Why is Sherlock Holmes so Popular? Ratiocination Rules!

Why is Sherlock Holmes so Popular? Ratiocination Rules!

Readers of The Strand Magazine can be in no doubt that this publication’s most famous “son” is riding high in the popularity stakes at the moment. We live in a time when there are perhaps more incarnations of, and homages to, Sherlock Holmes than ever before: the Hollywood blockbuster movies played as much for laughs and spectacle as for investigative insights; hugely popular television series in both the UK and USA, each featuring a 21st-century version of Holmes; award-winning, mainstream books providing “insights” into Holmes’s life before the Doyle tales and after; Holmes and/or Doyle have “met” any number of real-life or mythical figures who have been influenced by their encounter to such an extent that they then undertake investigations in Holmes’s manner; and so on. Certainly there’s always been a great deal of fan fiction circling the Holmes canon, but we’ve now gone way beyond that, and readers and viewers love it! It seems we, literally, cannot get enough Holmes.

But if that’s the case, why is he always changing, being reinvented? It seems to me that pretty much everything about Holmes has been altered at some time or another, except one thing: his method. And that’s why I suggest it isn’t Holmes himself who rules, but his method of utilizing ratiocination to solve crimes.

Ratiocinate: to “form judgements by a process of logic; reason.” —Oxford Dictionary

 

The idea of a detective (of whatever ilk) using logic and reason to solve a crime has long been the darling of crime-fiction authors and readers, reaching right back to Poe’s Dupin. And that’s to be expected. When solving a crime, some sort of process must be used; hardly ever does anyone say, “Let’s all guess whodunit, then discuss our preferences based upon no knowledge of the case whatsoever.”

 

Arthur Conan Doyle met Dr. Joseph Bell in 1877. Serving as Bell’s clerk at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, Doyle came to know a man well-respected for his unique method based upon detailed observation, then the use of deductive and inductive reasoning, allowing him not only to make diagnoses, but also to work out the occupation of a patient by using these same methods (apparently a favorite trick). Doyle readily acknowledged that Bell influenced his drawing of both the Holmes character and his now world-renowned methods.

 

In The Sign of the Four (Doyle, 1890), Holmes famously says,

“How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible,

whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?”

 

This oft-repeated quote is used to illustrate the bedrock of Holmes’s process, but ratiocination is about more than making observations and gathering clues and facts. We know this because of the roles Watson and Lestrade play in Doyle’s work: they see exactly what Holmes sees—even if he has to point things out to them—but they don’t draw the same conclusions he does from what they know and have observed.

 

For me, this is the most attractive aspect of the method—the thinking applied to the facts, rather than the act of running about gathering information and clues themselves. Sadly, some of the modern interpretations of Holmes don’t significantly feature this step in the process, whereas Doyle was at pains to point it out. Playing the violin, stepping away from the investigation to be able to view it through a different lens, even using drugs to dull his frustrations or, possibly, heighten his powers—all these are techniques Doyle gifted to Holmes, and each allowed him time to think, to cogitate. Then he returns to his “team” with a solution he has arrived at following this period of reflection. Other characters might view his process as something akin to a magic act, with a big “ta-da!” at the denouement, but Holmes isn’t a man who jumps to conclusions—though his encyclopedic knowledge about a host of topics allows it to appear so in some cases.

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This “let’s gather the facts as a team, but allow the star detective to work out the solution in his own inimitable way” approach to storytelling has mutated and been used by many authors. Take, for example, Christie’s Poirot, who gathers facts alongside Hastings or Japp and then sits quietly, maybe allowing his hands to construct a house of cards, while he allows his “little grey cells” to sort those facts and draw conclusions invisible to his partners. This is similar to how Christie’s other long-running character, Miss Marple, knits up clues into a solution as she knits up the items of clothing she’s creating from the ball of yarn (which is also known as a clew, by the way) in her lap. Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone uses the method of “collecting information, recording information, then understanding what she has observed” (G Is for Grafton, Hevener Kaufmann and McGinnis Kay, 2000). My own criminal psychologist sleuth, Cait Morgan, uses the technique of “wakeful dreaming” to escape the insertion of personal attitudes and assumptions all humans attach to their observations, allowing a clearer understanding of the facts at hand.

 

Thus, I would suggest that our fascination with Holmes today is not based merely on our love of Doyle’s characters—who frequently change and shift to accommodate modern realities, preferences, and ironies—but is, in fact, rooted in our desire to allow his method, ratiocination, itself to rule.

 

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Cathy Ace is the author of the Cait Morgan Mysteries (TouchWood Editions) and The WISE Enquiries Agency Mysteries (Severn House Publishers). You can find out more about the award-winning author at cathyace.com

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Authors, Sherlock.

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