The Sherlock Holmes Phenomenon

Who is C Auguste Dupin? The name won’t ring a bell easily because hardly anyone knows this fictional character created by Edgar Allan Poe. Dupin had actually made his first appearance in Poe’s 1841 book “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, generally considered the first real detective fiction in English literature. Poe created the character Dupin even before the word ‘detective’ had been coined. Or, so I heard.

However, when I curiously consulted the online etymology dictionary, I found out that in 1828, though not popular, the term ‘detective police’ was already in use in some British police documents. And it referred to those “fitted for or skilled in detecting”. But that was just 13 years before ‘Detective’ Dupin made his first appearance. In a series of books, this sleuth or ‘detective’ soon endeared himself to English readers with his skillful analysis of crime scenes.

His evaluation of the sequence of events and the possible motives of suspects, before finally revealing the real criminal – in the climax of the book - from a set of characters which readers are led to suspect, became a model-framework for many detective stories. “Without Edgar Allan Poe, We Wouldn’t Have Sherlock Holmes” is, in fact, the title of a Smithsonian website article. Today, 31 October, is the day on which ‘The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes’ by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was first published in 1892.

On this 126th anniversary of the great fictional detective’s arrival, therefore, I thought it appropriate to look back at Holmes and a few other fictional detectives. The pipe-smoking, cloth-capped, magnifying-glass-wielding Sherlock Holmes, of 221B Bakers Street in London, captured readers as he captured criminals. His mystery-unravelling skills are cogently narrated to us by his companion Dr Watson who often gets reminded that elementary escapes him.

Personally, I had graduated to Sherlock Holmes’ books, only in college. But my mind was already fertile for these books, thanks to my devouring of Enid Blyton’s stories of ‘Five Find-Outers’, a series of mystery-books I’d loved as a middle-school kid. My particular fascination for one of the characters, Fatty (real name, Frederick Algernon Trotteville) made me dream that I would become a detective like him. And once I got introduced to Agatha Christie’s fictional detectives ‘Hercule Poirot’ and ‘Miss Marple’ in other books, my dream got reinforced.

And I seriously felt I had found my calling. However, fortunately, or unfortunately, it was a short-lived desire. Father Brown (created by G K Chesterton), Jack Reacher (Lee Child), Inspector Maigret (Georges Simenon), V I Warshawski (Sara Paretsky), Mike Hammer (Mickey Spillane) and even Nancy Drew (Edward Stratemeyer) are all great fictional detectives. Precious Ramotswe (created by Alexander McCall Smith), who runs the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency in Botswana, solves many crimes too.

Almost all these detective characters came to life in movies and TV series, and changed the face of whodunits. Especially because, young people and millennials would rather watch, than read. My two daughters now watch Sherlock Holmes’ BBC TV series. No. Not those with Jeremy Irons in it, but those with Benedict Cumberbatch. And though I feel they should be reading instead of watching, I give in, and join them.

I find the setting of the series, in current day London, very odd. I dislike seeing Dr Watson browsing the Internet, and I dislike Sherlock Holmes walking past the London Eye. But what can I do? So, much to their dismay, I just take pride in explaining to them that ‘A Study in Pink’ was originally ‘A Study in Scarlet’. And that ‘A Scandal in Belgravia’ was actually ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’. But, they don’t care. They feel the adventures of their Sherlock Holmes is better than mine.