The Cost of a Method

As Sherlockians, we are expected to be many things. Mystery lovers in the eyes of some. Well-read literary sorts in the eyes of others. Sherlockian articles tend to cite everyone from Stout to Shakespeare, from the obscure to the obtuse. As long as the word is a written one, it will get cited with a certain pride of reference, no matter how unreliable the source. So it is that I find myself sheepishly admitting the source of inspiration for this month's column -- video.

Yes, I watched a movie this week when I could have been reading a book. And it didn't have gaslamps, deerstalkers, or any such stuff in it either. It was an early effort by Michael Mann, the guy who created Miami Vice. But as I watched it, I realized that, despite all the stylized Miami Vice trappings, the basic story was as close to a pastiche of Holmes as I've seen in a long time. No Victorian froo-frah, just one exceptional investigator going through his paces, just like Holmes.

How much like Holmes, I didn't fully realize until days afterward.

The movie is called Manhunter, and the basic story is that of an FBI investigator who specializes in serial killers. A typical enough plot, that, but the atypical part is the way he investigates the crimes. The investigator has research and lab people backing him up that are so efficient in their analysis of minutiae that even Holmes would have to admire their skill. The investigator's own speciality is just as Holmesian: he puts himself in the place of the criminal he's after.

"You know my methods in such cases, Watson: I put myself in the man's place, and having first gauged his intelligence, I try to imagine how I should myself have proceeded under the same circumstances."

Holmes explains the basic idea in MUSG, but we can be certain he used it many'other times without mentioning it. Every time he searched the scene of a crime, trying to reconstruct the criminal's movements, we can be sure his mind was full of questions like "Why did he stand by the fireplace so long?" "Why did he go through this cabinet?" In finding the answers, Holmes had to think as the criminal thought. He had to put himself in a frame of mind sympathetic enough to that of his quarry that he could identify the man's inner drives, his wants and his reasons.

The investigator in Manhunter does just that, but he has a small problem: after dealing with the criminal mind, he has trouble getting his own mind back after the investigation. After dealing with his own personal Moriarty, his mind is left so twisted that he has to be institutionalized for a time, just to get his own thoughts back.

This makes one wonder if Sherlock Holmes ever had such a reaction to his own method. Much as we like to think of Holmes as a superman, he had foibles as human as anvone else. And he himself had a Moriarty to deal with.

"All that I have to say has already crossed your mind," Moriarty said to Holmes when they finally met, and you can be sure it had. After months on Moriarty's trail, Holmes had almost certainly aligned his thoughts to those of his adversary. Trying to reason as Moriarty would, trying to deduce where the Napoleon of crime would strike next, Holmes's own genius for crime and manipulation probably helped him slide into the Moriarty mold all too teasily. But how easy would it be for him to get out?

Holmes didn't immediately return to Baker Street and his old life after defeating Moriarty. His three-year absence from London following the Moriarty matter has never truly had a satisfactory explanation. There are even those Sherlockian commentators who have observed as well that Holmes was never quite the same when he came back. He had a bit more of a dark side to him. He broke the law with greater frequency. Could it be that the mindset of Professor Moriarty had never totally left him, even after three years of trying to deal with it?

Being Sherlock Holmes was never easy, even for Sherlock Holmes. And sometimes, it was even harder for him.

(Printed in Plugs & Dottles, March 1990 )