A detailed study that adds new depth to an iconic character.
Why has Sherlock Holmes stood the test of time? The answer might not be elementary, according to this thought-provoking book.
Black, a veteran historian who has published more than 180 books, is interested in why Holmes has been so popular for so long. The author, a meticulous researcher, begins with Victorian England, where most of Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories are set. It was a time of radical cultural change, with technology and reason supplanting religious faith and the mercantile class beginning to push the old aristocracy aside. Holmes’ capacity for deductive reasoning and forensic science fit well in this milieu, and many of the villains are nouveau riche types. A surprising number of Americans, usually of the robber baron variety, wander through the pages of Doyle’s stories as well. Black, while acknowledging Holmes’ legendary intelligence, emphasizes that he was also a man of action, ready to don working-class disguises and fight if necessary. This duality that allowed Holmes to transcend his 19th-century origins also inspired a legion of imitators. As the stories developed, Holmes became more rounded and fully fleshed alongside his steady partner, Watson. The Holmes character is perfect for the big screen, with Basil Rathbone depicting him as a sophisticated, moral figure. Many actors have portrayed Holmes, and Robert Downey’s recent version brought a broad streak of dark comedy and emphasized the Holmes-Watson relationship. In the TV series Sherlock, Holmes, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, was transplanted to modern London, and Watson’s casebook morphed into a blog. The innovative series Elementary put them in New York, with Holmes as a recovering addict and Watson as his sober partner. One unfortunate omission from the book is the 2015 movie Mr. Holmes, in which Ian McKellen deftly plays Holmes as an aged, lonely figure, terrified of the dementia closing in. But this is a small point, and Black delivers an interesting, authoritative read.
A detailed study that adds new depth to an iconic character.Pub Date: June 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-538-16146-3
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2022
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.
A decidedly warts-and-all portrait of the man many consider to be America’s greatest writer.
It makes sense that distinguished biographer Chernow (Washington: A Life and Alexander Hamilton) has followed up his life of Ulysses S. Grant with one of Mark Twain: Twain, after all, pulled Grant out of near bankruptcy by publishing the ex-president’s Civil War memoir under extremely favorable royalty terms. The act reflected Twain’s inborn generosity and his near pathological fear of poverty, the prime mover for the constant activity that characterized the author’s life. As Chernow writes, Twain was “a protean figure who played the role of printer, pilot, miner, journalist, novelist, platform artist, toastmaster, publisher, art patron, pundit, polemicist, inventor, crusader, investor, and maverick.” He was also slippery: Twain left his beloved Mississippi River for the Nevada gold fields as a deserter from the Confederate militia, moved farther west to California to avoid being jailed for feuding, took up his pseudonym to stay a step ahead of anyone looking for Samuel Clemens, especially creditors. Twain’s flaws were many in his own day. Problematic in our own time is a casual racism that faded as he grew older (charting that “evolution in matters of racial tolerance” is one of the great strengths of Chernow’s book). Harder to explain away is Twain’s well-known but discomfiting attraction to adolescent and even preadolescent girls, recruiting “angel-fish” to keep him company and angrily declaring when asked, “It isn’t the public’s affair.” While Twain emerges from Chernow’s pages as the masterful—if sometimes wrathful and vengeful—writer that he is now widely recognized to be, he had other complexities, among them a certain gullibility as a businessman that kept that much-feared poverty often close to his door, as well as an overarchingly gloomy view of the human condition that seemed incongruous with his reputation, then and now, as a humanist.
Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9780525561729
Page Count: 1200
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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