<p>Hi SJCM, thanks for checking in—I completely understand! If you want a taste of Arthur Conan Doyle, but don’t have time for his longer The Hound of the Baskervilles, you might want to try one of the short stories ignatius posted:</p>
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<p>Moriarty felt like a “checklist item” to me. If you are not a Sherlock Holmes aficionado, then the Moriarty interlude feels out of place, and maybe a little confusing. Also, Moriarty isn’t even very helpful. He goes to great and mysterious lengths to give Watson a key, which Watson doesn’t even give to Holmes and which he notes would have been relatively useless anyway due to the labyrinthian nature of the prison. </p>
<p>I think Mycroft falls on that same checklist. Mycroft and Moriarty appear in the narrative and then disappear. Moriarty bothers me more as he should know enough about the jail to know that one key can’t suffice. Maybe he just wants to touch base with Watson and Holmes and take credit for the initial white silk ribbon. Mycroft supplies the information that Holmes’ investigation goes into upper echelons of British society and ranks will close. So they take us a step closer to the solution. (Watson never tells Holmes about meeting Moriarty and so never lets him know who sends the first white ribbon. Right?)</p>
<p>On the “I’m easy” side, I enjoyed seeing both Mycroft and Moriarty.</p>
<p>I enjoyed seeing Mycroft, too – that interaction seemed more normal to me. Also, I think a mystery writer does have to throw in some extraneous characters in order to create red herrings and such.</p>
<p>I believe Moriarty summoned Watson because he wanted to make it clear that despite his many crimes, he in no way supported The House of Silk and wanted to see it destroyed. It’s hard to believe that Mr. Leave-No-Stone-Unturned Holmes would shrug off the first white ribbon without ever bothering to solve the mystery of who sent it to him. And all he would have to do is ask Watson if he knew anything about it and Watson wouldn’t have to say a word–Holmes would read it in his eyes. Ratiocination!</p>
<p>I haven’t read enough Arthur Conan Doyle to be familiar with his Moriarty. (I know the Moriarty in the Cumberbatch Sherlock, but I don’t think that counts.)</p>
<p>Moriarty in The House of Silk put me in mind of a James Bond type villain, with his speech along the lines of, “I know all about everything and I have power over everything. Heh heh heh!” I almost expected him to be stroking a white persian cat! <a href=“Ernst Stavro Blofeld | James Bond Wiki | Fandom”>http://jamesbond.wikia.com/wiki/Ernst_Stavro_Blofeld_(Film)</a></p>
<p>Apparently Horowitz has written a more recent book, entitled Moriarty, also.</p>
<p>And then I found the following:</p>
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<p>Sigh. James Bond is maybe a more appropriate subject for Horowitz. He seems to be on a roll with these kinds of projects. </p>
<p><a href=“Watson%20never%20tells%20Holmes%20about%20meeting%20Moriarty%20and%20so%20never%20lets%20him%20know%20who%20sends%20the%20first%20white%20ribbon.%20Right?”>quote=ignatius</a>
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I’m going to believe he knew. Holmes figures out everything. :)</p>
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<li>The moors in The Hound of the Baskervilles are so central to the plot that they almost function as another character in the story.</li>
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<p>This link shows Dartmoor with its tors and mires and ponies. I can’t imagine a better setting for The Hound of the Baskervilles.</p>
<p><a href=“22.10.12 Dartmoor”>http://www.totally-cuckoo.com/22.10.12%20Dartmoor.htm</a></p>
<p>Thanks for the link @ignatius! I’d love to go hiking there. I thought Doyle did a very good job of creating the atmosphere. I don’t think of that as a strength of the Holmes stories, but actually I think he does it quite a lot. In “The Copper Beeches”, he also is very good at creating a sort of haunted house atmosphere and sets the house in its landscape. I think Horowitz tries to do the same with the House of Silk showing us some of the seedier parts of London.</p>
<p>BTW I’m now reading Death Comes to Pemberley and I think Horowitz does better channeling Doyle than Pym does channeling Austen, but it’s fun to compare the two.</p>
<p>Beautiful link Ignatius ! </p>
<p>The moors are like a separate character in Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, too. I guess in the American experience that would be akin to the way we feel about the prairie, especially in books like Lonesome Dove. </p>
<p>The 2nd half of question #3 (that ignatius posted) is: “If you were to describe them the way you would describe a human character, what would you say about them? Which person in the story do they most resemble and why?”</p>
<p>The moors are dangerous, beautiful, unpredictable, compelling (uh oh, sounds like a Bond heroine).</p>
<p>Actually, I believe the textbook answer to the question “which person in the story do they most resemble” is “Mr. Stapleton,” and he doesn’t really fit any of the above adjectives. As one of the school cheat-sheet sites (pinkmonkey) summarizes: </p>
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<p>mathmom, did you see the Masterpiece Theater production of “Death Comes to Pemberley”? </p>
<p>I thought they did an excellent job of bringing to life–and improving upon–P.D. James’ novel. </p>
<p>NJTheatreMOM mentioned in post #13 that both books in our duet had “improbable female characters” and I agree. In The Hound of the Baskervilles, Beryl Stapleton and Laura Lyons are chiefly victims of their cheatin’, murderous man. In The House of Silk, we have either victim (Ross’ sister) or villain (Mrs. Carstairs). And I include poor Mary in the two-dimensional victim category. None of these women are well-rounded characters.</p>
<p>I looked up Arthur Conan Doyle’s bio, but found that he had plenty of women in his life (wives, daughters, would-be lovers), so I wonder why he didn’t do a better job of depicting female characters.</p>
<p>There is a running joke in the “Sherlock” series that people keep (mistakenly) thinking that Holmes and Watson are gay. I really don’t sense such an undercurrent in Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories, but I do think of Holmes as asexual (Benedict Cumberbatch and Robert Downey, Jr. portrayals notwithstanding). </p>
<p>This Wikipedia entry describes him as a peculiar mix of chivalry and misogyny:</p>
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<p>If you want a different woman read <a href=“Adventure 12: “The Adventure of the Copper Beeches” | The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes | Sir Arthur Conan Doyle | Lit2Go ETC”>http://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/32/the-adventures-of-sherlock-holmes/363/adventure-12-the-adventure-of-the-copper-beeches/</a> which ends
She’s an amusing character. She knows she’s taking on a very dubious job, but the money is just too good to refuse. It’s amusing how governess’s in Victorian literature seem to get some leeway to be more interesting and fleshed out than other roles. I think perhaps because they are always dancing between two worlds - part of the family, but also servant. It wasn’t much fun to be a Victorian wife. Mrs. Hudson though always seems pretty sensible. I guess landlady is another acceptable job, that at least in Holme’s has her providing some wifely roles. (Feeding him and presumably getting his apartment cleaned.)</p>
<p>@Mary13 thanks for the recommendation, had no idea Death comes to Pemberly had been filmed, and I imagine it would be much better as it’s the voice and the pacing that is disturbing me more than the plot. (Not that I’m done with it by any means.)</p>
<p>I’m trying to think of good women characters in books written by Victorian male authors. I recently read The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope for another book club and there are some decent women characters in that. Thackeray, I guess, though I haven’t really read him.</p>
<p>^I think Becky Sharp in Thackeray’s Vanity Fair probably qualifies as an interesting character, but very much an anti-heroine. I loathed the book when I had to read it in 9th grade so don’t remember too much about it! I think Henry James had some interesting women characters and so did E.M. Forster. (But being gay probably had some influence on Forster’s outlook.)</p>
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Wilkie Collins</p>
<p>The CC Book Club read The Moonstone.</p>
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<p>Don’t forget Eliza Barrymore in The Hound of the Baskervilles. In a way, she can also be considered the victim of a murderous man Seldon the convict. However, she chooses to act. She loves her brother and protects him, convincing her husband to do the same. Her husband loves her enough to keep his mouth shut when confronted by Watson and Sir Henry.</p>
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<p>^^^And the female characters Lady Glencora Palliser and Alice Vavasor in Trollope’s Palliser series. </p>
<p>Thank you for the link to photos of the moors, Ignatius! I think they’re beautiful. While reading Doyle’s descriptions I thought often of the everglades (minus any hills and most rocks!) and many of our wet prairies. I would love to see them. I always associate the moors with The Secret Garden, written by a woman of course, but still described as mysterious, beautiful, lonely, and isolating-as in Hound.</p>
<p>I just reread my last post #55 and don’t think I explained myself well. When I said that Mrs. Barrymore can be considered a victim, I meant in the sense that her brother takes advantage of her love for him. He knows that providing for him endangers her and her husband, but he still makes her an accomplice. She could have - should have - refused to aid and abet but chooses to act on her love and the hope that he deserves a second chance. If caught though, she and her husband would have ended up imprisoned also. So - another act of love - toward a man that doesn’t deserve it.</p>
<p>Hm, interesting observations in the last few posts… </p>
<p>Mrs Barrymore in Hound of the Baskervilles was so sketchily presented that I scarcely considered her to be a real character.</p>
<p>Wilkie Collins! I’ve never read him…I wasn’t in the CC book club back when you guys read The Moonstone. Now I see that I should remedy this. I know Collins was a contemporary of Dickens…actually a friend of Dickens…and I believe he had an unconventional relationship with a woman (lived with a woman he was not married to). I read a Dickens biography recently, and this was mentioned.</p>
<p>The Palliser series should be on my reading list too, I see, plantmom.</p>
<p>mathmom, I have a confession. I was supposed to read Vanity Fair when I was a senior in high school, but I had a bad case of senioritis, and I hated the book, so I just <em>did not read it</em>!! This was out of character for me, as I was generally a good student. I still feel sort of embarrassed about the whole thing!</p>
<p>It’s funny, I never think of Henry James as a Victorian, maybe because he was an American. But of course he was. I’ve only read a little bit of his work. And E.M. Forster has always seemed modern to me; he didn’t start having his work published until after the death of Queen Victoria.</p>
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<p>I think Anthony Horowitz attempted to give a deeper, darker side to Sherlock Holmes by having him suffer over the fact that he’d made a “grave miscalculation” regarding Ross, which led to the boy’s death; and by then having a troubled Holmes burn down the Chorley Grange School.</p>
<p>I give Horowitz props for trying, but I don’t buy this “enhanced” Holmes. I don’t think he can be humanized. Watson says in the story “A Scandal in Bohemia” that “All emotions…were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind.” Holmes is a predictable machine. We know that in the end, as @Caraid said, “Holmes figures out everything.” He solves the puzzle; he’s always right; he saves the day (and the reputation of Scotland Yard). He’s not a tortured superhero ala Bruce Wayne, and I don’t think it works for Horowitz to try to mold him that way.</p>
<p>As for the various criminals in The House of Silk, I found them to be pretty traditional “ghastly versions of villainy”–unlike, for example, Stapleton in The Hound of the Baskervilles, whom we first meet running gracefully down the road wearing a straw hat and waving a butterfly net, for heaven’s sake.</p>
<p>There was a scene late in The House of Silk that was so stereotypical (of bad mystery dramas) that it was almost funny. The villain Henderson has Holmes cornered and is poised to shoot him dead—but first he happily reveals the details of his evil scheme, in response to Holmes’ polite inquiry, “…would you be so kind as to satisfy my curiosity on just a couple of points?” (p. 246) Surprisingly (not), this delay provides enough time for Holmes and Watson to be rescued. </p>
<p>I swear, when I finally come this/close to realizing my master plan for world domination (muuhahahaha), I am not going to be sidetracked at the last second explaining my strategy to the one person standing between me and ultimate control of the planet. </p>
<p>Apparently, it’s a thing. Evil Gloating: <a href=“http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EvilGloating”>http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EvilGloating</a></p>