My slow cataloguing of the Sherlock Holmes short stories from the pen of Arthur Conan Doyle progresses to the second collection, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894).

And, first up, with another famous moment that has taken on life beyond the canon, we have:

‘Silver Blaze’ (1892)

The Case

“There was but one problem before the public which could challenge his powers of analysis, and that was the singular disappearance of the favourite for the Wessex Cup, and the tragic murder of its trainer” — this is the case in a nutshell: highly-favoured horse Silver Blaze has been stolen from his stable, and his trainer John Straker found dead out on the wilds of Dartmoor, beaten around the head. How does a serving of curried lamb and the lameness of a handful of sheep unpick the case for the World’s Greatest Detective?

The Characters

Colonel Ross, owner; should have a horse in this race.

Inspector Gregory, Devonshire Police; unbridled professionalism.

Silas Brown, rival trainer; does have a horse in this race…maybe even two.

The Timeline

I can find no indication of a month or a year within these pages; the current horse racing calendar puts flat racing season between March and October, and since the Wessex Cup race occurs within the story we can perhaps narrow it to that window…but as to any greater detail, I have no idea.

The Tropes

When travelling down to Dartmoor, Watson mentions Holmes’ “sharp, eager face framed in his ear-flapped travelling-cap”, and I can’t help but wonder if this was Conan Doyle’s concession to Sidney Paget’s illustrations of his character wearing a deerstalker. Sure, it’s not a trope of the stories, but the hat has become so inextricably linked with Holmes that it’s almost impossible to think of one without the other.

And surely “the curious incident of the dog in the night-time” has become such a famous phrase, illustrating so perfectly the validity of negative evidence, that it cannot go unmentioned here. It’s at times like this that you really appreciate the genius of the concision of Doyle’s language.

Points of Interest

Given the furore Holmes would cause in the crime fiction sphere, it’s refreshing that the World’s Greatest Detective actually gets to do some detecting this time around. Indeed, this is a far more detection-based story than practically anything in the canon to date. Inspector Gregory has been at pains not to allow the footprints in the mud to have been trampled, Doyle introduces the elements that will come together to limn the solution as early as possible, and come the end it’s possible to get a sense of how Holmes has pieced it all together. Might this be where detective fiction proper began?

Let the notion that Holmes is infallible finally die, too: “I made a blunder, my dear Watson — which is, I am afraid, a more common occurrence than anyone would think who only knew me through your memoirs”. The egotism of the man would never allow him to admit to any flaws were they not an obvious part of his character, and here we have from the horse’s mouth an admission of his own shortcomings. And, hey, this becomes even more apparent in the next story…but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Overall, this s perfectly fine, with a few points of interest to perhaps raise its profile in the canon; clear-sighted, utilising a couple of clever ideas cleanly, structured along almost Humdrum lines…it feels like a progressive step has been made from the first collection, even if I can’t find too much else about this particular entry to discuss.