Plot similarities in canon

[mightymads]

The difficulty of the Holmes work was that every story really needed as clear-cut and original a plot as a longish book would do. One cannot without effort spin plots at such a rate. They are apt to become thin or to break.

—Arthur Conan Doyle, Memories and Adventures 

Some time ago, while I was reading The Whole Art of Detection by Lyndsay Faye (which is a series of short story pastiches), I noticed that at least two stories had very similar premises. Before writing another fic, I glance over those which I have already wrote to avoid being repetitive. Perhaps you have encountered a similar problem too. ACD himself mentioned how difficult it was to come up with an original plot. Just for fun I tried to trace similarities between various canon stories.

- Holmes watches his quarry to find out where the hidden thing is to avoid a painstaking search of the room in SCAN (Irene Adler and the photo) and in NAVA (Joseph Harrison and the treaty);

- A person is sent on a wild goose chase to get them out of the way in REDH (Jabez Wilson and the League), STOCK (Hall Pycroft and a job vacancy), 3GAR (Nathan Garrideb and the inheritance), and RETI (Josiah Amberley and the faked telegram);

- If big money is payed for a nonsensical reason, there’s usually a catch: REDH (bank robbery), COPP (impersonation), ENGR (forgery);

- A man who is considered to be dead is hiding himself both in NORW and in VALL while the presence of a secret room is figured out by the dimensions of the house in SIGN (where the treasures used to be kept) and NORW (Oldacre’s lair);

- A locked room murder mystery both in SIGN (Bartholomew Sholto) and EMPT (Ronald Adair);

- Important documents stolen in SECO and BRUC and it's basically too late to do something to prevent their being used by the enemy but Holmes takes on the cases anyway;

I'm sure there are more but at this point I stopped looking. Despite some rehashing, the stories are not less enjoyable. What do you think?