Follow the science, Sherlock

Sherlock Holmes was a pioneer in forensic crime-solving, a pretty good feat for a fictional character. Now Stewart Ross has written The Science of Sherlock Holmes (2020) about the great detective's methods for gathering evidence and making brilliant deductions.

Ross writes about Sherlock's use of his magnifying glass, his analysis of both fingerprints and footprints, his expertise regarding such things as tobacco ashes and bicycle tires, his knowledge of horses and handwriting, his use of telegrams and trains, and so on.

Unlike some Holmes scholars, Ross shows himself quite willing to criticize the great detective. He says things like "great storytelling, but questionable forensic science," "not sound science," and "Conan Doyle was not prepared to let science get in the way of a good story." The later Holmes stories, Ross reports, were not nearly as scientifically sound as the earlier ones were, in part because Arthur Conan Doyle was not keeping up with the latest scientific developments and also in part because the author had lost interest in the stories. The stories were always more about brain power than technology anyway, Ross points out.

Of course, Ross is not the most accurate of writers either. At one point he refers to O.J. Simpson as a "baseball superstar."