The title of Marcel Theroux's second novel is an exquisitely calculated tease; sibling rivalry in high-achieving literary families has been a hot subject since long before William James described Henry as his ''younger and shallower and vainer brother.'' Mycroft Holmes is Sherlock's older, smarter, lazier brother, a shadowy but nonetheless vivid occasional presence in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories. (He has a nebulous but potent role as ''the most indispensable man in the country,'' according to Sherlock. Among the only things that are certain about him, Theroux reminds us, ''are that he is very fat, and a member of the Diogenes Club, where conversation is forbidden.'')
It is hard for the reader not to jump to a quick conclusion about the subject of the novel, given the highly public sibling rivalry exhibited by the older generation of the Theroux family. Marcel is Paul Theroux's son; a section of his father's uproariously entertaining book about V. S. Naipaul, ''Sir Vidia's Shadow,'' elaborated with what seemed like relish on the theme that one brother is always the other's literary inferior. Many readers felt that these passages drew on feelings about Alexander Theroux, Paul's writer brother. And then there is the fact that Marcel's own brother, Louis, has achieved fame in Britain (where both of them were brought up) as a host of TV documentaries. As Sherlock Holmes might have said, these are murky waters, Watson.
Having set up expectations with its title, ''The Confessions of Mycroft Holmes'' then plays with them mercilessly. Marcel Theroux's subtle and intelligent book is subtitled ''A Paper Chase,'' and while that undersells the novel's underlying seriousness and sadness, it does catch the way the reader is led on, an...
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... your neighbors than try to make friends and discover you actually hate each other.'' That is deeply accurate, and it is matched by observations from the other side of the Atlantic. Patrick's lawyer on Ionia had ''that odd American gift -- or is it a kind of insensitivity? -- of talking all the time and still seeming able to form a distinct and favorable impression of your personality.'' The jokes are good, not least in their timing. Patrick's education had left him with ''a range of almost wholly useless abilities -- basic conversational Latin from the seminary, good Samoan, a degree in English literature.'' The title tease turns out to be the best joke of all, since the book does eventually wind up being about brothers, and also about the ways in which ''the imagination roams widely over the world until it finds a predicament that reflects its own secret agonies.''
Holmes and Holmes developed this typology based on various characteristics of the crime scenes and the victims themselves of 110 interviews of selected offenders and serial murders (Canter & Wentink, 2004). David Canter and Natalia Wentink conducted an empirical test of this typology and developed several criticisms to their work. Their empirical test concluded that the features described for each category tend to co-occur within each other. For example, the characteristics of a lust killer include a controlled crime scene, evidence of torture, the body being moved, a specific type of victim, no weapon left at the crime scene, and rape; all of these features are also included for the thrill killer. This makes it difficult to categorize these
Louis L’Amour was born Louis Dearborn LaMoore on March 22, 1908 as the last of seven children. His father and mother are Dr. Louis Charles LaMoore and Emily Dearborn LaMoore, for the first fifteen years of his life Louis lived in Jamestown, North Dakota; a medium sized farming community in the valley where Pipestem Creek flows into the James River. His grandfather, Abraham Truman Dearborn, told Louis stories of battles in history and his own personal experiences as a soldier. As a child Louis spent a great deal of time in a nearby library where his eldest sister, Edna, was a librarian, he was interested in the study of History and always went beyond the scope that was taught in the schools. In addition to the study of History and Natural Sciences, Louis was interested in the fiction writings of Robert Louis Stevenson, Jack London, Edgar Rice Burroughs and others. The members of the L’Amour family were intelligent and had a part in Louis’ education. Emmy Lou, his sister, taught him how to read, his father taught him about animals, taught him the benefit hard work and the fact that “a man could always find a way to solve a problem”. The basics of learning he got from his mother who had once trained to be a schoolteacher, and from Edna he got insights into libraries and research. His elder brother Parker provided examples of a reporter’s speed and simplicity of prose and the public relations savvy of a veteran political aid. Yale, his second brother, showed Louis a love of life and a gift of improvisation. Louis’ adopted brother John was an example of a natural survivor, quick of wit and sharp of tongue. Hard times uprooted the family from their everyday lives and the family, the father, mother, Louis and john, had to take their fort...
Herman Mudgett, better known as Dr. H.H. Holmes, was born May 16th, 1861, and died May 7th, 1896. He was an American serial killer who trapped, tortured, and murdered possibly hundreds of people. It is believed that his early life is what influenced his love for death and killing. According to Jerrod Brown, Eric Hickey, and Blake Harris, “the childhood of Holmes was shaped by physical abuse, difficulties in socializing with peers, and cruelty towards animals” (Brown, Hickey, and Harris). Holmes obsession with inflicting pain on others would eventually lead him to becoming America’s first documented serial killer. In this paper, Holmes early abusive life and late life will be discussed as well as his life of a serial killer
...r Conan Doyle loathed writing Sherlock Holmes. He would write the wrong name for major reoccurring characters and not care if the reasoning in his stories was completely illogical, yet he ironically created his own genre of mystery novels that are recognized even to those who have never read them. Doyle unwillingly created the most insane fanbase that is still alive and thriving today. Doyle’s stories are still popular even eighty-four years after his death because they keep readers enthralled with the story. He wrote war stories based on his own exciting experiences, stories that he believed brought him to the height of his writing capabilities, and stories that sent him crashing back down when a frenzy into Spiritualism crumbled his prestige as a writer. His stories manage to capture the reader’s attention, making them timeless classics in the world of literature.
Another convention of the detective story is that the detective will have a confidant through whom he can explain his reasoning to the reader. Holmes has a confidant, Watson, who is the stereotypical gentle doctor who is plain and uninteresting so as not to draw attention away from Holmes. “I had no keener pleasure than in following Holmes in his professional investigations'; this implies that Watson lead an uninteresting life, without many interesting hobbies or pastimes.
A horrific crime was committed in 2012 in Aurora, Colorado. A 27 year old man by the name of James Holmes walked into a movie theater and brutally shot at the crowd, killing 12 and wounding an astounding 70 people. Holmes had plenty of ammunition to continue his deranged killing spree but luckily his gun jammed and he surrendered and was arrested shortly after. James Holmes appeared in court and tried to justify his actions by saying he has a mental illness and brought forth witness saying he is a sweet and academically gifted child. In the end the jury and judge didn’t believe it, or just didn’t care, and found him guilty which landed him with 3,318 plus years, or one life sentence for every person he had killed. There was massive amounts
...mes’ lifestyle. Holmes, throughout his life was a criminal. Holmes desire to murder people was believed to come from from his desensitized feeling about dead bodies. This was due to his medical career. As mentioned earlier, when Holmes was in medical school, he had many dealings with cadavers and was very familiar with them. Later, when he began killing he did not look at the bodies as human beings, but as material or later, cash money. This relationship between crime and deviance is mainly why I choose this book. I feel that H. H. Holmes, although Holmes was a strange and demented man, was very successful. This success questions what makes people successful: is it your status, education, or was it his determination?
The acclaimed authors, Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle, formulate the characters of Auguste Dupin and Sherlock Holmes respectively, to be similar in the way that they analyze, deduce, and connect segments of desperate and often-thought “unsolvable” detective cases. Through their comparable techniques and system of deduction, Dupin and Holmes never fail to trace back their evidence to the scene of the crime. However, due to the vast difference in the writing styles of Poe and Doyle, the audience observes the main characters not as clones, but rather an analogous pair that think alike, but do not act alike. The personalities of Auguste Dupin and Sherlock Holmes, although present are recognizable differences in their actions, continue to
As if molded directly from the depths of nightmares, both fascinating and terrifying. Serial killers hide behind bland and normal existences. They are often able to escape being caught for years, decades and sometimes an eternity. These are America’s Serial Killers (America’s Serial Killers). “Even when some of them do get caught, we may not recognize what they are because they don’t [sic] match the distorted image we have of serial killers” (Brown). What is that distorted image? That killers live among everyday life, they are the ones who creep into someone’s life unknowingly to torture and kill them. The serial killers that are in the movies, Norman Bates, Michael Myers, and the evil master mind of SAW, these characters are just that characters. They have been made up as exaggerated fictional characters from the Hollywood imagination.
There is one immensely popular figure in Victorian literature that uses scientific deduction to solve criminal mysteries, and his curiosity to solve mysteries has become his obsession. However, he is so cool and distant from his own emotions that he does not care if the obsession leads to his destruction, as long as he solves the mystery to appease his voracious mind first. The only thing that truly excites him in a passionate way, the one thing that causes any emotion within his cool demeanor, is his curiosity, which is his addiction, for solving mysteries. He is the hero of the story The Sign of Four, and his name, of course, is Sherlock Holmes.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World (1912) is yet another essential novel, that marked and defined the genre science fiction. Set in an expedition to a plateau in South America, the reporter Edward Malone tells his journey along with the hot-headed and eccentric Professor George Edward Challenger. What differentiates the protagonists from Doyle’s, what was soon to be known as Challenger Tales, his Sherlock Holmes series, is not only the ambiguity in attitude, as Sherlock Holmes is considered self-controlled and analytical, whereas Challenger portrays the stellar opposite, but also the way both novels are being narrated. Whereas former novel series has Sherlock’s assistant Dr. Watson as the narrator of the protagonists adventures, The Lost
This paper will explore the relationship between Sherlock Holmes and his companion and friend Dr. John Watson. What is the relationship between Holmes and Watson? Are they compatible or are their differences to great for them to overcome. Looking at how they work together will also be a key factor in how well the relationship works between the two of them. Do their own interests and abilities get in the way? Does the time period in which they live factor into the environment of their communication styles?
“The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes,” states Sherlock Holmes (Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles loc 1238). According to TV Tropes, mystery is a genre of fiction where the plot revolves a mysterious happening that acts as the driving question. With any given problem there is a solution; however, and the question is “how does one come about to that solution”? Extremely high intelligence level, keen observation, creative imagination and sensitivity to details are just some of the qualities that Holmes possesses. In the process of solving mysteries, there is always a borderline between mere guessing, a coincidence, and a scientific approach that Holmes calls deductive reasoning. In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 1902 novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Dr. Mortimer seeks advice from Holmes as he explains the curse that has been plaguing the Baskerville family. With the power of deduction, Holmes realizes that Mr. Stapleton is actually a Baskerville descendant and has been planning to get rid of the other members of the family to claim the family fortune. Conan Doyle tells the reader what their mind is capable of doing by incorporating Holmes through his novels as he uses observation, deduction and knowledge in solving his cases. One important key that makes him different from most people is that he sees everything that people often neglect to pay attention to. A remarkable proof which shows that Holmes holds an extraordinary analytical mind and is uniquely capable of solving a mystery through his great sensitivity to minute details and the ability to draw connections from it was shown as he observes and deduces information from the letter received by Sir Henry Baskerville the moment he arrived...
In the Sherlock Holme’s stories Eastern and American influence were seen as dangerous and this is shown in “The Man With the Twisted Lip,” when Watson arrives at the drug house and says, “As I entered, a sallow Malay attendant had hurried up with a pipe for me and supply of the drug, beckoning me to an empty berth” (114). The importance of this is Watson describes a sallow, jaundiced look of the Malaysian attendant. The negative connotation Watson uses to describe the Malaysian attendant is directly associated with his race and ethnicity. Furthermore, some of Doyle’s descriptions of foreign characters imply a xenophobic attitude that non-europeans are inferior and often act out of the English norms. For instance, in “The Noble Bachelor,” the noblemen describes his American wife, Miss Doran as, “what we call in England a tomboy, with a strong nature, wild and free, unfettered by any sort of traditions. She is impetuous - volcanic, I was about to say. She is swift in making up her mind and fearless in carrying out her resolutions” (4). In the plot of the Noble Bachelor, Miss Doran runs off on the day of her wedding, causing distress and conflict to the aristocratic groom, Lord Robert St. Simon. In most of the Sherlock Holmes stories, Holmes remains unbiased when conducting an investigation, however the actual conflicts that Doyle wrote
James Kissane and John M. Kissane, “Sherlock Holmes and the Ritual of Reason”, in Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Vol.17, NO.4, March 1963, pp.353-62.