Recently I started reading a book called "Bakers Dozen", 13 Short Espionage Novels". The first one is a Sherlock Holmes short written by the great Sir Arthur Cannon Doyle. It only makes sense that a guy who could come up with a character as interesting as Sherlock Holmes would have to have had to been, at some level, an interesting guy. So far as TV and the movies, Sherlock is one character that they just haven't gotten right except for the critically acclaimed PBS series "Sherlock". I am sure that Robert Downey Jr. is a fine actor but I just couldn't by into it. Even more so with the CBS show "Elementary" with Lucy Lui as Watson. My anticipation was that I would catch every episode. However, just like with the movie it was very disappointing. Benedict Cumberbatch is the only one who I have ever seen who did a good enough job to allow me to get into the story. I heard there are a few new episodes coming out this year and am looking forward to that.
Enough about the movies, this post was supposed to be about the author who created such a great character and his sense of humor. When I got to page 14 (of the hardback version), it gave me a real chuckle. There was a character in the book who was already a corpse at the beginning of the story. In this short espionage novel, his body was found near some train tracks with some top secret submarine plans except for the fact that three pages of the plans were missing. In solving the mystery, Sherlock was going to figure out if he was a good guy or a bad guy. On page 14 he is interviewing the grieving "fiancée of the dead man" and she tells Sherlock:
"Arthur was the most single minded, chivalrous, patriotic man on earth" .
I don't know if that is true but Arthur was certainly a gifted writer and story teller.
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