Low Valley

Of the Sherlock Holmes short stories I've read thus far, I found "The Boscombe Valley Mystery" to be the most disappointing. I'm not sure its flaws could have been held against it at the time of its original publication, but it is certainly a story that has not aged well.

This story has Holmes and Watson traveling outside of London (to a fictitious location) in response to a man who has been wrongfully accused of a murder by none other than Inspector Lestrade. It is up to Holmes to find evidence of an alternative culprit and exonerate the client.

The problem is, this story just doesn't do well in the CSI age. The unraveling of the mystery doesn't hang on any brilliant deductive leap that Holmes makes, but rather hinges on Lestrade just having done an implausibly shoddy job of investigating his crime scene. The Scotland Yard detective overlooks blatantly obvious evidence, the omission of which inevitably leads to his incorrect conclusion. And it didn't even really take the sharp eyes of Holmes to see what Lestrade had missed; Watson himself in his narration picks up on some of the vital clues in the footprints left at the scene. I've found Doyle's stories to be best so far when he doesn't have to dumb down other characters to make Holmes seem brilliant by comparison; this story is the poorest yet in that regard.

But it's not all bad. For one thing, there's the interesting change of setting. This is the first time Holmes and Watson venture outside of London. It's also the first time that Holmes truly invokes his friendship with Watson; he specifically contacts Watson (now living with his wife) and asks for him to come along on the journey, whereas previous stories had Watson coincidentally showing up to become involved.

Also, as I noted earlier, Watson is able to notice some of the vital evidence himself. He's not quite able to reason what it all means, but has now watched enough of Holmes' methods that he seems to know what to look for, and anticipates in a rough sense how it could be relevant. So even as Lestrade was dumbed down extra for this story, Watson grows smarter. It's nice to have a bit of growth there.

But overall, I'd call this one a mostly forgettable Holmes adventure worth no more than a C.