DOYLE'S WORLD―LOST & FOUND

A deep dive into all things Doyle.

In their choppy second book, the father-and-son team of Eugene and Daniel Friedman offers a “fresh and unexpected perspective” on the doctor and his famous fictional character. They begin by looking at Arthur Conan Doyle’s early years “under the lens of a microscope,” uncovering obscure bits of biographical information, concluding Doyle inserted portions of his personality and early years into the characters of Holmes and Watson. In medical school, Doyle’s friend William Budd, with his “Holmes-like powers of observation,” influenced many stories. The authors explore how Doyle drew upon a “remarkably gifted coterie of physicians” and how he “transmuted” them into the gifted Holmes, and they show how another Edinburgh doctor, William Rutherford, inspired Doyle’s later creation, George Edward Challenger. They uncover a “long overlooked and virtually unknown Black leader Doyle met” while serving as ship’s physician aboard a freighter; this character, they write, “lurks behind his civil rights–inspired tales.” The Friedmans spend time on Doyle’s importance as a doctor who spoke out about urgent health matters like vaccinations and water contaminants, and they examine the influence fellow writers William Henley and Robert Louis Stevenson had on him. They also consider how Professor John Moriarty and Holmes’ relationship was becoming a “millstone” around the physician’s neck. After he killed Holmes off, ardent readers persuaded Doyle to bring him back. The Friedmans go on to examine his close relationship with friend and writer Grant Allen, for whom Doyle graciously completed the ill man’s last book; and Doyle’s feelings for and travels in America and his “lifelong belief in the unseen world,” employing “his own brand of scientific methodology to delve into the metaphysical.” The book concludes with a special treat: two stories by one of Doyle’s mentors, Dr. Reginald Ratcliff Hoare, stories the Friedmans endeavor to prove with scrupulous textual analysis were actually written by Doyle.

An odds-and-ends miscellany best suited for hard-core fans.