I was in Washington DC a couple of weeks ago and shopping for cheap books to consume on the plane home. In rummaging through the discounted discount books, I ran across the "Classic Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" for less than $2.00 and being a sucker for books on sale, I bought it for pocket change, put it in my briefcase and thereafter forgot about it until I stopped for coffee before work the other day and looked for something else than the newspaper to read.
I opened the first page of my dime store literature and stumbled over the formalized style of the author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, which one becomes accustomed after a few paragraphs.
"The Red Headed League", "A Case of Identity", "The Boscombe Valley Mystery", "The Beryl Coronet" and the list goes on Sherlock's keen deductions and odd methods of crime detection.
Sherlock is a detective, who confounds police orthrodoxy and provides "out of the box" thinking. He is brilliant. He challenges the norm and looks to the finite things that speak volumes to those that read them. Sherlock reads the person, the situation, the environment, the circumstances to hear the story of how it all happened or could have happened. Who else but, Sherlock would write a mongraph about tobacco ashes and residues as a method of crime detection. He has utter disgust for the mundane, but finds that God is in the details.
But I also see a humanistic side to him, that he is not just a genius, but a man who respects honour, who protects the reputation of his clients, their families and is a patriot that protect his country from escalating into journalistic rampages of scandal. Anybody like that today?
That's why I admire him. But alas, I can only hope to be like Watson, one who follow his exploits as an observer. Both Watson and I want to be like him, but we can only be his friend.
