Re-read: The Black Peter
Jul. 31st, 2021 05:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mightymads posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
victorian221bTime flies, doesn't it? Today is the last day of July, unbelievable! But our read-along continues. The Black Peter is a great adventure story and has everything to make a great TV-episode: neat deductions, waiting in an ambush, the wrongly accused suspect, and finally a spectacular grand reveal. It is really a pity that no major adaptation includes it. Fair enough, the ending is somewhat similar to STUD, when Holmes catches Cairns with a cunning trick, but excercising in harpooning? Holmes's boltholes? Captain Basil? I'd like to see all that.
This tale was clearly inspired by ACD's experience on a whaler during his student days, so he had some first-hand experience with sea-folk and harpooning techniques. And there's also a fascinating insight into Neligan's crime, that he actually was a fraud who had no intention of returning the money to his creditors because there was no need to sell the securities abroad. I highly recommend the blog called An Observance of Trifles.
I don't have any more notes on this story except that I enjoyed it and that there's one of my favourite lines in the canon characterizing Watson: "He said nothing of his business to me, and it was not my habit to force a confidence." I keep returning to it when I write Holmes fic.
This tale was clearly inspired by ACD's experience on a whaler during his student days, so he had some first-hand experience with sea-folk and harpooning techniques. And there's also a fascinating insight into Neligan's crime, that he actually was a fraud who had no intention of returning the money to his creditors because there was no need to sell the securities abroad. I highly recommend the blog called An Observance of Trifles.
I don't have any more notes on this story except that I enjoyed it and that there's one of my favourite lines in the canon characterizing Watson: "He said nothing of his business to me, and it was not my habit to force a confidence." I keep returning to it when I write Holmes fic.
