Early Whodunit:The Great Sherlock Holmes

midory

sape2 yang pernah bace buku sherlock holmes by conan doyle..
sila bagi komen anda pasal buku tuh...
sherlock holmes ni seorang detektif...

rose_liz

sayaoernah main games jer

midory

Habits and personality

Monument of Sherlock Holmes in LondonHolmes describes himself as "Bohemian" in habits and lifestyle. According to Dr Watson, Holmes is an eccentric, with no regard for contemporary standards of tidiness or good order. In an early story, Watson describes Holmes as:

“ The worst tenant in London...[he] keeps his cigars in the coal-scuttle, his tobacco in the toe end of a Persian slipper, and his unanswered correspondence transfixed by a jack-knife into the very centre of his wooden mantelpiece... He had a horror of destroying documents…Thus month after month his papers accumulated, until every corner of the room was stacked with bundles of manuscript which were on no account to be burned, and which could not be put away save by their owner.[10] ”

What appears to others as chaos, however, is to Holmes a wealth of useful information. Throughout stories, Holmes is depicted as diving into his apparent mess of random papers and artifacts only to retrieve precisely the specific document or eclectic item he was looking for.

In matters of personal hygiene, by contrast Holmes is described in The Hound of the Baskervilles as having a "cat-like" love of personal cleanliness. This in no way appears to hinder his ability to be intensely practical in pursuit of his profession, however, and in the first Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, his hands are discoloured with acid stains, while later Holmes uses drops of his own blood to conduct chemical experiments.

Dr Watson frequently makes note of Holmes' erratic eating habits. The detective is often described as starving himself at times of intense intellectual activity, such as during "The Adventure of the Norwood Builder" where, according to Watson:

“ [Holmes]had no breakfast for himself, for it was one of his peculiarities that in his more intense moments he would permit himself no food, and I have known him to presume upon his iron strength until he has fainted from pure inanition.[11] ”

His chronicler does not consider as a vice Holmes's habitual use of a pipe or his less frequent smoking of cigarettes, and cigars. Nor does Watson condemn Holmes's willingness to bend the truth or break the law - for example by lying to the police, concealing evidence or breaking into houses - where he feels it morally justifiable on behalf of a client.[12]


The first appearance of Holmes, 1887Holmes is portrayed as a patriot, acting on behalf of the government in matters of national security in a number of stories.[13] He also carries out counterintelligence work in "His Last Bow", set at the beginning of the First World War. As shooting practice, the detective adorns the wall of his baker street lodgings with "VR" - Victoria Regina - in bullet pocks made by his pistol.[14]

Holmes has an ego that sometimes seems to border on arrogance, albeit justified. He takes pleasure in baffling police inspectors with his superior deductions. Holmes does not seek fame, however, and is usually content to allow the police to take public credit for his work. It is often only when Watson publishes his stories that Holmes's role in the case becomes apparent.[15]

Holmes's demeanour is usually described as dispassionate and cold. When in the midst of an adventure, however, Holmes can display remarkable passion. He has a flair for showmanship and often prepares elaborate traps and reveals to capture and expose the culprit of a crime, often to impress Watson or one of the Scotland Yard inspectors.[16]

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Methods of detection

Holmesian deduction

Holmes' primary intellectual method of detection is deductive reasoning of the solution to a crime. "From a drop of water," he writes, "a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other."[21] Holmes stories often begin with a bravura display of his talent for "deduction". It is of some interest to logicians and those interested in logic to try to analyse just what Holmes is doing when he performs his deduction. Holmesian deduction appears to consist primarily of drawing inferences based on either straightforward practical principles — which are the result of careful inductive study, such as Holmes's study of different kinds of cigar ashes — or inference to the best explanation.

Holmes's straightforward practical principles are generally of the form, "If 'p', then 'q'," where 'p' is observed evidence and 'q' is what the evidence indicates. But there are also, as one may observe in the following example, often some intermediate principles. In "A Scandal in Bohemia" Holmes deduces that Watson had got very wet lately and that he had "a most clumsy and careless servant girl." When Watson, in amazement, asks how Holmes knows this, Holmes answers:

“ It is simplicity itself... My eyes tell me that on the inside of your left shoe, just where the firelight strikes it, the leather is scored by six almost parallel cuts. Obviously they have been caused by someone who has very carelessly scraped round the edges of the sole in order to remove crusted mud from it. Hence, you see, my double deduction that you had been out in vile weather, and that you had a particularly malignant boot-slitting specimen of the London slavey. ”

In this case, Holmes employed several connected principles:

If leather on the side of a shoe is scored by several parallel cuts, it was caused by someone who scraped around the edges of the sole in order to remove crusted mud.
If a London doctor's shoes are scraped to remove crusted mud, the person who so scraped them is the doctor's servant girl.
If someone cuts a shoe while scraping it to remove encrusted mud, that person is clumsy and careless.
If someone's shoes had encrusted mud on them, that person has been very wet lately and has been out in vile weather.
By applying such principles in an obvious way (using repeated applications of modus ponens), Holmes is able to infer that:

"The sides of Watson's shoes are scored by several parallel cuts"; to "Watson's servant girl is clumsy and careless"; and "Watson has been very wet lately and has been out in vile weather."

Deductive reasoning allows Holmes to impressively reveal a stranger's occupation, such as a Retired Sergeant of Marines in A Study in Scarlet; a former ship's carpenter turned pawnbroker in "The Red-Headed League"); and a billiard-marker and a retired artillery NCO in "The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter". Similarly, by studying inanimate objects, Holmes is able to make astonishingly detailed deductions about their owners, including Watson's pocket Watch in "The Sign of Four," as well as a hat,[22] a pipe,[23] and a walking stick[24] in other stories.

Once he has amassed a large body of evidence and deduced a number of possible explanations, Holmes proceeds to find the one explanation that fits all the facts of the case to produce a solution. As Holmes explains to Watson, says, "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

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Weapons and martial arts

Pistols On occasion Holmes and Watson carry pistols with them, in the case of Watson often his old service revolver. However, Watson only describes these weapons as being used on seven occasions.[25]


Holmes brandishing a weapon.Cane Holmes, as a gentleman, often carries a stick or cane. He is described by Watson as an expert at singlestick and twice uses his cane as a weapon.[26]

Sword In a "Study in Scarlet" Watson describes Holmes as a expert with a sword-although in none of the stories is it mentioned of Holmes using a sword. [27]

Riding crop In several stories, Holmes appears equipped with a riding crop. In "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" he uses it to lash out at a venomous snake and in "A Case of Identity", he comes close to thrashing a swindler with it. Using a "hunting crop," Holmes knocks a pistol from John Clay's hand in "The Red-Headed League."

Fist-fighting Holmes is described as a formidable fist-fighter. In The Sign of the Four, Holmes introduces himself to a prize-fighter as:

“ "The amateur who fought three rounds with you at Alison's rooms on the night of your benefit four years back." McMurdo responds by saying, "Ah, you're one that has wasted your gifts, you have! You might have aimed high, if you had joined the fancy." ”

Holmes engages in hand to hand combat with his adversaries on several occasions throughout the stories, inevitably emerging as the victor.[28]

Martial arts "The Adventure of the Empty House", Holmes recounts to Watson how he used martial arts to overcome Professor Moriarty and fling his adversary to his death at the Reichenbach Falls. He states that "I have some knowledge, however, of baritsu, or the Japanese system of wrestling, which has more than once been very useful to me.""Baritsu" was a drafting error on the author's part who meant to refer to the real martial art of Bartitsu.

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Knowledge and skills

Sherlock Holmes (right) and Dr Watson, by Sidney Paget.In the very first story, A Study in Scarlet, something of Holmes's background is given. In early 1881, he is presented as an independent student of chemistry with a variety of very curious side interests, almost all of which turn out to be single-mindedly bent towards making him superior at solving crimes. An early story, "The Adventure of the Gloria Scott", presents more background on what influenced Holmes to become a detective: a college friend's father complimented him very highly on his deductive skills. Holmes always uses scientific methods and focuses on logic and the powers of observation and deduction.

In A Study in Scarlet, Holmes claims he does not know that the Earth revolves around the sun, as such information is irrelevant to his work solving crimes. Directly after having heard that fact from Watson, he says he will immediately try to forget it. He says he believes that the mind has a finite capacity for information storage, and so learning useless things would merely reduce his ability to learn useful things. Dr Watson subsequently assesses Holmes's abilities thus:

-Knowledge of Literature.—Nothing.
-Knowledge of Philosophy.—Nothing.
-Knowledge of Astronomy.—Nothing.
-Knowledge of Politics.—Feeble.
-Knowledge of Botany.—Variable. Well up in belladonna, opium and poisons generally. Knows nothing of practical gardening.
-Knowledge of Geology.—Practical, but limited. Tells at a glance different soils from each other. After walks, has shown me splashes upon his trousers, and told me by their colour and consistence in what part of London he had received them.
-Knowledge of Chemistry.—Profound.
-Knowledge of Anatomy.—Accurate, but unsystematic.
-Knowledge of Sensational Literature.—Immense. He appears to know every detail of every horror perpetrated in the century.
-Plays the violin well.
-Is an expert singlestick player, boxer and swordsman.
-Has a good practical knowledge of British law.
However, even at the very end of A Study in Scarlet itself, it is shown that Holmes knows Latin and needs no translation of Roman epigrams in the original—though knowledge of the language would be of doubtful direct utility for detective work. Later stories also contradict the list. Despite Holmes's supposed ignorance of politics, in "A Scandal in Bohemia" he immediately recognises the true identity of the supposed "Count von Kramm". Regarding non-sensational literature, his speech is replete with references to the Bible, Shakespeare, and even Goethe.

Moreover, in "The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans" Watson reports that in November 1895, "Holmes lost himself in a monograph which he had undertaken upon the Polyphonic Motets of Lassus"—a most esoteric field of knowledge, for which Holmes would have had to "clutter his memory" with an enormous amount of information which had absolutely nothing to do with crime-fighting—knowledge so extensive that his monograph was taken as "the last word" on the subject.[29] The later stories abandon the notion that Holmes did not want to know anything unless it had immediate relevance for his profession; in the second chapter of The Valley of Fear, Holmes instead declares that "all knowledge comes useful to the detective", and near the end of "The Adventure of the Lion's Mane", he describes himself as "an omnivorous reader with a strangely retentive memory for trifles".

Holmes is also a competent cryptanalyst. He relates to Watson, "I am fairly familiar with all forms of secret writing, and am myself the author of a trifling monograph upon the subject, in which I analyse one hundred and sixty separate ciphers." One such scheme is solved using frequency analysis in "The Adventure of the Dancing Men".

Holmes's analysis of physical evidence is both scientific and precise. His methods include the use of latent prints such as footprints, hoof prints and bicycle tracks to identify actions at a crime scene (A Study in Scarlet, "The Adventure of Silver Blaze", "The Adventure of the Priory School", The Hound of the Baskervilles, "The Boscombe Valley Mystery"), the use of tobacco ashes and cigarette butts to identify criminals ("The Adventure of the Resident Patient", The Hound of the Baskervilles), the comparison of typewritten letters to expose a fraud ("A Case of Identity"), the use of gunpowder residue to expose two murderers ("The Adventure of the Reigate Squire"), bullet comparison from two crime scenes ("The Adventure of the Empty House") and even an early use of fingerprints ("The Norwood Builder"). Holmes also demonstrates knowledge of psychology in "A Scandal in Bohemia", luring Irene Adler into betraying where she had hidden a photograph based on the “premise” that an unmarried woman will seek her most valuable possession in case of fire, whereas a married woman will grab her baby instead. In the first story, A Study in Scarlet, Holmes claims to have invented a chemical process to detect old blood stains — although different blood types would not be recognised until years later.

Despite the excitement of his life (or perhaps seeking to leave it behind) Holmes retired to the Sussex Downs to take up beekeeping ("The Second Stain"), and wrote a book on the subject, entitled "Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, with Some Observations upon the Segregation of the Queen".[30] His search for relaxation can also be seen in his love for music, notably in "The Red-Headed League", where Holmes takes an evening off from a case to listen to Pablo de Sarasate play violin.

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Synopsis

The Cunninghams fighting with Holmes.Watson takes Holmes to a friend's estate near Reigate in Surrey to rest after a rather strenuous case in France. Holmes finds that his services are needed here, but he also finds that his recent illness serves him well. His host is Colonel Hayter.

There has recently been a burglary at the nearby Acton estate in which the thieves stole a motley assortment of things, even a ball of twine, but nothing terribly valuable. Then one morning, the Colonel's butler tells news of a murder at another nearby estate, the Cunninghams'. The victim is William Kirwan, the coachman. Inspector Forrester has taken charge of the investigation, and there is one physical clue: a torn piece of paper found in William's hand with a few words written on it. Holmes takes an instant interest in this, seeing something that Forrester has missed: it is quite clear to Holmes that the fragment of a note was written by two men, each writing alternate words. One man is young, and the other rather older. Moreover, they are related. Holmes, an expert at studying handwriting, does not voice this or any other observation or conclusion until the end of the story. He also observes that one line says "quarter to twelve", coincidentally the time of William's murder.

One of the first facts to emerge is that there is a longstanding legal dispute between the Actons and the Cunninghams involving ownership of about half of the estate currently in the Cunninghams' hands.

Holmes spends quite a bit of time investigating and interviewing the two Cunningham men, young Alec and his ageing father. Alec tells Holmes that he saw the burglar struggling with William when a shot went off and William fell dead. The burglar ran off through a hedge to the road. The elder Cunningham claims that he was in his room smoking at the time, and Alec says that he had also still been up. Holmes knows that they are lying. No burglar with any sense would break into a house when he could see by the lit lamps that someone was still afoot. Also, William's body has no powder burns on it; so he was not shot at point-blank range as the Cunninghams claim. The escape route also does not bear their story out: there is a boggy ditch next to the road that the fleeing murderer would have had to cross, yet there are no signs of any footprints in it.

Holmes knows that it would be useful to get hold of the rest of that note found in William's hand. He believes that the murderer snatched it away from William and thrust it into his pocket, never realizing that a scrap of it was still in the murdered coachman's hand. Unfortunately, neither the police nor Holmes can get any information from William's mother, for she is quite old, deaf, and somewhat simple-minded.

Holmes puts his recent illness to use and fakes a fit just as Forrester is about to mention the one clue to the Cunninghams. He suspects that the Cunninghams know where the rest of the note is, and does not wish them to destroy it. Holmes also cunningly gets the elder Cunningham to write the word "twelve", which appears on the scrap of paper recovered from the murder scene, by deliberately making a mistake in an advertisement that Holmes tells Cunningham to publish, and asking him to correct it.

Holmes then insists on searching the Cunninghams' rooms despite their protests that the burglar, whom Holmes has by now dismissed as a fabrication, could not have gone there. He sees Alec's room and then his father's, where he deliberately knocks a small table over, sending some oranges and a water carafe to the floor. The others have not been looking his way at the time, and Holmes implies that the cause is Watson's clumsiness. Watson plays along and starts grovelling about to gather up scattered oranges.

Everyone then notices that Holmes has left the room. Moments later, there are cries of "murder" and "help". Watson recognizes his friend's voice. He and Forrester rush to Alec's room where they find Alec trying to throttle Holmes and his father apparently twisting Holmes's wrist. The Cunninghams are quickly restrained, and Holmes tells Forrester to arrest the two for murdering William Kirwan. At first, Forrester thinks Holmes must be mad, but Holmes draws his attention to the looks on their faces — very guilty. After a revolver is knocked out of Alec's hand, the two are arrested. The gun, of course, is the one used to murder William, and it is seized.

Holmes has found the rest of the note, still in Alec's dressing gown pocket. It runs thus (the words in boldface are the ones on the original scrap):

"If you will only come round at quarter to twelve to the east gate you will learn what will very much surprise you and maybe be of the greatest service to you and also to Annie Morrison. But say nothing to anyone upon the matter."
The elder Cunningham's confidence is broken after his arrest and he tells all. It seems that William followed his two employers the night they broke into the Acton estate (Holmes has already deduced that it was they, in pursuit of documents supporting Mr. Acton's legal claim, which they didn't find). William then proceeded to blackmail his employers — not realizing that it was dangerous to do such a thing to Alec — and they thought to use the recent burglary scare as a plausible way of getting rid of him. With a bit more attention paid to detail, they might very well have evaded all suspicion.

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Holmes and Watson

This is one of the rare stories that show a glimpse of Watson's dedication and his life before he met Holmes, as well as Holmes' trust in Watson. Colonel Hayter is a former patient Watson treated in Afghanistan and has offered his house to Watson and Holmes. Watson admits in convincing Holmes, "A little diplomacy was needed," for Holmes resists anything that sounds like coddling or sentimentalism. Watson also glosses over the facts of Holmes' illness from overwork, implying redundancy for all of Europe was "ringing with his name."

Holmes' health has collapsed after straining himself to the limit, and his success in the case means nothing to him in the face of his depression. With his superhuman physical and mental achievement, he has a correspondingly drastic fit of nervous prostration and needs Watson's assistance. Holmes clearly has no problem with asking Watson for help when he needs it, for he sends a wire and Watson is at his side twenty-four hours later. At the onset of the mystery, Watson warns Holmes to rest, not to get started on a new problem. However, Watson knows and has revealed in other writings that inactivity is anathema to Holmes, and his caution comes off as weak. Holmes takes it all with humor, but the reader does not doubt his mind is eagerly upon the trail of the crime. At the conclusion, he tells Watson: "I think our quiet rest in the country has been a distinct success, and I shall certainly return much invigorated, to Baker Street to-morrow.

crystal_grey

ader baca dari sekolah lagi.... one my feveret

sekarang ni ader version bahasa melayu untuk kanak-kanak...

[ Last edited by  crystal_grey at 25-5-2009 16:52 ]