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narcasseHaving finally managed to get through the second half of A Study in Scarlet via the medium of audio book and doing other things while I listened it turns out that the story itself isn’t particularly terrible: it’s just such a drastic change in tone that following the first half it doesn’t quite fit. The concluding chapters on the other hand, which come back to the initial timeframe, are the longest and most detailed explanation of Holmes’ line of reasoning given in canon, which can be more or less distilled down into reverse engineering. Of course the reverse engineering part should be obvious all things considered but I’d never quite thought about in those terms before.
The second half of The Valley of Fear just like A Study in Scarlet is an equally enthralling story that seems to be fairly out of place against the initial part of the story. The story itself would have made for a separate adventure story with a different detective hero easily enough. It does follow on with the theme of larger than life heroes and villains from across the Atlantic but the flow of the story itself was more about the action rather than the environmental details which began the exposition tale in A Study in Scarlet which I preferred. The epilogue that followed did on the other hand bring the whole story together with the taunting note from Moriarty, a directly communicated challenge which is something that doesn’t occur again till The Final Problem with a face to face confrontation.
On a side note, having caught sight of a few interview comments from whichever of the writers said it in regards to the re-imagined modern day Moriarty in the recent BBC adaptation I was more than a little annoyed to read that apparently the original Moriarty just wasn’t frightening enough and was in fact too cerebral. The whole point is that Moriarty isn’t a fool, he’s a respected educator and is terrifying because of the cold, analytical method through which he deploys his minions. He’s the greater looming presence because he’s not usually on screen baiting Holmes directly and generally adaptations have carried that over. The Granada version was vicious and threatening and the Russian version was pretty darn terrifying just to look at. So while I’m reserving judgement on IT professional Moriarty of the most recent adaptation I’m not entirely thrilled with the idea of the original being unthreatening because he was an academic. Has nobody ever seen academic bitch fights after all?
The second half of The Valley of Fear just like A Study in Scarlet is an equally enthralling story that seems to be fairly out of place against the initial part of the story. The story itself would have made for a separate adventure story with a different detective hero easily enough. It does follow on with the theme of larger than life heroes and villains from across the Atlantic but the flow of the story itself was more about the action rather than the environmental details which began the exposition tale in A Study in Scarlet which I preferred. The epilogue that followed did on the other hand bring the whole story together with the taunting note from Moriarty, a directly communicated challenge which is something that doesn’t occur again till The Final Problem with a face to face confrontation.
On a side note, having caught sight of a few interview comments from whichever of the writers said it in regards to the re-imagined modern day Moriarty in the recent BBC adaptation I was more than a little annoyed to read that apparently the original Moriarty just wasn’t frightening enough and was in fact too cerebral. The whole point is that Moriarty isn’t a fool, he’s a respected educator and is terrifying because of the cold, analytical method through which he deploys his minions. He’s the greater looming presence because he’s not usually on screen baiting Holmes directly and generally adaptations have carried that over. The Granada version was vicious and threatening and the Russian version was pretty darn terrifying just to look at. So while I’m reserving judgement on IT professional Moriarty of the most recent adaptation I’m not entirely thrilled with the idea of the original being unthreatening because he was an academic. Has nobody ever seen academic bitch fights after all?
