Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong: Reopening the Case of the Hound of the Baskervilles

First, to get out of the way the least interesting part of this book: yes, Bayard makes a convincing case that the great detective was wrong in nearly every detail in his most famous case. Second, some suggested prerequisites to get the full understanding and enjoyment from Bayard's seemingly contrarian reading: --Bayard's slim volume How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read, where he first presents his argument that books have a life beyond the written page: Each reader brings to a book their own "inner library." which might have common titles but not the same content as other readers. --Martin Booth's biography The Doctor and the Detective: A Biography of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, which documents the conflicted relationship Conan Doyle had with his most famous character. Although Holmes made him rich, Conan Doyle killed him off, but had to bring him back to life to meet the demands of his readers and publishers. As in the case of "How to talk", I picked up this book with the thought that Bayard must be a committed contrarian with no intent other than to galvanize opinion, and as in the first, I found that he was not only serious but successful in his scholarship. Here he expands on the concept of the "screen books" in our "inner library" to make the argument that stories and their characters have a life beyond and between the words their authors use to create them, as evidenced by the intensity of the distraught reaction of Holmes's fans when Conan Doyle try to kill the character; these readers became, in Bayard's argument, "immigrants to the text". Similarly, in Conan Doyles' intense reaction to his character, Bayard finds "emigrants from the text" as the fictional "nonexistent" character Holmes exerted his control over Conan Doyle in the flesh and blood world where he lived. The concept is not new to Bayard. The life of characters beyond the control of their creators has been dealt with many times in literature, for example the recent movie Stranger Than Fiction. But Bayard does an excellent job of making this higher criticism understandable and accessible to the average reader, and might inspire some to read their favorite authors and characters with different eyes. And besides that, he's a ball of fun to read!

"The main premise of detective criticism is this: many of the murders narrated in literature were not committed by the people accused by the text. In literature, as in life, the true criminals often elude the investigators and allow secondary characters to be accused and condemned. In its passion for justice, detective criticism commits itself to rediscovering the truth. If it is unable to arrest the guilty parties, it can at least clear the names of the innocent." This is literary criticism like you've never read it. When I picked up this book, I thought it was a fan fiction approach to Sherlock Holmes. What I ended up reading was an entertaining, thought-provoking and convincing argument that Sherlock Holmes did not solve The Case of the Hound of the Baskervilles. Summary: Written in a casual, easy-to-read style, Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong is broken into 3 short sections. In the first, Bayard points out Holmes's mistakes and builds a case for Stapleton's innocence (Holmes concludes that Stapleton is guilty at the end of The Hound of the Baskervilles). After convincing the reader that Stapleton is innocent, Bayard takes a detour for the second section into the history surrounding Arthur Conan Doyle and his character Sherlock Homes. He also talks about how literary characters pass in and out of the real world and argues that they can take on a form of autonomy and commit crimes which even the author doesn't know about. (It sounds a little kooky, I know, but it makes sense when you read it.) In the third section, Bayard turns back to the case at hand and points a finger at the "real" murderer. Review: I started this book and couldn't put it down. There were some typos (it was translated out of the original French) and shameless self-promotion by the author, which bothered me, and the detour in the second section was slightly longer than I would have wished, but those are the sole objections I can make to this book. Part literary deconstruction, part imagination, and part pure genius, this book must be read by anyone who takes the slightest interest in criticism--you will never look at any book the same. Besides, if you don't read it, you'll never know what really happened in The Hound of the Baskervilles; I'm certainly not going to tell you!

If you are interested in semiotics, freudian analysis, and sherlock holmes (and I am sure most of you are) then this book is a brilliant find. In its frugal, non-franco-typical 188 pages, the author covers a very broad range of topics from contemporary lit-crit to cognitive psychology, while demonstrating a delightful command off Holmes and Holmes critical impedimentia. There are two central ideas. First, Bayard explores the relationship between literary characters and reality, which leads to a quick detour through our collective subconscious. Second, there is a meditation on positivism and pseudoscience, with a shout-out to freudian contributions to the scientific method. These two ideas are dialectically synthesized into the conclusion that Holmes' methods are fundamentally flawed and lead to a flawed outcome in the Hound of the Baskervilles, which quite simply Sherlock fouls up to a fair-the-well. Bayard, with a better understanding of the cognitive processes of real and fictional characters (Conan Doyle and Holmes, specifically) is able to utilize Holmes' techniques of close observation and deduction to discover the true culprit in the tale, which I won't spoil by revealing. His "solution" is analytically compelling and represents a coup de main for the new criticism ideas of close textual reading and multiple interpretations of texts. In fact, he makes those highly academic ideas quite fun while letting that poor doggy off the hook.

A glowing beast stocks what is supposed to be the last of the rich and influential Baskerville family. At least two men seem to have been killed on the cold and desolate English moor by the bloody hound. All hopes for the future of the young Baskerville rest on the cunning of the world's most famous detective, Sherlock Holmes. But did he get his conclusion all wrong? Did the real murderer go free? According to French literature professor, Pierre Bayard, not only did Holmes make numerous mistakes, Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock's creator) hated the character so much that by the time he wrote The Hound of the Baskervilles he couldn't see who the real murderer was either. Bayard follows the story from the outcry that arose around the world when Conan Doyle killed Holmes in The Final Problem. The intensity of the opposition to Holmes' death proved to be more than Conan Doyle could handle. He grudgingly continued writing the stories despite his desire to move to other stories. Bayard's supposition, that evidence in the Baskerville case was overlooked and that Holmes repeatedly saw what he wanted to rather than what existed on the page, is intriguing and makes for an interesting and short read. The book opened up an entire world of literary theory that argues that characters in books can be as real as live human beings because of the impact they have on the everyday life. Humm... I'll have to think about that. The consequences are alarming, but then, so is reality. --

Reading this book made me scramble back to my old copy of Sherlock Holmes mysteries. One particularly disturbing aspect of this stunning new analysis suggests Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had a vendetta not only against his creation...but also Sherlock Holmes fanatics. It warns the reader of an unorthodox way of understanding the complex interaction between fiction and reality. The cruel irony of realizing we as readers can be tricked into believing one conclusion when the real one is in plain view should be lost on no one. This book may end up becoming a classic in literary criticism.