By Lisa Malice, Ph.D.
If you’re like me, you learned to love mysteries from your parents. My first exposure came about when my family outgrew our Sunday night viewing of The Wonderful World of Disney and replaced it with The NBC Sunday Mystery Movie (1971-1977). With sleuths rotating through the weekly series lineup, my family followed Columbo, McCloud, and MacMillan & Wife catch the bad guys, though my favorite was—and still is—The Snoop Sisters, starring the incomparable Helen Hayes and Mildred Natwick as two gray-haired mystery-writing busybody sisters who use their sleuthing skills to help their police detective nephew (Bert Convy) solve real-life murders.
Sunday nights during the summer were spent driving home from the family cabin listening to The CBS Radio Mystery Theater. The radio plays, broadcast 1974-1982, were engaging, suspenseful, well-acted, capturing our attention and imagination of the scenes, characters, actions, murders, and motives. (You can access these wonderful radio shows via www.CBSRMT.com.)
These shows captivated my young mind, prompting me to start reading mysteries, ones I pulled off my mother's vast shelves of books. She read the masters of British Mystery--Agatha Christie, P.D. James, Ngaio Marsh, and others, and I followed suit. But as my high school studies focused more on science and math, I found myself under the spell of Sherlock Holmes. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s iconic deerstalker-capped sleuth fascinated me with his vast wealth of knowledge, mastery of logic, and keen abilities of observation and deduction to identify a murderer, his or her motive, weapon of choice, and how the deed was done. I used my paper route earnings to buy my own hard-bound copy of The Original Illustrated Sherlock Holmes: 37 Short Stories and a complete novel from The Strand Magazine by Arthur Conan Doyle (1976), complete with all 356 original illustrations. With more than 600 pages, the book kept me reading night after night when I was supposed to be asleep. I still have the thick tome in my personal library.
Nowadays, I always have a good crime story on my nightstand, but my days also start out with a daily dose of mystery at the gym, eyes glued to my tablet as I watch an episode of my latest (rarely current) tour of murder while sweating away on the elliptical machine. Just the suspense is often enough to keep my heart-rate elevated. My brain cells get a work-out, too, matching wits with fictional detectives which wield powers of observation and deduction to rival that of Holmes. Apart from obvious portrayals of Doyle’s iconic characters, such Elementary (starring Jonny Lee Miller as Sherlock and Lucy Liu as Dr. Joan Watson), TV producers and screenwriters have filled the broadcast spectrum with a variety of Sherlockian adaptations. Each sleuth has a unique backstory, personality quirks, and entourages that round out the series bible.
The most renowned, award-winning of these series is Monk (2002-2009). The story revolves around Adrian Monk (Tony Shaloub), a former San Francisco police detective on the autism spectrum, whose wife’s unsolved murder exacerbated his obsessive-compulsive and phobic tendencies. The local Homicide Chief (and Monk’s best friend) tolerates Monk’s idiosyncrasies to take advantage of the private detective’s heightened sense of observation and keen deductive intellect in solving some of the city’s most perplexing and high-profile murder cases. Monk’s female assistants serve as his Watson, always by his side to help when needed. The show is both humorous (the producers’ vision for the often-bumbling character was Inspector Clouseau of Pink Panther fame) and dramatic, especially as the eighth and final season winds-down with Monk finally solving his wife’s murder and bringing the culprit to justice.
A wackier version of Doyle’s detective is Psych’s Shawn Spencer (James Roday), whose powers of observation – drilled into him during his formative years by his cop father (Corbin Bernsen) -- feed into his eidetic memory. He passes himself off as a psychic detective, showing up the local Santa Barbara police detectives in closing their cases, while earning just enough to live the life of an adult who never wanted to grow up. His best friend, a straight-arrow pharmaceutical sales rep, Gus (Dule Hill), serves as Shawn’s reluctant Watson. The popular show with a talented ensemble cast ran for eight seasons then followed up with TV movies (more are promised – hooray!).
Currently, I’m watching The Mentalist, which centers on Patrick Jane (Simon Baker), a man whose keen abilities (hypnosis, observation, deduction) allowed him to pass himself off as a psychic. After the murders of his wife and daughter, he devotes his talents as a consultant with the California Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in solving high-profile murders. Each episode begins with Patrick tagging along with the CBI Homicide Unit to a high-profile crime scene – a dead body covered by a sheet. A quick examination of the body, a look around at the area, are usually enough for Patrick to deduce the cause of death, whether the crime happened (if in question), and a clue to the victim’s identity (when it is uncertain). Patrick’s mentalist capabilities make him a skilled interrogator with the ability to mesmerize reluctant witnesses into spilling the beans and murderers into revealing their guilt.
I’m also a fan of ABC’s Elsbeth, which is now filming its second season. Carrie Preston stars as a Sherlockian attorney, a court-ordered observer of NYPD Homicide, who draws on her singular point of view to make unique observations the detectives often overlook. Her astute deductive abilities allow Elsbeth to ID the real villain fairly quickly (rather than the suspect that the cops like for the crime). Like the series that drew me into mysteries and made Peter Falk a household name, Columbo, Elsbeth, is an inverted detective show—a howtocatch’em vs. a whodunit—and a joy to watch.
Do you have a favorite TV version of Sherlock Holmes?
Tell us about the show and its master
detective.
I'm afraid I don't watch much TV (my daughter pointed out that my cable, part of the internet-phone-cable package and thus not costing me anything extra, was still not working four months after she told me I needed to call someone. I'd forgotten.) But I do love Sherlock Holmes! My first husband introduced me to his works. My father didn't think children should read adult books, so I was limited to the Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys/Bobbsey Twins, etc. that I could get my hands on, and mysteries, mostly Agatha Christy, that I snuck from my aunt's collection to read secretely.
ReplyDeleteI love how young people learn to love reading, whatever the genre, from having books in the home. I have to wonder if that will fall by the wayside as more and more ebooks and audiobooks replace print copies.
DeleteNot of Sherlock, but of his sister, I love the Enola Holmes mysteries and wish there were more!
ReplyDeleteI've enjoyed those as well.
DeleteI will check out Enola Holmes next time I go to the gym! Thanks!
DeleteI'm a huge Monk and psych fan. And yes, I definitely see the connections of Holmes. The creator of Monk even says that his name (Adrian Monk) is an homage to Sherlock Holmes in how the syllables roll off the tongue.
ReplyDeleteWhat a fun fact! Thanks for sharing.
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