The Devil and Sherlock Holmes
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Reporting, like detective work, is a process of elimination. It requires that you gather and probe innumerable versions of a story until, to borrow a phrase from Sherlock Holmes, “the one which remains must be the truth.”
Although Holmes is the subject of just one of the stories in this collection, about the curious death of the world’s foremost Holmes expert, all twelve contain elements of intrigue. Many of the protagonists are sleuths: a Polish detective trying to determine whether an author planted clues to a real murder in his postmodern novel; scientists who are stalking a sea monster; a con man who suddenly suspects that he may be the one who is being conned. Even the stories that seem cut from a different cloth deal in mystery of a kind: the secret world of sandhogs digging water tunnels under New York City, or the riddle of an aging but ageless baseball star.
Unlike the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, these tales are all true. The protagonists are mortal: as with Dr. Watson, they can observe, but they don’t necessarily see. Pieces of the puzzle often remain elusive. Their stories do not always end happily. Some of the characters are driven to deception and murder. Others go mad.