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| Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong: Reopening the Case of the Hound of the Baskervilles | 
 enlarge | Author: Pierre Bayard
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Category: Book
List Price: $20.00
Buy New: $9.45
You Save: $10.55 (53%)
New (34) Used (9) from $6.62
Avg. Customer Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 87484
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 208
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5 x 0.8
ISBN: 1596916052
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.912
EAN: 9781596916050
ASIN: 1596916052
Publication Date: October 28, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
A playfully brilliant re-creation of one of the most-loved detective stories of all time; the companion book no Holmes fan should be without. Eliminate the impossible, Holmes said, and whatever is left must be the solution. But as Pierre Bayard finds in this dazzling reinvestigation of The Hound of the Baskervilles, sometimes the master missed his mark. Using the last thoughts of the murder victim as his key, Bayard unravels the case, leading the reader to the astonishing conclusion that Holmes – and, in fact, Arthur Conan Doyle – got things all wrong: The killer is not at all who they said it was. Part intellectual entertainment, part love letter to crime novels, and part crime novel in itself, Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong turns one of our most beloved stories delightfully on its head. Examining the many facets of the case and illuminating the bizarre interstices between Doyle’s fiction and the real world, Bayard demonstrates a whole new way of reading mysteries: a kind of “detective criticism” that allows readers to outsmart not only the criminals in the stories we love, but also the heroes — and sometimes even the writers.
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| Customer Reviews:
Not your mother's literary criticism... January 5, 2009
"The main premise of detective criticism is this: many of the murders narrated in literature were not committed by the people accused by the text. In literature, as in life, the true criminals often elude the investigators and allow secondary characters to be accused and condemned. In its passion for justice, detective criticism commits itself to rediscovering the truth. If it is unable to arrest the guilty parties, it can at least clear the names of the innocent."
This is literary criticism like you've never read it. When I picked up this book, I thought it was a fan fiction approach to Sherlock Holmes. What I ended up reading was an entertaining, thought-provoking and convincing argument that Sherlock Holmes did not solve The Case of the Hound of the Baskervilles.
Summary:
Written in a casual, easy-to-read style, Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong is broken into 3 short sections. In the first, Bayard points out Holmes's mistakes and builds a case for Stapleton's innocence (Holmes concludes that Stapleton is guilty at the end of The Hound of the Baskervilles).
After convincing the reader that Stapleton is innocent, Bayard takes a detour for the second section into the history surrounding Arthur Conan Doyle and his character Sherlock Homes. He also talks about how literary characters pass in and out of the real world and argues that they can take on a form of autonomy and commit crimes which even the author doesn't know about. (It sounds a little kooky, I know, but it makes sense when you read it.)
In the third section, Bayard turns back to the case at hand and points a finger at the "real" murderer.
Review:
I started this book and couldn't put it down. There were some typos (it was translated out of the original French) and shameless self-promotion by the author, which bothered me, and the detour in the second section was slightly longer than I would have wished, but those are the sole objections I can make to this book. Part literary deconstruction, part imagination, and part pure genius, this book must be read by anyone who takes the slightest interest in criticism--you will never look at any book the same.
Besides, if you don't read it, you'll never know what really happened in The Hound of the Baskervilles; I'm certainly not going to tell you!
 Through the looking glass January 4, 2009
I thought that this was a lot of fun. According to this book, which adds no new facts or evidence to the original The Hound of the Baskervilles, that stupid limey bastard got the wrong murderer, the wrong murder, the wrong Hound of the Baskervilles, and even unknowingly contributed to the real murder and the escape of the real murderer. It was written in French by a Frenchman and some of the translation of the original into French and then back into God's language weakens some of the argument but not substantially so. Being written by a Frenchman, of course, the book is haughty and pretentious but even that fits right into this in-depth analysis of those shocking events, so clouded as they are by fog and mystery. There is even a good deal of psychological, parapsychological,and even metaphysical examination of the reality of literary characters. We're through the looking glass here, people.
Apparently the author has done something similar with Agatha Christie's The Murder of Rodger Ackroyd, a Hercule Poirot mystery, but that has yet to be translated into English.
A gem December 3, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
If you are interested in semiotics, freudian analysis, and sherlock holmes (and I am sure most of you are) then this book is a brilliant find. In its frugal, non-franco-typical 188 pages, the author covers a very broad range of topics from contemporary lit-crit to cognitive psychology, while demonstrating a delightful command off Holmes and Holmes critical impedimentia.
There are two central ideas. First, Bayard explores the relationship between literary characters and reality, which leads to a quick detour through our collective subconscious. Second, there is a meditation on positivism and pseudoscience, with a shout-out to freudian contributions to the scientific method. These two ideas are dialectically synthesized into the conclusion that Holmes' methods are fundamentally flawed and lead to a flawed outcome in the Hound of the Baskervilles, which quite simply Sherlock fouls up to a fair-the-well.
Bayard, with a better understanding of the cognitive processes of real and fictional characters (Conan Doyle and Holmes, specifically) is able to utilize Holmes' techniques of close observation and deduction to discover the true culprit in the tale, which I won't spoil by revealing. His "solution" is analytically compelling and represents a coup de main for the new criticism ideas of close textual reading and multiple interpretations of texts. In fact, he makes those highly academic ideas quite fun while letting that poor doggy off the hook.
He May Have a Point November 9, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
A glowing beast stocks what is supposed to be the last of the rich and influential Baskerville family. At least two men seem to have been killed on the cold and desolate English moor by the bloody hound. All hopes for the future of the young Baskerville rest on the cunning of the world's most famous detective, Sherlock Holmes. But did he get his conclusion all wrong? Did the real murderer go free?
According to French literature professor, Pierre Bayard, not only did Holmes make numerous mistakes, Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock's creator) hated the character so much that by the time he wrote The Hound of the Baskervilles he couldn't see who the real murderer was either.
Bayard follows the story from the outcry that arose around the world when Conan Doyle killed Holmes in The Final Problem. The intensity of the opposition to Holmes' death proved to be more than Conan Doyle could handle. He grudgingly continued writing the stories despite his desire to move to other stories.
Bayard's supposition, that evidence in the Baskerville case was overlooked and that Holmes repeatedly saw what he wanted to rather than what existed on the page, is intriguing and makes for an interesting and short read. The book opened up an entire world of literary theory that argues that characters in books can be as real as live human beings because of the impact they have on the everyday life.
Humm... I'll have to think about that. The consequences are alarming, but then, so is reality.
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Another but deadlier "Irene Adler" tricked Sherlock Holmes November 1, 2008
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
Reading this book made me scramble back to my old copy of Sherlock Holmes mysteries. One particularly disturbing aspect of this stunning new analysis suggests Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had a vendetta not only against his creation...but also Sherlock Holmes fanatics. It warns the reader of an unorthodox way of understanding the complex interaction between fiction and reality. The cruel irony of realizing we as readers can be tricked into believing one conclusion when the real one is in plain view should be lost on no one. This book may end up becoming a classic in literary criticism.
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