Criminal Motivations

Great, just when I get to liking a book I realize what it actually is. The Devil and Sherlock Holmes isn't just one story, it's multiple stories. At first this case was kind of boring but towards the end it became heart-racing.

Richard Green over time had a parallel life to Doyle. As Doyle got crazy towards the end of his life so did Green. The narrator met with Richard's good friend Gibson again and also with Richard's sister. Gibson told of Doyle becoming more spiritual over time and it tore Richard apart. He couldn't stand Doyle becoming more spiritual and he backlashed against him. Writing demeaning things about him instead of praising him like he once did with Dame Ellen. At this time, no one even thought that Richard had been murdered, not his best friend or his own sister. Gibson brought to the attention the striking similarities of Richard's death, to the death of a 'wife' found lying dead on a bridge in "The Problem of Thor Bridge", a Holmes book. The wife had been informed of an affair that her husband had with the governess and through her jealousy killed herself and framed the woman with whom she blamed for her misery. Gibson believed with no evidence of forced entry and with Richard recently going mad that he may have staged the whole thing himself.

Upon the Narrator's visit to see Richard's sister, Priscilla, he found out that she too believed that Richard had staged the thing himself. She believed that with the Doyle collection being sold, and Doyle not being able to retrieve it he had nothing left to live for. However, it wasn't until after Green had died did the family learn alot of vital information. For one, Dame Jean initially did send the most important papers to the British Library, and the British Library bought much of the remaining documents at the auction. Also, if you were wondering about the answering machine being the "American", it was a simple explanation. The machine had been made in America and came with pre-recorded answering message, so when Richard took off his personal message, the pre-recorded one was played.

The sad thing about this case was that if Richard hadn't killed himself he could have written his biography on Doyle, and redeemed himself. This was a pretty good story, it was interesting and considering it was real, pretty interesting. I had never even heard of Conan Doyle at the time of reading this. It's kind of like a true, The Help, but with a twisted criminal case plot instead of Southern maids in the 60's. The last sentence was really powerful to me, I think the sister had finally found closure. It read,  "Unlike in detective stories, we have to live without answers".