Raymond Farney

Book Review: The Sherlock Holmes Journal, Winter of 2018, By Rodger Johnson. A Study in Sherlock: Watson’s Notebook by Raymond G Farney. Outskirts Press, 2018. 716pp. £36.95 (hbk) Like Martin Dakin’s Sherlock Holmes Commentary, Mr Farney’s book looks separately at each story in the Canon, but his approach is different. Here is the information a researcher would need on pretty much any aspect of each case, mostly via extracts long and short. The general pattern, after Publication & Dates, is: Story Introduction, Date, Duration, Crime, Client, Victim, Crime Scene, Criminals, Punishment, Official Police, Characters, Others Mentioned, Locations, Locations Mentioned, Evidence & Clues, Motive, Timeline, Story Conclusion, Weather, Payment, Quotes, Questions, and Notes. It’s all carried out with great care and remarkable thoroughness (though a couple of names are misspelt), and will certainly prove useful to Holmes scholars.