From the Mean Streets to Baker Street

The following essay is from the book Sherlock Holmes and Philosophy, a collection of contemporary essays available October 11, 2011, and appears courtesy of Open Court Books. 

It’s hard to recall the first detective who stole my heart. I’m sure he was wrapped in a trench coat, blowing smoke in someone’s face, but there have been so many through the years. As a young girl, I crushed on Charlie Chan and an assortment of detective heroes on Saturday morning television, curled up on my parents’ basement couch, alone, just me and my screen sleuths.

My serious relationships began with exposure to hard-boiled PI’s—the stuff of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. These guys—and they almost always were guys—were the heroes of film noir, the film tradition rooted in post-World War II disillusionment, inspired by the grit and grime of hard-boiled pulp fiction. Even before I knew I wanted to be a detective, I was turned on by the world in these films. And especially by the detectives who inhabited it. They spit out cool dialogue, knew strange, interesting people in every pocket of the city, and always attracted the most alluring and resourceful women. It didn’t hurt that they also brought down one or two bad guys.

And they did it on their own. They were lone wolfs, private dicks, ex-cops who had been cast out from their former departments. It made perfect sense that I would be a sucker for them. Even at a young age, I saw myself as a loner and aspiring rebel.

Sherlock Holmes, the most famous sleuth of them all, was noticeably absent in my little black book of detectives. In movies, I always associated Holmes with Basil Rathbone. When I caught his detective on the screen, I routinely turned the channel for more colorful personas, or waited for the next Saturday morning’s detective to make his appearance.

The Evidence

Recently, while channel surfing on early morning cable, I stumbled upon Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1943), one of fourteen films in a series of Sherlock Holmes mysteries released between 1939 and 1946. These were the films that likely introduced me to Conan Doyle’s world and his Baker Street detective. But this time, I didn’t find myself switching channels. To my surprise and pleasure, I liked what I saw. Although Holmes hadn’t changed through all these years, I had.

I know works of art don’t change through time, but certain ones seem to transform themselves in response to the spectator’s own transformation. So it wasn’t surprising that this recent viewing of The Secret Weapon jumpstarted my reevaluation of Holmes and Rathbone, and my relationship to them.

Similar to the setting all those years ago, I watched the Holmes film on an early Saturday morning. But much had changed. I was no longer in my parents’ basement, curled up on their couch in my PJ’s. My parents—and their home—are long gone. I don’t think I even own a pair of pajamas. My life is no longer a mysterious journey waiting to unfold—it’s a journey that is already more than half over. And, in the years since my first exposure to Holmes and my early fixation on detectives, I had fulfilled my fantasy—I worked as an investigator with the Chicago Police Department’s Office of Professional Standards, a civilian investigative unit that handled misconduct charges against police officers. The work was a long way from Scotland Yard, but it was close enough. Holmes and I now had something in common: we were both investigators.

Now I could appreciate Holmes, especially Rathbone’s portrayal. It was as if I was meeting him for the first time. Despite his faraway world drenched in London fog and his Baker Street address, Holmes didn’t feel like a distant, remote figure. He was no longer the brittle, mechanical sleuth-robot that I recalled from my youth. He was now the witty master of disguise, fully loaded with a dry sense of humor and razor-sharp mind. He was modern. He was cool. He was even a bit sexy in a tweedy kind of way.

Tea For Two versus Table For One

While Holmes on screen offered some new satisfactions all these years later, I still wondered how he stacked up to my noir heroes.

In an early scene in The Woman in Green (1945), the action slows down while Holmes prepares a cup of tea for himself and Watson. After he pours Watson’s tea, he drops a splash of milk into the cup. He doesn’t ask—he just pours.

This familiarity—this intimacy—was one of the most striking discoveries and satisfactions during my investigation of the early Holmes films. There’s something touching here, as if Holmes and Watson are an old married couple, aware of the subtlest details of each other’s lives, an awareness cultivated by a long life of togetherness. Holmes clearly has been paying attention to clues and details beyond the scope of an official investigation.

Unlike Holmes, the hard-boiled detectives are defined by their loner status. It’s not that there aren’t people in their world: cops from their police days before they were kicked out of the department; good-looking secretaries who know the right kind of booze to keep stocked in their desk drawer; and an assortment of marginalized oddballs that they can call on day or night. But when push comes to shove, these detectives are alone—and they know it. They don’t have sidekicks or partners. If they do—like Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon—the partner usually gets knocked off a few minutes into the story.