On the trail of Mr Holmes

Having finally finished VS Naipaul's excellent A Turn in the South, last week I allowed myself a little light relief in the form of a Sherlock Holmes box set I purchased at some absurd knock-down price at WH Smith in Edinburgh last Christmas while the rest of my family were busy trying to exchange their presents. After taking a couple of months to finish VS, as the state of the paperback will testify (my handbag is a dangerous place), I zipped through two in as many days: A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four. Their modest size made them ideal fodder for a trip on the number 19 at rush hour, although, not having read a detective novel for some time, I kept rushing ahead through important chunks of Holmesian logic and missing details entirely.

Gulping down two in succession reminded me of something I noticed during my degree: if one overdoses on any writer, however skilfull, instead of reading their work at decent intervals, as it was published, then one starts to pick up on little literary tics and repeated devices which, although perfectly innocuous on their own, begin to become a bit of a bore en masse. Obviously Conan Dolyle wished to remind his readers afresh each time of Holmes' amazing powers of logical deduction, and found it convenient to employ Watson as a Doubting Thomas figure in this regard, but reading about this testing process even twice spoiled my enjoyment of it a little. So I shall give CD a break for a month or so for fairness' sake, despite wishing to plunge in anew tomorrow morning.