As the final entry in my series of narrations of the Holmes stories (for awhile) this one naturally is the most skillfully done. Watson should have remembered that Sherlock Holmes is a package deal if you want the genius, you must accept the eccentricity. Holmes’s brilliance is nevertheless on full display in this entry. Holmes and Watson spar over the latter’s dramatic depiction of Holmes’s detective methods and Holmes uncharacteristically gets on Watson’s nerves. He later added “The Adventure of the Second Stain” (also in this narrated collection) to serve that distinctive role.

Wodehouse Patricia Highsmith Ray Bradbury Raymond Carver Richard Bausch Richard Ford Sherman Alexie Sherwood Anderson Stephen King Stuart Dybek T.Arthur Conan Doyle intended this story to be his final official entry in the Holmes canon. Scott Fitzgerald Flannery O'Connor Frank O'Connor George Saunders Grace Paley Guy de Maupassant Haruki Murakami Henry James Isaac Babel James Joyce James Thurber John Cheever John O'Hara John Updike Jorge Luis Borges Joyce Carol Oates Junot Díaz Karen Russell Kate Chopin Langston Hughes Leonard Michaels Leo Tolstoy Lorrie Moore Maeve Brennan Maile Meloy Mary Gaitskill Mary Robison Nathaniel Hawthorne Neil Gaiman O. What do you think about this story? As always, join the conversation in the comments section below, on SSMT Facebook or on Twitter Authors on SSMT Agatha Christie Alice Munro Ambrose Bierce Amy Hempel Ann Beattie Anton Chekhov Arthur Conan Doyle Barry Hannah Bernard Malamud Carson McCullers Clarice Lispector Donald Barthelme Edgar Allan Poe Edna O'Brien Ernest Hemingway Eudora Welty F. Come back to this lady in a year, and may her future and yours justify us in the judgment which we have pronounced this night.” So long as the law does not find some other victim you are safe from me. Do you find the prisoner guilty or not guilty?” Now, gentleman of the jury, you have heard the evidence. Watson, you are a British jury, and I never met a man who was more eminently fitted to represent one. And that’s quite a trick on Doyle’s part. It’s a golden move by a detective – you’re acting with supreme kindness but also rebellion against the system. He decides that the guilty party is not morally responsible and offers freedom. The end of “Abbey Grange” finds him acting as a one-man (well, Watson does contribute his opinion as well) courtroom. And quite often, as we see in “Abbey Grange,” he doesn’t even feel compelled to report the results of his detective work to them. He has no need for the police force’s help. One of the enduring qualities of Sherlock Holmes is his existence on the margins of society. The Adventure Of Abbey Grange by Arthur Conan Doyle, 1904Īllowing Sherlock to bypass the judicial system entirely at story’s end

The adventure of abbey grange