Ransom Riggs’ tongue-in-cheek 2009 book The Sherlock Holmes Handbook: Methods and Mysteries of the World’s Greatest Detective is supposed to show how Sherlock Holmes’ approach to crime detection can act as a model for those who aspire to follow the same path. It is divided into three parts: detective skills, survival skills and life skills, relating the topic under consideration back to Conan Doyle’s stories.
The first part covers those attributes which make a first-rate detective, from how to apply reasoning to a problem, question a suspect, analyse bullet evidence, and examine a body, to how to decode ciphers, handle fingerprints, typography and footprints. There is even information on cracking a safe and locating a secret chamber in a house, not perhaps part of the sleuth’s everyday repertoire.
Information on survival skills arms the detective with the means of defence, though again not all will have to deal with master criminals, fake his or her own death or survive a plunge over a waterfall. The disguise section could be come in handy though.
Life skills is a rag-bag of issues addressing Holmes’s idiosyncratic character that didn’t fit in elsewhere: sniffing out a hoax, how to deal with friends, women and children (distantly, if not at a distance), drugs, handling royalty, and how to raise bees. Clearly short on the word count despite its modest length, an appendix has a short biography of Conan Doyle, a few choice quotes from Holmes, and a list of the stories.
Categorised by Riggs as an ‘irreference’, i.e. an ‘irreverent reference’, it is an amusing read but it is difficult to see who the target reader is because anything in it of use in appreciating Holmes’s character will already be apparent from the stories, and anyone really looking for a detection manual (or how to raise bees for that matter) will not find it sufficiently detailed. There are peeps into the great man’s times, and it is mildly diverting, but the exercise carries with it the air of the remainder bin.
The Joy of Mere Words 