SOUNDTRACK: hiatus.
[READ: March 4, 2024] “The Man with the Twisted Lip”
After a couple of lesser stories, the seventh story in this collection returns Holmes to his glory. For instance, he looks at a felt hat and determines
That the man was highly intellectual is of course obvious upon the face of it, and also that he was fairly well-to-do within the last three years, although he has now fallen upon evil days. He had foresight, but has less now than formerly, pointing to a moral retrogression, which, when taken with the decline of his fortunes, seems to indicate some evil influence, probably drink, at work upon him. This may account also for the obvious fact that his wife has ceased to love him.
Outstanding.
The hat belongs to a man who was carrying a Christmas goose. He was set upon by some thugs and dropped the goose. But when he fought off the thugs, he smashed a window. Peterson, a constable happened upon the scene, but everyone fled, leaving Peterson with a hat and a goose. No one claimed the goose, so Peterson ate it and Holmes took the hat.
But Peterson comes back soon after saying that in the goose was a blue gem–the Countess of Morcar’s blue carbuncle.
Holmes lays some simple traps and determines that at least two people are not suspects in the theft. But this case, which seems so challenging actually get solved fairly easily. The remainder of the story actually lays out how the jewel wound up in a goose.
I have read another version of this story (in comic book form) and I feel like the “how” part may have been placed in a different order, which made the story a bit more suspenseful. But perhaps I am misremembering.
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The four novels of the canon:
- A Study in Scarlet (1887)
- The Sign of the Four (1890)
- The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902)
- The Valley of Fear (1915)
The 56 short stories are collected in five books:
- The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892)
- The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894)
- The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1905)
- His Last Bow (1917)
- The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927)
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892) contains 12 stories published in The Strand between July 1891 and June 1892
- “A Scandal in Bohemia” (June 1891)
- “The Red-Headed League” (August 1891)
- “A Case of Identity” (September 1891)
- “The Boscombe Valley Mystery” (October 1891)
- “The Five Orange Pips” (November 1891)
- “The Man with the Twisted Lip” (December 1891)
- “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle” (January 1892)
- “The Adventure of the Speckled Band” (February 1892)
- “The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb” (March 1892)
- “The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor” (April 1892)
- “The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet” (May 1892)
- “The Adventure of the Copper Beeches” (June 1892)
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SOUNDTRACK:
I Just Read About That... 