Normally, I would tell you all about myself here, but this is the only place I can address a question that popped up in conversation recently: Why Sherlock Holmes?

If you've found this profile, you're no doubt as much in love with the canon as I am. You've probably had a similar conversation: you're in a restaurant or cafe or park somewhere with some friends and somehow you stumble on the topic of Sherlock Holmes. You can see your friends thinking, "why on earth do you actually ENJOY that kind of thing? What is so special about these stories?" One of my dear friends actually asked me that question tonight and it is for his sake that I'm writing this out and sharing it with you.

I found the Sherlock Holmes stories in 6th grade. I had really just begun to read, I wasn't much of a reader all through elementary school, then something clicked, or maybe broke, and I began devouring literature: The Hobbit, Treasure Island, Watership Down. It's my English teacher's fault, really. One day she asked me if I had tried Conan Doyle, "Sir Arthur" she called him. I thought she was talking about the legendary king of England. I read the stories that summer, all of them, in two weeks. They captivated me right from the very begining.

Why? Well there are several reasons. The first, most basic one, is that they are simply very well written. Arthur Conan Doyle was a master story-teller. His mysteries are never predictable, his stories are timeless, his characters are vibrant, realistic, and human. Sherlock Holmes is at once larger than life and innately human, he is, on one hand, the master logician (whose deductions are always water tight, and I have examined them carefully), and the moody artist. He is a flawed man, who suffers from boredom, depression, and his own peculiar list of vices just like the rest of the human world. Furthermore, Holmes is supplied with a seemingly endless array of adversaries who are clever, creative, sly, and artful. Conan Doyle never sucumbs to the lure of the formula mystery where the plots all seem more or less the same after the fourth or fifth try.

There is something about victorian London that seems the perfect background for mysteries. I believe it's one of the reasons I love these stories so much. Conan Doyle paints a unique portrait of London during his time. It's a place you want to jump into, provided you can find a handsom cab and a flat with a warm fire and a cheery landlady. The London of the Holmes stories is at once grim and inviting, mysterious and oddly familiar, the perfect setting for a master detective to do his work.

Perhaps the most enthralling aspect of the canon is the remarkable friendship between Holmes and Watson. It is a friendship so strong, not even the heartbreak of Holmes' three-year supposed death can break it. The two men are perfectly balanced, the artistic yet fiercely logical detective, and the sturdy, moral, yet loving, military doctor. They complement eachother in a beautiful way. I always find the stories that feature Holmes alone rather unbalanced. There's no strong yet emotional character to counteract Holmes' abrupt and coldly rational manner, no one of the reader's inteligence for the reader to cling to and relate to (for as much as I'd like to be as brilliant as Holmes, I must content myself with being human like Watson). One of the great wonders of the literary world is that friendship, that amazing, enduring friendship.

I wish I could sum this up in one brilliant sentence, but I'm unable to at the present moment. If you have read to this point, thanks for induring my little diatribe. Perhaps you can use some of it to answer "the dreaded question"

~Anozira