Holmes: The Adventure of the Gloria Scott

/ Alex Good

Or: “Holmes’s First Case.” Which is its single claim to fame. Though young Sherlock wasn’t a detective yet but a student on holidays when a school chum invited him to spend some time at his family estate. While there he stumbles into the usual mess of a blackmail plot involving a shady old acquaintance from the colonies.

I didn’t find any of it very interesting, and Holmes’s great skills at detection aren’t put to much of a test. For example, he picks up on the fact that his chum’s father had known someone with the initials J.A. who he had subsequently tried to forget based on the fact that he had had “J.A.” tattooed on his arm and then tried to erase the tattoo. Clever. And then he solves the easiest code ever by figuring out that he just has to read every third word in an otherwise baffling note. (Experts, by the way, point out that this means the note is in fact written in cipher, not code. There is a difference, albeit not one I’m keen on explaining.)

Basically this is just Holmes narrating the events to Watson and reading a long letter from the father explaining all that was happening in the blackmail scheme, which is something Holmes didn’t figure out on his own. It may have been his first case but it’s also among his most forgettable and well worth skipping.

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