Sherlock Holmes: Solutions from the Sussex Downs

Review: This book, of which only a 100 cioues were made, consists of a series of letters exchanged between Sherlock Holmes in retirement and a number of British police officers. Each set contains a description of a set of events that the officer finds mysterious and the comments provided by Sherlock on those events. Some series include additional responses and replies but most are ony a few pages long in total. There are twenty five tricky little mysteries presented here, each with that special twist that causes the reader to say "Now why didn't I see that?".

I'm not saying no reader will solve any of the mysteries presented, but I doubt that any reader will solve all of them. Further, I expect most readers will get the same kick from many of these that they first got when reading a Watson account of Holmes' deductions for the first time. They are deliciously simple but devilishly tricky. I still don't agree with all of the author's conclusions, but I have to admit that even the ones I don't like are plausible.

The mechanism employed, copies of correspondence providing the content of the story, is uncommon, but satisfying. I wrote to the author about this, citing Kel Richards' Adventure of the Amateur Hangman as the only other instance of this technique I had seen. Mr Narasimhan said he hadn't read the Richards story but that his own Grandfather had employed the technique in a book he wrote some years before. It's good to confirm that bright ideas run in families and I hope we'll see more letters from the Sussex Downs.

Reviewed by:Philip K. Jones, 2003