Sherlock- The Blind Banker

[daibhidc]

Well, that was ... interesting. Whereas last week's was a straight-up take on A Study In Scarlet, this one combined elements of several: Obviously, the mysterious cryptographic messages are from "The Adventure of the Dancing Men"; I think the idea of the acrobatic murderer is based on the Australian Aborigine in The Sign of Four and DI Dimmock is Athelney Jones from that novel[1] (although the line about his future career is probably based on Holmes's comment about Inspector Hopkins as being "promising" in "The Abbey Grange"). Pushing things a bit further, Holmes gets a case from an old University friend in "The Musgrave Ritual", and a non-British crime organisation works with Moriarty (and gets disposed of by him) in The Valley of Fear. So a right old mix, then.

The actual plot, however, seems to be more of a Fu Manchu homage, and I'm not really sure that it worked. "A Study In Pink" took all the Holmesian stuff and brought it right up to date, with GPS and mobiles and laptops. "The Blind Banker", despite Watson's problems with self-service checkouts and the use of spraypaint for the messages[2], somehow felt very period.

It wasn't bad, but it wasn't what I was expecting, and I think last week's was a lot better. Hopefully, next week's will be up to that standard.

[1]Watson getting a girlfriend, of course, is also from The Sign of Four.

[2]I liked the idea that Holmes gets his graffiti expertise from an actual graffiti artist. I'm choosing to believe that Raz's real name is Wiggins.

Comments

[rhiannon-s.livejournal.com]

I'm just not enough of a Holmesean geek to identify the sources like you have, but overall I liked it too. It felt about 15minutes too long though, can't really say why just felt so to me. I preferred aSiP, still not bad though.

What did you think of last night's Smallville, all very DC-Mythic.

[daibhid-c.livejournal.com]

Not seen it yet; I'm sure I'll have a lot to say about it, though 8-)...

[john_amend_all]

Everyone seems to think that it dragged in the middle. Perhaps because they've read The Valley of Fear where Holmes goes from "It's a code" to "It's a book code" to "and here's the book" within minutes, whereas here it was drawn out and out and out.

[daibhid-c.livejournal.com]

I missed that one. Need to reread Valley of Fear...