OBSESSIONS AND ICONS PART ONE

It was a Sherlock Holmes Weekend on ITV3 and although I was too busy to watch I did catch the Elementary, My Dear Viewer piece in which actor, and Holmes aficionado, Richard E Grant studied the appeal of the Great Detective.

There was some interesting input from three giants of the genre Val McDermid, P.D. James and Jeffrey Deaver looking even more cadaverous than usual. Apparently Lincoln Rhyme was created as a paraplegic because Deaver wished to create a detective who would defeat the criminals solely by the use of his superior intellect, as a tribute to Holmes.

None of the participants would have enjoyed the hatchet job by Richard A. Posner in the New Republic back in 2004 [thanks for the link to Detectives Beyond Borders], when he reviewed The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle, edited by Leslie S. Klinger and made statements such as:

"Holmes is for the immature..... this absurd obsession.....the reading of detective stories is simply a kind of vice that, for silliness and minor harmfulness, ranks somewhere between smoking and crossword puzzles."

The article is long but well worth a read if only to realise how misguided a judge and graduate of Harvard law School can be.

to be continued.......