The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes by Anthology

Author:Anthology [Anthology]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-07-07T04:00:00+00:00

Detective: SHAMROCK JOLNES

Narrator: WHATSUP

THE ADVENTURES OF

SHAMROCK JOLNES

by O. HENRY

O. Henry wrote two waggish parodies of Sherlock, Holmes—“The Sleuths” and “The Adventures of Shamrock Jolnes” both to be found in SIXES AND SEVENS (Garden City, Doubleday, Page, 1911). The great Shamrock appeared briefly in a third story, “The Detective Detector,” in WAIFS AND STRAYS (Garden City, Doubleday, Page, 1927), but this tale was a parody of The Master Criminal rather than of The Master Detective.

Your Editors have chosen “The Adventures of Shamrock Jolnes” because it presents Shamrock at his deductive best. In “The Sleuths” Jolnes shares the spotlight with—worse, actually yields it to—another detective named Juggins; and in “The Detective Detector” Jolnes plays second fiddle to a one-man Murder, Inc. named Avery Knight. Since this anthology is dedicated to the One and Only, with rivalry of any sort firmly excommunicated, we cannot permit so nondescript a pair of interlopers as Juggins and Knight to trespass upon the sacred precincts.

O. Henry’s invention of the name Shamrock is surely an appealing conceit. The more you think of it, the more it grows on you. But delicious as it is, it does not represent the author s major effort in the field of parody names. O. Henry wrote two other detective-story burlesques, caricaturing the famous Vidocq. They are included in ROLLING STONES (Garden City, Doubleday, Page, 1912) and the parody name for Vidocq is positively inspired. It is le nora juste, the paragon of paronomasia, the ne plus ultra of neology—in a word, Tictocq.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.