Sherlock Holmes' Book of Falls
The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (Original: The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes) is one of Arthur Conan Doyle written collection of twelve crime - short stories about his famous detective Sherlock Holmes and his friend Dr. Watson , published in the UK in 1927.
Emergence
The Book of Cases contains the last twelve Sherlock Holmes short stories that Doyle wrote between 1921 and 1927. The author had previously summarized eight detective stories in his farewell performance . The individual episodes of the Book of Cases were, as was generally the case with Doyle's short stories, first published individually in magazines and then put on the market as a book in an anthology. Sherlock Holmes' Book of Cases was published simultaneously in Great Britain and the USA in June 1927. However, there were differences regarding the spelling of the title. The English edition spoke of a case book , the American edition of a case book and later editions even of a "casebook".
content
The book contains twelve short stories, each around 30 to 40 pages long in the German version. The letters in square brackets denote the now firmly established abbreviations. This final volume of Sherlock Holmes adventures differs from previous works in that not all stories are told from Watson's perspective. In the stories The Pale Soldier and The Lion's Mane , Holmes himself acts as the narrator; the adventure of the Mazarin stone is portrayed in the third person.
- The Illustrious Client [ILLU], 1924 (The Illustrious Client)
- The Blanched Soldier [BLAN], 1926 (The Blanched Soldier)
- The Mazarin Stone [MAZA], 1921 (The Mazarin Stone)
- The Three Gables [3GAB], 1926 (The Three Gables)
- The Sussex Vampire [SUSS], 1924 (The Vampire of Sussex)
- The Three Garridebs [3GAR], 1924 (The Three Garridebs)
- The Problem of Thor Bridge [THOR], 1922 (The Riddle of the Thor Bridge)
- The Creeping Man [CREE], 1923 (The man with the crouched gait)
- The Lion's Mane [LION], 1926 (The Lion's Mane)
- The Veiled Lodger [VEIL], 1927 (The veiled tenant)
- Shoscombe Old Place [SHOS], 1927 (Shoscombe Old Place)
- The Retired Colourman [RETI], 1926 (The retired paint dealer)
The illustrious client
The young noblewoman Violet de Merville has fallen in love with Baron Gruner and ignores his criminal past. Holmes tries to convince Violet, with the help of Gruner's former lover Kitty Winter, that the relationship is dangerous. When Holmes is injured in an attack, he sends Watson to Gruner on the pretext of a conversation about Chinese porcelain and thus arrives at a book that incriminates Gruner.
The pale soldier
James M. Dodd asks Holmes for help because he has not heard from his comrade Godfrey Emsworth of the Yeomanry , with whom he fought in the Boer War , for some time . When Dodd visited the Emsworth family, he saw his friend at night with a very pale face. Holmes finds out that Godfrey has leprosy and is therefore isolated in a garden shed. The soldier finally says that he was infected in a hospital in South Africa .
The Mazarin stone
Holmes is looking for a stolen crown jewel . He lures Count Sylvius, who stole the Mazarin stone, together with his violent partner Merton to 221b Baker Street . With the help of a wax figure , as he has already used in the adventure The Empty House , he overpowers the criminals and can return the valuable stone to its rightful owner.
The three gables
Lady Maberley is urged to sell her house and its contents. When there was a break-in, Holmes discovered a manuscript. In it, Maberley's son Douglas is critical of a former lover. This Isadora Klein tried by all means to get the manuscript in order to destroy it.
The Sussex Vampire
Robert Ferguson has been concerned for the safety of his youngest child since he reportedly saw his wife bite the baby on the neck like a vampire . However, in the face of a limping dog and jealous son, Holmes realizes that Mrs. Ferguson was very caring. The supposed vampire bite was used to suck poison from the child's body.
The three Garridebs
The American John Garrideb reports of a strange inheritance that he could get if he found two more men with his rare last name. He has already found Nathan Garrideb, an old scientist. A few days later, he presented an ad with the name of a third Garrideb and sent Nathan over to him. But Holmes has unmasked John as a killer Evans on the basis of linguistic differences between British and American English and overwhelms the criminal when he tries to steal a coin minting machine from Nathan's house.
The riddle of the Thor Bridge
see The Riddle of the Thor Bridge
The man with the crouched gait
Trevor Bennett has watched his boss Presbury, professor of comparative anatomy , act strangely on certain nights. The scientist moves in a bent forward position and climbs up walls. He is also attacked by his dog, as Holmes and Watson see for themselves. The explanation is provided by a drug that was only tested on langurs and that the professor wanted to use as a fountain of youth in order to be more interesting to a young woman.
The lion's mane
Holmes, living on the Sussex coast , is confronted with the mysterious death of the teacher McPherson. The man was dead on the bank with red welts on his back. His incomprehensible last words were "the lion's mane". During the investigation, the prime suspect Murdoch suffers the same wounds as McPherson. In John George Wood's book Out of Doors , Holmes finds the killer: the yellow haired jellyfish, Cyanea Capillata , also known as the lion's mane .
The veiled tenant
Holmes does not have to investigate himself, but rather hears the story of Mrs. Ronder, which gives him clarity about a mysterious death in the past. The wife of the circus artist Ronder loved the acrobat Leonardo and wanted to use his help to kill her violent husband. The murder was supposed to look like an accident involving Ronder's lions . After Leonardo had killed Ronder with a specially prepared, steel-nailed lead club, Ronder's wife opened the lion's cage. But the distraught lion tore the woman's face to pieces, and Leonardo was too scared to intervene. The disfigured woman has finished her life, but Holmes is able to comfort her, and two days later she sends him a bottle of hydrogen cyanide that she has already kept ready, but has rejected .
Shoscombe Old Place
Sir Robert Norberton, who lives at Gut Shoscombe, has to win the next race because he is in financial difficulties because of his dependence on his sister, Lady Beatrice. In addition, the horse trainer Mason reports that Norberton visited an old tomb at night . After some on-site investigations, Holmes and Watson surprise the rider in the crypt. He explains to them that his sister died a week before the important race, which ended the usufruct of the estate. To cover up the fact until the race, he hid the body in the crypt and let the maid's husband take on the role of his sister.
The retired paint dealer
meaning
Sherlock Holmes 'Book of Falls is one of the works from Doyle's second creative period after Holmes' death in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes and his resurrection in The Return of Sherlock Holmes . The Book of Cases is the last Holmes volume and, like The Return of Sherlock Holmes and His Farewell Presentation, is one of the lesser-known Sherlock Holmes volumes.
expenditure
- Arthur Conan Doyle: Sherlock Holmes Book of Cases (translation: Hans Wolf), Haffmans Zurich 1987, ISBN 3-251-201085
- same translation (new edition): No and But, 2005, ISBN 978-3-0369-5151-5
- Same translation (paperback): island paperback no.3321, 2007, ISBN 978-3-458-35021-7
- Arthur Conan Doyle: Sherlock Holmes Collected Works , Hardcover (Translator: Adolf Gleiner, Margarete Jacobi, Louis Ottmann, Rudolf Lautenbach), Anaconda-Verlag 2012, ISBN 978-3866478503
See also
- Characters from the Sherlock Holmes stories
- Sherlock Holmes media
- Sherlock Holmes pastiches
- The riddle of the Thor Bridge
