Why sherlock holmes was wrong

Part intellectual entertainment, part love letter to crime novels, and part crime novel in itself, Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong turns one of our most beloved stories delightfully on its head. Examining the many facets of the case and illuminating the bizarre interstices between Doyle's fiction and the real world, Bayard demonstrates a whole new way of reading mysteries: a kind of "detective criticism" that allows readers to outsmart not only the criminals in the stories we love but also the heroes-and sometimes even the writers.

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In this counter-investigation of Doyle's most famous Holmes case, Bayard challenges the reader to suspend belief in the detective's conclusions about not only the perpetrator of the crimes, but even the famous sleuth's reading of the clues. How Bayard works this all out the reader will have to experience, but he does provide a fascinating and rewarding examination of Holmes' method of operations, i.

The French have long been fascinated by crime fiction. In Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong , Pierre Bayard combines this with a second fascination of French intellectualism, that is, various theoretical approaches to texts.

In the process Bayard's little book opens an engaging and enlightening discussion of one of the central works of classic detective fiction. Toggle Navigation. Then he suggests that maybe Stapleton would have worn a disguise while collecting the money. But what disguise would work? An unknown heir suddenly appears out of nowhere after the violent deaths of two Baskervilles?

In fact, Stapleton is the victim—whose only crime was keeping a large, unaggressive dog in secret because he thought it was amusing to frighten his neighbors. The real murderer Bayard says spoiler!

Stapleton took a mistress, and Beryl has grown to loathe him. Stapleton conceals the accident to protect himself and his beloved dog, and Beryl seizes her chance. She goes to London, and taunts Sherlock Holmes by impersonating him, in order to get him to take on the case. Holmes and Watson then convince themselves that Charles was murdered.

They work his heir Henry into a pitch where he believes he is under murder threat too. While Holmes kills the innocent dog, Beryl tells Stapleton that his hound has run off into the mire. Crazed with worry, Stapleton attempts to pursue the beast.

Beryl has removed the guideposts Stapleton uses to navigate the swamp, though, and he dies. Holmes is completely bamboozled; he thinks he has foiled a murder, rather than aiding in perpetrating one. For example, Stapleton and Beryl pretend through the novel that they are brother and sister, rather than man and wife.

But if the culprit is Beryl, then the deception makes no sense. But surely a divorce, or at least a separation, would have been the natural step if she had reached a stage where she was willing to express such open contempt to his face.