The Scientific Sherlock Holmes: Cracking the Case with Science and Forensics
Combining two popular topics, the uses of science in criminal investigations and literature’s most famed detective, O’Brien surveys and appraises the scientific ability of Sherlock Holmes. As he inventories such Holmes-story crime-scene clues as footprints, ciphers, and poisons, O’Brien informs his readers of controversies among Holmes fans concerning their hero’s powers of scientific deduction. Sf author Isaac Asimov, for example, criticized Holmes as a bad chemist, which O’Brien, a chemistry professor by occupation, largely refutes, though with concessions to Asimov on particular points. Overall, O’Brien praises Holmes, or rather his creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, as in scientific step with his times, at least until Doyle seemingly killed off Holmes and his archenemy, Dr. Moriarty, in “The Final Problem,” in 1893. Although Doyle deployed science when he revived Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901), O’Brien holds that scientific sophistication degraded in the later stories, which O’Brien links to a lessening in their literary quality, compared to that of the earlier ones. Nevertheless, the scientific intricacies of O’Brien’s analyses should pique the timeless interest in the cases of Sherlock Holmes. --Gilbert Taylor