Author: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
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| via Wikipedia |
The Valley of Fear was the fourth and final Sherlock Holmes novel. It was originally serialized in the Strand Magazine from 1914-15, then published in book form in 1915. Holmes and his faithful Watson investigate the murder of Mr. John Douglas of Birlstone.
As with the first two Holmes novels, the mystery's resolution involves a lengthy, multi-chapter backstory. It is because of these segues that I generally don't care for Holmes in long form. This time, Doyle takes us to Pennsylvania coal country to witness the exploits of the dreaded Scowrers, a union terrorist group based on the real-life Molly Maguires. (I'm guessing Sir Arthur wasn't pro-labor.) The Pennsylvania story isn't exactly bad. If anything, it's more interesting than the main tale and its twist more satisfying. It's just not what I want out of the Holmes experience. However, I find it interesting that the Scotsman Doyle, as responsible as any for fueling the anglophilia of millions, had his own romantic fascination with the rough American backcountry.
Allusions to Moriarty are also rather clumsily tacked on to the narrative. Overall, I'll be glad to get back to what I hope is the tidier work of the last two Holmes short story collections.
Interesting post.
ReplyDeleteThank you.
DeleteI've often wondered when we moved to a show instead of tell form of writing, but I've never gotten around to doing the research.
ReplyDeleteI have two thoughts. First, there's the time period. With serialization, you get paid for volume so there was an incentive to pad your material. There's also Doyle himself who clearly wanted to get away from Holmes and write other stuff. So he injected the story he really wanted to write directly into the Homes story.
DeleteIt's the time period aspect I'm wondering about. Jekyll & Hyde is a great example: virtually none of the action happens in the moment. You are just told about it after the fact. Everything was like that.
DeleteHowever, that's completely true about Doyle. He wanted desperately to quit writing Holmes.
I think a lot of 19th century writers liked the idea of a storyteller spinning a yarn for an audience. Twain certainly did. I think we've talked about "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" before. Not a whole lot actually happens in the that story. It's all in the telling.
Delete