There's Only One 
Sherlock Holmes...
Isn't There?

Sherlock Holmes, logician, the man with a Strad, a deerstalker, a cocaine habit (it was legal then) whose principal occupation was as ‘consulting detective’ and resident at 221B Baker Street (with his chronicler and friend Dr. John Watson) returns! He returns to the… er… he’s everywhere. Anthony Horowitz’s officially approved (by the Conan Doyle Estate) novel, “The House of Silk,” arrives to approving reviews (well review- I only read one); Guy Ritchie’s sequel, “Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows” muscles its way back to a theater near you for Christmas, and the new year will present us with a new season of “Sherlock,” the hit British television update of Sherlock Holmes (As seen on PBS).

With all this returning one has to wonder if he really went anywhere at all. Conan Doyle published no fewer than 56 Sherlock Holmes stories and four novels and when he attempted to kill him off (“The Adventure of the Final Problem”,) the force of public demand eventually led to his return after an 8 year absence with “The Hound of the Baskervilles,” and a further 24 years of stories followed.

Conan Doyle’s detective owes an acknowledged debt to Edgar Allen Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin ("Murders in the Rue Morgue"), and in turn, Sherlock Holmes had a profound influence on the Detective Fiction genre and authors including Agatha Christie (Hercule Poirot), Dorothy L. Sayers (Lord Peter Wimsey) and even Umberto Eco with his William Baskerville in “The Name of the Rose.” However, much as I always return to Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce over modern cinematic re-interpretations, you can’t go wrong with Conan Doyle’s original- check out “The Sign of Four,” , if only to find the classic Sherlock Holmes-ism,
“…When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth…”.
It’s elementary my dear Watson… - as Conan Doyle never in fact wrote.

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