia
This is the first of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes short stories. The hereditary King of Bohemia hires Holmes to retrieve (steal!) photographic evidence of a scandalous affair. Uncharacteristically, the great detective underestimates the jilted woman and is unable to complete the assignment. Rather than displaying frustration or anger, Holmes is smitten… not with love, but with admiration for her intellect. Themes: philandering, class, sexism, deception, underestimating one’s foe, respect. Some say that Holmes’s esteem for Adler suggests a feminist theme. However, as Watson says, she is the woman; the only one he ever regards so highly. More…