Elementary, my dear Watson.

So, lets talk about Mr Sherlock Holmes.

Photo taken at 221b Baker St whilst in London

Lately, I have been very much infatuated with Sherlock Holmes, the famous creation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (as my family is all very well aware of). I have always liked the Sherlock Holmes stories and read a good deal of them in my mid teens. I quite like the fact that you can never quite solve a Sherlock Holmes mystery because Sir Arthur always wrote from the point of view of Sherlock's faithful companion, Dr Watson, and Dr Watson was only of just above average intelligence and never noticed the pivotal clues. This always gave Sherlock the opportunity of remarking, "Elementary, my dear Watson" and explaining the mystery with the inclusion of the clues that Watson had not noticed. Although Sherlock, as I said, often had the opportunity to say this, he never actually said it (much like, "Beam me up, Scotty" was apparently never said in Star Trek).

My interest in Sherlock was reawakened when my Aunt Bec came to Tassie for a visit a few months ago. Bec stopped at a second hand shop to buy a book to read while she was holidaying down here on the island. She didn't much care what book it was so she picked up one called "The Beekeepers Apprentice" by Laurie R King. She thoroughly enjoyed the book and left it for me to read and send back up to her (notice she liked it so much that she wanted it back). I read the book and loved it and went on eBay to buy my own copy. "The Beekeepers Apprentice" is the first in a series of books (of which I have now collected four, unfortunately not 1,2,3,and 4 but 1,2, 4,and 6 so I've only read 1 and 2) in which Holmes, after retiring to the country and raising bees, meets a young woman with a gift for detective work almost equal to his own. The two then of course have adventures and solve cases together.

After patiently listening to me bubble on about how wonderful these new Sherlock Holmes adventures were my very thoughtful brother gave me a very large amount of audio books on Cd for Christmas to listen to while I am travelling up and down the coast all summer (I often like to listen to audio books as they hold my concentration better than music and keep me awake). Amongst these are many of the original Sir Arthur Conan Doyle masterpieces and I have already listened to "A Study in Scarlet" and "The Sign of the Four" whilst travelling around the state in the last week.


Then, as I'm sure you are all aware, the new Sherlock Holmes movie just came out and, of course, I wanted to see it so Mum, Dad, Rob, and I all went through to Devonport to see it on Monday. I actually really liked it. I have some issues with it such as the casting of Robert Downey Jnr as Sherlock (Sherlock is described as being very tall and lean with sharp eagle like features - I think Hugh Laurie should play him personally), the fact that Dr Watson was much smarter and more useful than portrayed by Sir Arthur, and the fact that Dr Watson's fiancee was completely different - the same name, but a completely different person to the one in the originals. Despite of all these flaws, I really liked it. The case was one in which no logical solution seemed possible until Sherlock himself explained it to you - exactly the way Sir Arthur always intended it to be. The music by Hans Zimmer (the guy that did Pirates of the Caribbean and a heap of other movies with awesome scores) was very good and really added to the movie. Despite my objections to the casting, Robert Downey Jnr did a reasonable job, and despite his being far too useful, so did Jude Law in his role of Dr Watson. Even Rachel McAdams (not one of my favourite actresses) didn't manage to murder the role of Irene Adler too badly. The villain of the story, Lord Blackwood, was brilliant. Just look at him - isn't he simply dripping with evil?

Even Professor Moriarty made an appearance of sorts, and they seemed to very deliberately leave the door open for a sequel with Professor Moriarty taking over the role of lead villain.

All in all, its been a very Sherlock-y summer so far. And that's just fine with me :)