I note in today's THE TIMES that Ben
Hoyle (Arts Re****ter) believes "...the cult
of the detective peaked with the creation
of Sherlock Holmes".
I can't see this go unchallenged, much as
it is quite cleverly couched. Has the guy
never read any Isaac Asimov? Or any of
the countless other works of detective fiction
which still sell more than Conan Doyle?
Forensics is still in its adolescence. And
Holmes was not much of a forensics man,
albeit Conan Doyle was a fan of such moves
as to extend the fairground lure of cold-
reading into craniology and beyond; his
work always built on the concept of the
rote-memorised taxonomic catalogue, beit
the study of clays found in the Downs and
London, cigar ashes from round the world,
or the unique aural gravures of Francophone
penitentiaries (*****cised, for some reason,
perhaps to appeal to the more ladylike of
his suffragan fans).
And nor can the "cult" of the detective have
peaked a century ago: purely in numeric terms
there are far more narratives in far more media
now than ever before. And folk still visit Lodnon's
Baker Street daily to see the door of 221B.
G DAEB
COPYRIGHT (C) 2008 SIPSTON
--
Not one of these modern mathematicians
who doesn't know a 2 from a 4.
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