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The Valley of Fear
When it comes to my favorite fiction, I’m something of a purist. Most newer adaptations are met with skepticism and rarely approval from me. I am the pickiest by far about Sherlock Holmes. I love the character and Doyle’s original stories and have strong opinions about many of the interpretations people have put on them more recently. Sherlock Holmes is not something that needs to be modernized and there’s not much to read between the lines, so I only like the originals and the most faithful adaptations, like the TV series starring Jeremy Brett.
None of this is directly to do with The Valley of Fear, the Holmes novel I’m reviewing today. I’m just sharing it to emphasize that I’m a devoted fan of the Holmes stories despite the critiques I’m going to share about this particular installment in the series.
The Valley of Fear is the last of only four novel-length Holmes stories by Doyle. Most of Holmes and Watson’s adventures are chronicled in short stories that were published in magazines and later collected into several collections. I find that Doyle was better suited to that format. There’s a reason that The Hound of the Baskervilles is the only full-length Holmes novel that outshines the stories in popularity. The Valley of Fear is almost half filler. Or, more accurately, half of the book doesn’t involve Holmes, but I think that’s the same thing since he’s the main reason I’m reading the series.
The first half of the book reads like any other Holmes story. A case is presented, he investigates, finds clues, talks to people, ponders the case, and has his final epiphany. That part of the book is quite good. The mystery centers around the murder of a man who lived in America for many years. He bears a mysterious mark on his arm that seems to be the symbol of a secret society. The face has been damaged, so this mark is used to identify the body. Holmes soon finds that the case is not as straightforward as it appears. The man wears several pieces of valuable jewelry, but only his plain wedding ring is missing. His wife and best friend behave suspiciously. The clues are either too obvious or make no sense at all.
The final plot twist might be obvious to mystery fans as it has been done before by other authors and in other stories, but it is still a well-crafted mystery. My critique begins when we arrive at Holmes’ solution to the case only to find there are a lot of pages left in the book.
These pages contain what is essentially a completely new story. It is a flashback of sorts telling how one of the people involved in Holmes’ case came to be in that position. This man, McMurdo, arrives in America and travels west to a mining village. He finds that a branch of the lodge he joined in Chicago meets in the village. However, this branch of the lodge is not a friendly club but a kind of mafia that commits crimes with impunity and controls the townspeople on pain of death. This gang earns the region the name “valley of fear.” We watch as McMurdo gets deeper into the gang, falls in love, and ultimately works up to the second climactic plot twist of the book.
This half also isn’t a bad story in and of itself. It has quite a bit of action and feels like a western.* The problem is that it’s not a Sherlock Holmes story. Yes, a backstory was needed for the main case, but it could have been much briefer. When you love Holmes and Watson, you pick up a longer novel hoping it means even more of your favorite detective-doctor duo, so it’s disappointing when you spend half the book reading about a gangster in the old west, regardless of whether the gangster is interesting or not.
If you’re working your way through the entire Holmes “canon” like me, The Valley of Fear isn’t something to dread. The opening exchange between Holmes and Watson is one of my all-time favorites:
“I’m inclined to think—” said I.
“I should do so,” Sherlock Holmes remarked impatiently.
And even in the frustratingly Holmes-less second half of the book, Doyle’s writing has the Victorian charm I’ve come to enjoy and occasionally chuckle at. Still, I don’t think the book will be a go-to reread after I’ve finished the series.
Thoughts on Writing
The Valley of Fear may not have been my favorite Holmes story, but it gave me some food for thought about the importance of length and format in writing, a topic I’ve been mulling over lately.
In my experience, the modern writing world tends to focus only on novels, which they define as a fiction story of 50,000 or more words. Shorter formats aren’t typically encouraged, except for specific purposes like contests or the few very niche literary mags that still exist. For several reasons—which I plan to discuss in an upcoming post—I don’t like this trend. For now, I’m just going to look at how Doyle and his popularity prove my point.
If novels really are the ideal format, The Valley of Fear should be better and more popular than the shorter Holmes stories, but it isn’t. The Valley of Fear and A Study in Scarlet, the first Holmes novel, both include too much non-Holmes material that feels like filler. I liked The Sign of Four, but it gets mixed reviews from others. The Hound of the Baskervilles is the only long Holmes work that seems to outrank the short stories. Clearly, Doyle was not as well suited to the novel format and length.
If Doyle had tried to make every Holmes story into a novel, he probably wouldn’t have been as successful and Sherlock Holmes wouldn’t be the phenomenon he is today. Doyle and his series were best suited to short stories, and he recognized that – or perhaps his publishers did. Either way, time has proven it to be the best choice.
So, if you are trying to write, take a lesson from Doyle. Find the format that works best for you and your story and use it. Staying mostly below the 50,000 word line hasn’t put a dent in Sherlock’s fame, so don’t let it tarnish yours before you even get started.
*If you’ve read A Study in Scarlet, the first Holmes novel, you’ll know that Doyle included a western-esque backstory there too. I can’t help but wonder why he didn’t just write separate western stories if that’s what he was into.
Enjoyed the review but really enjoyed the information about the teas. I enjoy tea occasionally in the afternoon and before I started drinking coffee, it was also my morning drink. Our daughter has tea almost every afternoon. Some of those you mentioned sounded so good, but I usually stick to herbal tea. I agree with you about Camomile tea.