Whee, another update! Since Rook has been up, I’ve been playing an excessive amount of WoW so I could group with him (We gave him a 10-day free trial account since he’s up for the week.) so I haven’t been doing much other on-line stuff. One thing I’ve done off-line is read the entirety of The Science of Sherlock Holmes by E.J. Wagner. I checked it out at the library Wednesday evening and couldn’t tear myself away from it until four in the morning.

It’s pretty much exactly what the title says: the science behind Sherlock Holmes and how he solves mysteries. However this is on the misleading side because the book is less about Holmes himself and more about the advancements in “Medical Jurisprudence” or “Legal Medicine,” now known more generally as “forensic science,” the application of science to decide questions arising from legal proceedings. Through detailed and well-exampled explanations of the advances in fields such as autopsies, police record-keeping, dirt sample analyses and early blood tests as well as numerous other fields, Wagner chronicles the advances and setbacks of medico-legal science using cases such as Jack the Ripper, Lizzie Borden and other famous cases which have deeply affected not only Doyle’s (that’s Sir Doyle, not the one rambling right now) works of fiction but court cases all the way up to modern times. It’s fascinating, and it’s just as fascinating to find out that the character of Holmes may well have contributed to the advancements of modern forensic science. Keen!

It’s a history lesson, science lesson, and literary lesson all rolled up in 213 pages. It even includes a glossary, extensive bibliography, and an index so you can easily go back and find interesting information to share with random people around you. I read out many paragraphs to Ian and Rook because they’re just so fascinating! The only qualm I have with the book is that occasionally the chapters seem to meander and stray a bit, but by the end of the chapter, they’re generally brought back together again so that the whole of the chapter makes sense as it is. That was confusing at first, but I got used to it. Well worth a read, and if you read as fast as I do, it should only take a day or two. For the rest of you, I’d give you a week or so. It reads fast, and it captures enough interest to keep you from putting it down. Anyone interested in science, history, medicine, court cases, or even just Sherlock Holmes (one of my favorite literary characters and hence why I picked the book up in the first place) would probably enjoy this book in one way or another because it covers such a broad range of subjects without getting too technical in any one field so as to lose people whose interests lie elsewhere. Great read. Go get it from your library or go buy it. I’m gonna go read Batman comics now (another character heavily influenced by Holmes and forensic science; go figure).