The Seven-Per-Cent Solution
Being a Reprint from the Reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D.
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3.0 • 1 Bewertung
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- CHF 14.00
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- CHF 14.00
Beschreibung des Verlags
New York Times Bestseller
One of Parade's 101 Best Mystery Books of All Time
This "rediscovered" Sherlock Holmes adventure recounts the unique collaboration of Holmes and Sigmund Freud in the solution of a mystery on which the lives of millions may depend.
First discovered and then painstakingly edited and annotated by Nicholas Meyer, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution related the astounding and previously unknown collaboration of Sigmund Freud with Sherlock Holmes, as recorded by Holmes's friend and chronicler, Dr. John H. Watson. In addition to its breathtaking account of their collaboration on a case of diabolic conspiracy in which the lives of millions hang in the balance, it reveals such matters as the real identity of the heinous professor Moriarty, the dark secret shared by Sherlock and his brother Mycroft Holmes, and the detective's true whereabouts during the Great Hiatus, when the world believed him to be dead.
Kundenrezensionen
Where Fidelity Meets Folly: Assessing Meyer’s Holme
Nicholas Meyer’s The Seven‑Per‑Cent Solution is, in many respects, an impressive act of literary ventriloquism. His command of Arthur Conan Doyle’s tone, decadence, and narrative scaffolding is so deft that one could, at moments, genuinely forget whose hand is guiding the tale. This fidelity to the Doylean atmosphere is unquestionably one of the novel’s strongest achievements.
The story moves with a confident pace, and Meyer’s craftsmanship is most evident in the final act, where the narrative gathers its full dramatic weight. Yet it is precisely here — in the book’s much‑praised climax — that my admiration becomes more complicated. The ending, though imaginative and executed with goodwill, veers into a realm of fantasy that strains the integrity of Sherlock Holmes’s character. It is a bold excursion, certainly, but one that ultimately feels preposterous in its attempt to “explain” Holmes.
What troubles me most is a familiar pattern among modern pastiche writers: the eagerness to pathologise Holmes, to retrofit his brilliance with psychological origins or medicalised motivations. Holmes is, by design, outside the frame of ordinary understanding; his mind is not meant to be domesticated by diagnostic labels or reductive backstories. To insist upon such explanations diminishes him. In Meyer’s case, this impulse reaches its zenith, and despite the author’s evident affection for the character, the result borders on an inadvertent insult — an attempt to anchor a figure who was never meant to be tethered.
Holmes’s complexity does not require pathology. It requires respect for the enigma.
Meyer’s novel remains an engaging and stylish homage, but its central conceit ultimately reveals more about our contemporary discomfort with the inexplicable than about Holmes himself.