The Los Angeles Times reviews a new book on how laypeople, you and me, can be like Sherlock Holmes.
From the piece...
Sherlock Holmes' powers of detection are legendary. Holmes was so beloved that when author Sir Conan Doyle killed the character off, popular outcry forced him to revive him. Holmes has been bobbing to the surface of our cultural slipstream ever since; he'll make his latest splash on Dec. 25, when Guy Ritchie's film starring Robert Downey Jr. as Holmes and Jude Law as Watson hits screens.
But aspiring sleuths need not wait until then to make like Sherlock Holmes. A new manual from Quirk Books (the publisher that brought us "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies") takes lessons from all Doyle's writings to provide a kind of do-it-yourself detective guide. "The Sherlock Holmes Handbook -- The Methods and Mysteries of the World's Greatest Detective" by Ransom Riggs includes sections like "How to Locate a Secret Chamber" and "How to Keep Your Mind Sharp: Opium Dens and Narcotics in the Victorian Era."
Some of the lessons seem obvious, but it takes a keen mind like Holmes' not to miss things others might. In "How to Examine a Body at a Crime Scene," the first lesson is Make sure the victim is actually dead. In two different Holmes stories, victims were deeply unconscious -- and one had been nailed in a coffin. Get the Lady Frances Carfax out of there, pronto!
If you care to read the Sherlock Holmes stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, go here.
If you care to watch the movie (I just might today), here's the trailer...
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