Detective’s Sites Real Page Turners

Sherlock Holmes is listed as No. 7 on the “Interests” list of Michael Sherman’s home page. Sherman, who is a computer science and physics student at Carnegie Mellon University, puts his religion (Christianity) at the top of his list and his favorite car (Porsche) as No. 2.

Even though Holmes is relatively low on the list, Sherman’s Web page dedicated to the most famous detective in literature is amazingly comprehensive. Not only does it include information about Holmes and his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but it also provides links to 48 of Doyle’s stories that feature the detective.

Click on one of those story links and you get not just a description of the story or summary of the plot--you get the full text. All of these stories by Doyle, an optician whose first Holmes tale was published in 1887, are old enough to have become public domain.

His last 12 Holmes stories, published after 1919, are still protected by copyright (in effect in the U.S. for 75 years after first publication), but you can be sure that as soon as they age enough to be free of legal constraints, they too will be posted online.

Sherman is only one of many Sherlock Holmes fanatics . . . er, fans . . . who have taken to the Web to create tributes to their hero. If you, too, love the brilliant, super-observant Holmes and his somewhat blundering sidekick, Dr. John H. Watson, you can plan on spending many hours on the Web.

In addition to the stories, Sherman’s site, at https://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/andrew.cmu.edu/usr18/mset/www/holmes, includes a selection of pictures that illustrate Holmes books and screen shots from some of the television and film adaptations. Best of all, the site sports a search engine that will find mentions of any word in any of the 48 online stories.

The most extensive Holmes site I spotted is by Canadian author Chris Redmond, whose books include “A Sherlock Holmes Handbook.” His site, at https://watserv1.uwaterloo.ca/~credmond/sh.html, includes links to the online stories, in English and also those that have been translated into French.

Redmond’s biography of Holmes’ creator is also more extensive. Doyle (1859-1930) wrote more than 50 books, many of which neither starred Holmes nor were even mysteries. He also penned science fiction, military histories, seafaring adventures and even domestic comedies, Redmond notes.

Tiring of his most famous creation, Doyle killed off Holmes in “The Final Problem,” published in 1893. But the public outcry for more of the detective stories caused the author to revive Holmes in 1901.

The Redmond site includes extensive links to other Holmes home pages, and just about anything else online that has anything to do with the fictional character, including actors who played him, such as Basil Rathbone and, more recently, Jeremy Brett. There are also links to libraries and to the many Holmes fan clubs worldwide.

One of the most interesting links for Holmes die-hards is to a page by Leslie Klinger (https://pw2.netcom.com/~lklinger/chrotabl.htm) that sets out timelines to highlight events in the lives of Holmes, Watson and Doyle, as well as historical events.

For example, in the year 1881, Holmes and Watson meet, Doyle signs on as a ship’s doctor heading for West Africa, Benjamin Disraeli dies and Pablo Picasso is born.

As you can see, the timeline is a mixture of fact and fiction whose relationship is far from, as Holmes would say, “elementary.”

* Cyburbia’s e-mail address is david.colker@latimes.com.