The Adventure of the Speckled Band

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle took inspiration from Edgar Allan Poe’s work, and the Sherlock Holmes mysteries have strongly influenced the genre of detective fiction. Doyle once lauded the American writer, asking, “Where was the detective story until Poe breathed the breath of life into it?” (Eschner, Kat. “Without Edgar Allan Poe, We Wouldn’t Have Sherlock Holmes.” Smithsonian Magazine, 20 Apr. 2017).

Elements of crime and mysteries appear in the works of Shakespeare, Voltaire, and earlier writers, but scholars generally agree that Poe’s “Dupin Tales” mark the emergence of a new subgenre of crime and mystery fiction: the detective story. Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin uses the power of deductive reasoning, which he calls “ratiocination,” to unravel mysteries in three short stories, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue“ (1841), “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt” (1843), and “The Purloined Letter“ (1845).

The elements Poe invented, such as the reclusive genius detective, his ‘ordinary’ helper, the impossible crime, the incompetent police force, the armchair detection, the locked room mystery, etc., have become firmly embedded in most mystery novels of today (Marković, Helena and Biliana Oklopčić. “Edgar Allan Poe’s Chevalier Auguste Dupin: The Use of Ratiocination in Fictional Crime Solving.” HUM, July 2016, pp. 91-105).

Many of these elements appear in “The Adventure of the Speckled Band.” Holmes demonstrates both his superhuman intelligence and his eccentric personality during the investigation at Stoke Moran. In his function as narrator, Watson renders the methods of his brilliant friend accessible to readers. In addition, the story belongs to the category of locked room mysteries because the sealed door, windows, and chimney barred any other human from entering Julia Stoner’s room at the time of her murder. In a 1927 interview toward the end of his literary career, “Doyle attributes the creation of Holmes to his scientific training, and to a keen irritation when reading detective stories whose protagonists stumbled on solutions by chance or narrative non sequitur” (Jones, Josh. “Arthur Conan Doyle Discusses Sherlock Holmes and Psychics in a Rare Filmed Interview (1927).” Open Culture, 29 Nov. 2012). Clearly, the focus on rationality in Poe’s stories resonated with Doyle’s methodical, medically trained mind.

While Doyle was not the first writer to pen detective stories, the serialization of the Sherlock Holmes adventures in The Strand Magazine led the genre to explode in popularity. In addition, Doyle added his own innovations to the genre by creating a detective who leaves the safety of his proverbial armchair and leaps into the fray: “Where Dupin’s solutions come through contemplation and rationality alone, Holmes is both an intellectual and a man of action, and Doyle’s stories are stories of adventure as well as detection” (“Detective Fiction.” St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, 6 Oct. 2022).

In “The Adventure of the Speckled Band,” Holmes demonstrates his chops as an action hero when he laughs in the face of the villainous Dr. Roylott and when he beats the venomous snake back through the ventilator with his cane. Over the years, Doyle’s stories have influenced a panoply of fictional detectives, including G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown (The Innocence of Father Brown, 1911), Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot (The Mysterious Affair at Styles, 1920), Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade (The Maltese Falcon, 1929), and Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe (The Big Sleep, 1939).

Dame Agatha Christie, the “Queen of Crime” herself, alluded to Holmes and Watson in most of her novels (Barquin, Alexis. “Influence.” The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia, 24 Feb. 2021). Since Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s death in 1930, the author’s influence and the great detective himself have lived on in countless novels, short stories, television series, films, and plays.