The Adventure of the Speckled Band

Author: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Background: I am a huge fan of Sherlock, with Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman. Recently, there was a “special episode” of Sherlock set in the Victorian period. It made me want to read the original Sherlock Holmes stories.

My thoughts: Good story! I kept reading until I was finished, because I had to know what happened—which is the mark of a good mystery, in my opinion. I read somewhere that this was ACD’s favorite Sherlock Holmes story. In “The Adventure of the Speckled Band,” Holmes and Watson are chilling at 221B Baker Street. A woman named Helen Stoner comes and tells them about the bizarre and unexplained death of her beloved sister. When her sister was alive, the two of them lived with their stepfather, a doctor named Dr. Grimesby Roylott (that names sounds like that of a Harry Potter character). Their stepfather had been living in India, but after he beat an Indian man to death and went to prison for it, he returned to England with a pet baboon and cheetah (oh, the Empire...)

The ending of the story was satisfyingly creepy. It reminded me of something one would see on the show Forensic Files. I’ve read a couple of things about “The Adventure of the Speckled Band,” and it seems as though there are parts that are not exactly rooted in biological truth. Oh well. It is a really good story. And, after reading the story (as happens after I watch the series Sherlock), I felt the need to be more observant of things. Like Sherlock himself.

Great passage: “So tall was he that his hat actually brushed the cross bar of the doorway, and his breadth seemed to span it across from side to side. A large face, seared with a thousand wrinkles, burned yellow with the sun, and marked with every evil passion, was turned from one to the other of us, while his deep-set, bile-shot eyes, and his high, thin, fleshless nose, gave him somewhat the resemblance to a fierce old bird of prey.”