Revisiting Sherlock Holmes

The other day, when I blogged about what I've been doing with my life for the past 4 years, Aunty Helpful Dictator's mind went straight to Sherlock Holmes. And another evidence about how everything is interconnected, my sister happened to mention Sherlock Holmes in one of our many conversations about a few weeks before that. The thing is, for the past few weeks, I have also been reading Sherlock Holmes and his adventures in solving crimes.

I first got to know the amazing detective (yes, I know he is fictional, but...) at the age of 13 during Literature class (my teacher at that time seemed to be a big fan!) have become a fan myself ever since. At that time, however, our books were abridged versions with a controlled vocabulary of (I can't remember how many) words, which the English Language Department thought was the appropriate number of words any 13 year old should know... (after all, English is only thought as a second language here)

I've always been fascinated by crime solving characters. It started with Enid Blyton's Secret Seven and Famous Five to the Five Find Outers, to Alfred Hitchcock's Three Investi, gators, and Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys and finally followed by the abridged versions of Sherlock Holmes . It reached a point where one of my ambitions included being a private investigator, but was kept aside after a sudden realisation that it could never materialise no thanks to the career advisor at school.

I recently came across a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories (unabridged and with the original illustrations, or so they say), and discovered that they are still as fascinating as ever. I guess crime novels never run out of fashion even when you're spoiled with all the modern technology available in the CSI series. The best part of all is after all these years, I also finally found out how he and Dr. Watson became crime solving buddies.