Sherlock Holmes Version 2.0: Adapting Doyle in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

A decade into the twentieth century, Sherlock Holmes seemed to have entered a kind of semi-retirement. In ‘The Devil’s Foot’, published in The Strand in December 1910, Watson explains that the reason he has provided his readers with so few new case studies over recent years is because of his friend’s ‘aversion to publicity’. It is certainly not, he continues – protesting perhaps a little too much – because of ‘any lack of interesting material’ (‘The Devil’s Foot’, His Last Bow : 153). Instead of a new case, Holmes has suggested that he write about a case which happened in Cornwall some 13 years previously. Even then, Holmes seems to have been a little the worse for wear, and is away from London to recuperate on the advice of his doctor: