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Dec 28, 2022

“the unknown gentleman who lost his Christmas dinner” [BLUE] 

 
Poor Henry Baker has always been a sad, sympathetic character. Deprived of his hat and his peace offering to his wife at Christmastime, he was a victim of an unintended crime.
 
It seemed like the proper time of year to reflect on what life must...


Dec 21, 2022

“a long-suffering woman” [DYIN] 

 
 
Have you considered how much (or little) we know about Mrs. Hudson, and what we take for granted? For example, her first name was Martha, she was widowed, and she retired with Sherlock Holmes. 

The answers to those are: no, not sure, and definitely not. Catherine Cooke's...


Dec 15, 2022

“Good old Dr. Starr!” [3GAR] 

 
One of the creepiest looking characters in the Sherlock Holmes stories was Col. Lysander Stark, who chased after Victor Hatherly with a meat cleaver in "The Engineer's Thumb."

But then we run across the name Lysander Starr in "The Three Garridebs." What gives? We track the...


Dec 8, 2022

“found in the banks of the Amoy River in southern China” [BLUE] 

 
The blue carbuncle had quite a journey. Before it even arrived in the action of the story, the piece of crystallized charcoal was the object of "two murders, a vitriol-throwing, a suicide, and several robberies."

But once it's in London and...


Dec 1, 2022

“devoted to a series of walks” [WIST] 

 
In at least four separate cases, we know that Holmes and Watson were out strolling around London. How does this square with Holmes's aversion toward exercise?
 
And what about other occasions in the countryside? Was Holmes a man of nature, was he gathering information, or...