u/apeel09

One of the most interesting things about Sherlock Holmes is how often he relies on disguises. Holmes appears as clergymen, sailors, booksellers, and even opium addicts — sometimes fooling Watson completely.

But the disguises aren’t just entertaining plot devices. They reflect a deeper Victorian anxiety about identity itself. In Doyle’s London, people could disappear into crowds, reinvent themselves, and hide behind respectability. The Holmes stories are full of characters leading double lives or concealing their true nature.

What makes Holmes fascinating is that he fights deception through deception. He uses masks to uncover truth. And in many ways, he understands something modern readers still recognise: most people perform versions of themselves for the world.

That may be why these stories still feel contemporary. Beneath the fog, disguises, and gaslight, Doyle was writing about a society where appearances could no longer be trusted completely which feels surprisingly familiar today.

A thought occurred to me watching the Basil Rathbone films again. I wonder if, for a lot of the public, that version of Holmes became more real than Doyle’s.

The deerstalker, the pipe, the rapid deductions, the almost military certainty, Nigel Bruce’s loyal but baffled Watson. Even people who have never read the Canon often picture Holmes that way.

What’s interesting is that the films take huge liberties with the stories, especially the later wartime ones. And yet somehow they still feel like Sherlock Holmes.

Maybe accuracy is not really the point. Maybe Rathbone captured something essential about Holmes that audiences immediately recognised, even when the plots had very little to do with Doyle.

Curious what others think. Did the Rathbone films preserve Holmes for modern audiences, or did they permanently replace the Canon version with a different character altogether?

Holmes presents his retirement to Sussex as a personal choice. Bees, quiet countryside, no more London crime. But I sometimes wonder whether the Canon hints at something slightly different.

By the later stories Holmes seems more tired, more withdrawn, and occasionally less sharp than the figure we see in the great adventures of the 1890s. Watson himself comments more than once on Holmes ageing. Cases increasingly come to Holmes rather than Holmes actively pursuing them.

There is also the question of what Holmes actually lives for. Solving problems is not just a profession for him. It is the thing that gives structure to his mind. So the idea that he simply walks away from it all and becomes contented country gentleman and beekeeper has always felt a little too neat to me.

I’m not suggesting Holmes was incapable by any means, but I do wonder whether retirement was less a triumphant decision and more an acknowledgement that he could no longer operate quite as he once did.

Or perhaps Holmes finally solved the one case he never could in London: how to live an ordinary life.

Is The Devil’s Foot Holmes’s most dangerous case?

People usually think of Moriarty or The Final Problem when talking about Holmes in real danger, but I’ve always thought The Devil’s Foot deserves a mention.

This is one of the few stories where Holmes is not just threatened by a criminal, but by the case itself. The poison in The Devil’s Foot is so horrifying that Holmes and Watson nearly die simply by testing it. Holmes knowingly risks both their lives just to understand what happened, which is a level of recklessness even Watson finds alarming.

There’s also something unusually dark about the story. It feels less like a puzzle and more like Holmes stepping into something genuinely sinister and almost supernatural, even though the explanation is ultimately rational.

Unlike Moriarty, this is not a battle of minds. It is immediate physical danger, and Holmes comes frighteningly close to paying for his curiosity.

So I’m curious what others think. Was The Devil’s Foot actually Holmes’s most dangerous case, or would you give that title to another story?