Diving into the Valley of Fear with Doyle’s Holmes and Watson
Detective stories are formulaic, and it’s hard to revolutionise the way the story is told, the way the plots are structured, to offer something completely fresh. But back before the turn of the century, Doyle had offered something different with his Sherlock Holmes. The Valley of Fear follows the formula of its original predecessor, A Study in Scarlet, but as it is a plot structure that is not often used by other pens, it does not lose its freshness.
Like A Study in Scarlet, there are two parts to the book. The first half is Holmes solving a mysterious murder and the latter, the story of the murderer and the victim to rewind back the time, so that we know the motivation of the crime. Though many critics and fans alike feel that the latter part is unnecessary, and detracts away from the detective element of the book (not to mention not having Holmes and Watson in the story at all), I loved the latter half.
We are fascinated with murder as it is human emotions taken to its most extreme of consequences. Perhaps we entertain ourselves with these crime stories because the stories may touch us in our lives at some point, that perhaps we are capable of such acts ourselves. It is a scary thought, isn’t it? What better way to study these motivations than to go back to the beginning?
The tragedy in Birlstone, or was it?
A message from an informant, warning Holmes that a “Douglas” is in danger. Inspector MacDonald came in a little later to tell Holmes that this man Douglas has actually died, murdered in his own home. Thus, Holmes, Watson and the London police has to take a trip to Birlstone where the victim was the proprietor. The circumstances are strange, as the house is practically a castle with a moat, making it difficult for anybody to sneak in. Douglas was a reputable man in town, a beacon in the community.
There are suspects abound who were at the house: the housekeeper, the butler, Mrs Douglas and a Mr Barker, who was Douglas’s partner when they made their wealth back in America. We find later on that Douglas had been apprehensive of a threat to his life, but from who or where nobody really had an inclination, only the words “Valley of Fear”. It doesn’t help that there may be some connection between the missus of the house and her husband’s business partner, that they may be a little too friendly.
In the second part, we learn about Douglas’s background as a “scowrer”, or a freemason of some sort who wreak havoc across a mining town in America. He is running away from the law, yet he was not afraid to call out the police whenever he comes them. He is combative, yet within months, he was an essential part of the chapter. He makes enemies though, and as we know, the enemies led him to the murder in Birlstone many years later.
Another strong edition to the Sherlock Holmes repertoire
It is rare to have a weak Sherlock Holmes book, and so far I have only came across one that I didn’t like, which was the Return of Sherlock Holmes. This confuses me a little, because Holmes took Moriarty down in a waterfall in Memoirs, yet he came back to life due to popular demand in Return, to a tired collection of stories. But in Valley, he had not met his archnemesis though the novel was published much later, which means that Valley was a prequel to Memoirs.
The confusions of timelines aside, this is a Holmes which were published in the quaint and London moving at a breakneck speed. The post Industrial Revolution hangover had given way to a London with modern buildings not recognisable in Holmes’s timelines, new technologies such as motor carriages and a more liberal outlook from traditional opinions — controversies such as homosexuality even among the upper echelons, has started to rear its head. But like Dirty Harry, Holmes is a constant in an ever changing world.
But let’s talk about the second part of the novel. Douglas, the criminal who moved up the ladder in Vermissa, is a captivating character. A young man who pulls people into his circle, stubborn to the point of rebellious yet remaining likeable, and deep within we can suspect that he carries with him the burden of humanity — as when he spoke with old Morris, who thought that the scowrers were much too harsh on the people, an unpopular opinion. It is difficult not to side with this young Douglas, despite his chosen life as a scowrer.
The first part of the book is an elongated short story, the kind we get in the Adventures, and the second part of the book is a novella in itself and perhaps can survive on its own. Yet, the connection between the two stories binds the book cohesively. What was amiss was the connection with Moriarty — if his name had been omitted from the novel, nothing would have really changed.
In my Penguin edition, the publisher also included the essay A Case of [Mistaken?] Identity by David Cannadine, which I found to be the best essay that I have read so far on the opium-addicted detective. Cannadine explores deeply the context behind the ever-changing London to Holmes’s position as a sleuth in the midst of this magnetic metropolitan.
Surprisingly, Holmes is not so much a London-centric character as let’s say, any Dickens character. Doyle is of Irish background, raised in Scotland and became a naturalised anglophile. In fact, plenty of his conjurations of London are errant, clumsy and resemble more Edinburgh than the English capital. The settings for the Holmes stories are often not set in London and oftentimes take place in a domestic, far away from any English landmarks and enclosed in rural idyll.
But it is a snapshot of London that had just found her way at the doorstep of modernism. The passing landmarks mentioned in the stories have only been constructed recently. Holmes was also a resort and escape to a citizenry recovering from the horrors of Jack the Ripper. The English needed their heroes. But Holmes was also in a unique situation where London was actually becoming increasingly safe. This is reflected in Holmes’s complaints that at time he really had not much to do.
Sherlock Holmes will remain to us as English as fish and chips, as James Bond or The Sex Pistols would always be. But read Doyle’s work for its discourse in humanity, for justice. Naturally, we want perpetrators of crimes to be caught, but there is something deeper than just emotions taken to the extremes. In Douglas we have a second protagonist with a great personal strength and charisma, that he had to decide, it seems, to follow the life of crime or the righteous path. This is why I think, even after more than a century, the detective genre from the pen of Conan Doyle remains levels above most others in the field.
