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A Look at the Ultimate Detective
Sherlock Holmes is one of the world’s best-known fictional characters. Holmes became more famous than his creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, the first in modern literature to become so. Created in the 1880s, Holmes continues to fascinate today.
“The Science of Sherlock: The Forensic Facts Behind the Fiction,” by Mark Brake takes a deep dive into the Sherlock Holmes phenomena and the realities behind Holmes’s detection methods.
The opening chapter starts at the end – the death of Sherlock Holmes at Reichenbach Falls. Brake introduces the Holmes phenomena, explaining how Holmes kicked off the modern world of literary fandom. Brake explains how and why the fandom phenomena occurred. He shows why it disconcerted Holmes’s creator to the point where Doyle literally killed off his most popular character.
You love to read literary criticism, don’t you? Of course, you do. It’s why you come to Ricochet. So let me offer you a small diversion this morning by analyzing one of the staples of the British literary canon, T. S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. I think I can do this by focusing our attention on only three lines from the poem.
King Arthur is probably the world’s best-known fictional character. Writers from the 11th century’s Chrétien de Troyes to Bernard Cornwell in the 21st century have written stories about him. And the King Arthur’s legend keeps growing. A story this well-known must have a historical basis.
“The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, and Charles Williams,” by Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015, 656 pages, $35.00 (Hardcover)