Valley of Fear p. 207-281

          I actually found this part of the book very exciting and suspenseful. I originally thought that it would be a simple murder story, and I loved the many plot twists that Doyle incorporated. At first, Doyle led us to believe that Barker and Mrs. Douglas were cheating on Mr. Douglas and were the culprits of the murder. However, it eventually turned out that they were actually helping Mr. Douglas, who was still alive, which was something that I was not expecting at all. Doyle continued to allow the readers feel the suspense through the dialogue between Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in which Holmes keeps asking Watson’s opinions, in which it seems like Watson is taking the role of the audience in sharing his thoughts on Holmes’ theories. Furthermore, Doyle tried to really make the reveal of the truth dramatic by having all of the detectives wait outside for Barker to fish out the clothes, and the cold weather really amplified this feeling of restlessness and suspense. I loved that after Holmes spent the night in the study room, we were left wondering what he figured out along with the other detectives. While the detectives were mad that Holmes wasn’t sharing any information, it felt like we the audience were in the same position as the detectives and were almost being teased by Holmes’ hiding his information from us. This made it much more suspenseful and made me curious.

          However, though this part contained a lot of suspense, still some of the deductions made seem to be sort of unreasonable and the detectives seem to have great luck that somehow solves everything and almost seems like Doyle is using dues ex machina technique to quickly solve the mystery. For example, though Sherlock Holmes’ claims that having one dumbbell was very strange and must be the solution to the entire mystery, I wondered if that was really a reasonable thought. Yes, having a single dumbbell may be strange, but how was he so sure that it had anything to do with the murder? Furthermore, it seems unrealistic that Holmes just wanted to observe the study room just for the sake of finding the dumbbell—which again, I believe is a far-fetched assumption. And strangely, he actually did find it and solved the entire mystery. He claimed that having a dumbbell missing and water nearby meant that something was being weighed down—I surely felt like that was far-fetched. Also, they were quite lucky that the person to went to kill Mr. Douglas somehow had the same height and figure as him.

         Though the second part of the reading was slower and less suspenseful, it was interesting to see how things played out. I wasn’t really quite sure how the second part tied in with the first, but the character presented in the second part seems to be the past of Mr. Douglas. Though I’m not sure why he has a different last name in the past, everything from the past in Chicago, the joining of a secret society, his encounter with Ettie (who might be the first wife?), and his quarrels with Mr. Balwin (who might be the person who wants to kill him) seems to point to the past of Mr. Douglas that was constantly hinted at in the first part. It seems like Mr. Douglas had a very successful past as a part of the secret society, and I wonder what happened so that he had to live his life hiding (if it is actually Mr. Douglas).