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It is 1890. A year after Holmes's death, Watson--now in a retirement home--narrates a tale of Sherlockian detection that could tear apart the very fabric of society. The story opens with a train robbery in Boston, and moves to the innocuous setting of Wimbledon.
Ik heb Het huis van Zijde van Horowitz uitgelezen, en wat is dit mooi.Onvoorstelbaar goed, met een verhaallijn die je doet huiveren, en die zo goed wordt opgebouwd....gewoon geweldig !!! ( )
So, all of the elements are there: the data, the data, the data. Nothing of consequence overlooked. And yet can Horowitz, like Holmes, make from these drops of water the possibilities of an Atlantic or a Niagara? Can he astonish us? Can he thrill us? Are there "the rapid deductions, as swift as intuitions, and yet always founded on a logical basis" that we yearn for?
Emphatically, yes. The characters are, as Conan Doyle himself would have them, as close to cliché as good writing allows. Horowitz's Watson cleverly excuses himself right at the start from any complaints about style or content by reminding us of Holmes's oft-stated judgment of the stories: "He accused me more than once of vulgar romanticism, and thought me no better than any Grub Street scribbler." We must take them on their own terms, then: Mr Carstairs, the troubled dealer in fine art, who is being watched by a mysterious stranger in a flat cap with a "livid scar on his right cheek". Carstairs's wife, the mysterious foreign adventuress. Cornelius Stillman, the bumptious American millionaire. The dastardly Boston Irish gang, led by the ruthless O'Donaghue twins. The madwoman in the attic. The creepy reverend who runs a home for boys. The big set-pieces: the train robbery; the escape from prison; the freak show; the high-speed horse-drawn carriage chase.
Dorothy L Sayers understood the rules of the Holmesian game when she remarked that "it must be played as solemnly as a county cricket match at Lord's: the slightest touch of extravagance or burlesque ruins the atmosphere". Horowitz plays a perfectly straight bat. This is a no-shit Sherlock.
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
12,13,14 ASH
Opdracht
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
For my old friend, Jeffrey S. Joseph
Eerste woorden
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
I have often reflected upon the strange series of circumstances that led me to my long association with one of the most singular and remarkable figures of my age. [Preface, p. 3]
I have often reflected upon the strange series of circumstances that led me to my long association with one of the most singular and remarkable figures of my age. If I were of a philosophical frame of mind I might wonder to what extent any one of us is in control of our own destiny, or if indeed we can ever predict the far-reaching consequences of actions which, at the time, may seem entirely trivial.
Citaten
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
I had never had literary ambitions. Indeed, if anyone had suggested that I might be a published writer, I would have laughed at the thought. But I think I can say, in all honesty and without flattering myself, that I have become quite renowned for the way I have chronicled the adventures of the great man.
In all the time that I knew him, I never saw Holmes read a single work of fiction — with the exception, that is, of the worst items of sensational literature — and although I cannot make any great claim for my powers of description, I am prepared to say that they did the job and that he himself could have done no better.
"Everything has a relevance," remarked Holmes. "I have often found that the most immaterial aspect of a case can be at the same time its most significant."
Where I perhaps did Lestrade an injustice was in suggesting that he had no intelligence or investigative skill whatsoever. It's fair to say that Sherlock Holmes occasionally spoke ill of him, but then Holmes was so unique, so intellectually gifted that there was nobody in London who could compete with him and he was equally disparaging about almost every police officer he encountered . . . . Put simply, next to Holmes, any detective would have found it nigh on impossible to make his mark and even I, who was at his side more often than anyone, sometimes had to remind myself that I was not a complete idiot.
It sometimes occurs to me now, having witnessed so many momentous changes across the years, that I should have described at greater length the sprawling chaos of the city in which I lived, perhaps in the manner of Gissing — or Dickens fifty years before. I can only say in my own defence that I was a biographer, not a historian or a journalist, and that my adventures invariably led me to more rarefied walks of life — fine houses, hotels, private clubs, schools and offices of government. It is true that Holmes's clients came from all classes, but (and perhaps someone might one day have pause to consider the significance of this) the more interesting crimes, the ones I chose to relate, were nearly always committed by the well-to-do.
And then there was the greatest curse of our age, the carelessness that had put tens of thousands of children out on to the street; begging, pickpocketing, pilfering or, if they were not up to the mark, quietly dying unknown and unloved, their parents indifferent if indeed those parents were themselves alive. There were children who shared threepenny lodging houses, provided they could find their share of the night's rent, crammed together in conditions barely fit for animals. Children slept on rooftops, in pens at Smithfield Market, down in the sewers and even, I heard, in holes scooped out of the dust-heaps on Hackney Marshes. There were, as I shall soon describe, charities that set out to help them, to clothe and to educate them. But the charities were too few, the children too many and even as the century drew to a close, London had every reason to be ashamed.
Come, Watson, that's quite enough of this. Get back to the story. Holmes would never have stood for it had he been alive!
Laatste woorden
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
I hope with all my heart that he is playing for me ...
It is 1890. A year after Holmes's death, Watson--now in a retirement home--narrates a tale of Sherlockian detection that could tear apart the very fabric of society. The story opens with a train robbery in Boston, and moves to the innocuous setting of Wimbledon.
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The House of Silk
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