On every Murder Desk case there is a black telephone on the desk. Pick it up, and Sherlock Holmes gives you a hint: first a gentle one, then a sharper one, and each one costs you points. He is our favourite detective, and this note is about why we put him on the line.
The detective of Baker Street
Sherlock Holmes was created by Arthur Conan Doyle, a young doctor who wrote stories while he waited for patients. Holmes first appeared in A Study in Scarlet, in Beeton’s Christmas Annual for 1887, sharing rooms at 221B Baker Street with Dr John Watson, who tells most of the stories.
Doyle went on to write four novels and fifty-six short stories about him. Most of the stories first appeared in The Strand Magazine, from 1891, and they made Holmes the most famous detective in the world.
“You see, but you do not observe”
Holmes says that to Watson in “A Scandal in Bohemia” (1891), and it is the heart of his method. Watson has climbed the same stairs hundreds of times; Holmes knows how many steps there are. The difference is not cleverness. It is attention.
That is exactly what a case file asks of you. The answer is almost never hidden. It sits in a paper you have already read, waiting for you to notice it.
The real doctor behind him
Doyle studied medicine in Edinburgh, and one of his teachers was Dr Joseph Bell. Bell liked to look at a new patient and tell the students, before the patient said a word, where they had been and what they did for a living, all from small signs: a tan, a way of standing, the wear on a pair of hands. Doyle later said that Holmes was built on Bell.
So the most famous fictional detective began with a real habit: look closely, and let the small things speak.
The detective who would not stay away
Doyle grew tired of Holmes and tried to end the stories in “The Final Problem” (1893). Readers were furious. Holmes came back in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901-02) and returned to Baker Street for good in “The Adventure of the Empty House” (1903). More than a century later, readers still will not let him go, and neither will we.
Why he gives the hints
- He points at the evidence. A good hint from Holmes does not hand you the answer. It sends you back to a paper you have already read and asks you to look again.
- He is patient. His first hint is always a nudge. Only if you ask again does he say more.
- He is honest about the cost. Every hint takes points off your score, and the telephone tells you how many before you ask, so you decide when it is worth it.
His best-known rule fits a case file perfectly. In The Sign of the Four (1890) he asks Watson how often he has said that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Rule people out with paper, one by one, and see who is left.
Read a story, then pick up the telephone
Conan Doyle died in 1930, and the Holmes stories are now in the public domain, free for anyone to read. If you have never read one, start with “A Scandal in Bohemia” or The Hound of the Baskervilles. Then open a case, and when you are stuck, pick up the telephone.