A Case of Identity, by Arthur Conan Doyle, published 1891, later collected in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Illustration by Gaston Simoes da Fonseca, 1909
there's a common characterization that comes with Holmes that he can solve anything instantly and make his deductions without ever seeing the spot a crime or incident occurred. He's depicted as a man with a super intellect with a database for a brain that can compute literally anything under the sun. which. fine. i guess.
A Case of Identity is one of those stories that i think leads to that characterization. The entirety of the case is solved while inside the flat of 221b. All clues and people necessary to the case are delivered or become present in 221b so Holmes and Watson never have to do any ground work. which is also fine! but it's more fine when there's no connotation of this being attached to cold super genius in it's original publication. Holmes is cocky but not toward people that don't deserve it.
anyway, A Case of Identity is a really unique and strong case within the canon in my opinion. i think it's exemplary of showing the breath of Holmes' detective skills. he still does a fair amount of detective work and still gets to do a flashy little show off move at the end. it's a great story and one i do recommend you read yourself.
a short summary
a wealthy young woman named Miss Mary Sutherland comes to Holmes with her problem: her fiance Hosmer Angel has disappeared and basically left her at the altar. she admittedly didn't know much about Hosmer before he asked her to marry him, he was apparently an intensely private person. Hosmer would only send Mary typewritten letters without a signature (Holmes is shown a few of them), would prefer his letters to be addressed to the post office so he could pick them up himself, and would only ever visit when Mary's disapproving and overbearing step father was out of town. Mary is truly in love with this man and she wants to know where he is, even if she can never marry him.
by the time Mary leaves, Holmes starts to have a pretty good idea of who Hosmer Angel was, and maybe you do too after reading that short paragraph.
Holmes sends out his own letter to call someone in, Mary's stepfather, James Windibank. he begins to apologize for his stepdaughter's actions but Holmes interrupts him. Holmes says that just like someone's handwriting, a even a machine like a typewriter has certain quirks that identifies it as belonging to certain people. Holmes can tell that the typewriter that Hosmer used to send his letters is exactly the same that Windibank used to respond to Holmes' summons to 221b. Holmes calls him out on this, and Windibank admits to it since his step daughter's marriage means a loss of income to himself so he came up with a plot to make his daughter devoted to a man that didn't exist and then leave. However, Windibank points out that what he did wasn't technically illegal, so Holmes responds with one of my favorite things he's ever said in canon:
"The law cannot, as you say, touch you,” said Holmes, unlocking and throwing open the door, “yet there never was a man who deserved punishment more. If the young lady has a brother or a friend, he ought to lay a whip across your shoulders. By Jove!” he continued, flushing up at the sight of the bitter sneer upon the man’s face, “it is not part of my duties to my client, but here’s a hunting crop handy, and I think I shall just treat myself to—” He took two swift steps to the whip, but before he could grasp it there was a wild clatter of steps upon the stairs, the heavy hall door banged, and from the window we could see Mr. James Windibank running at the top of his speed down the road.
Illustration in The Inter Ocean (5 september 1891)
unfortunately, Windibank's plot worked and Mary is committed to Hosmer, even if he doesn't exist and Holmes elects not to tell Mary the truth. it would cause Mary more trouble than it's worth to know Windibank did all that, especially since she still trusts her step father. thankfully Windibank is unlikely to try such a thing ever again now that Holmes knows about him.
the analysis
i think Holmes should threaten to hit people more. end of analysis.
but actually i really like this story, it's yet another incident of "no crime committed" (hm i should probably do a review of a canon story soon where a crime actually happens...), but it's so borderline to that that it's easy to ignore that. i think it's an exemplary story in displaying Holmes' compassion that he threatened to beat a man and where not telling his client the truth is probably the better option. as i stated in the intro, a lot of stories would make Holmes smug and cold and not do any of that.
the hinge point of the clue relies on the typewriter of Windibank used to masquerade his letters to Mary. a lot of the clues point to Hosmer just being a character, with no identifiable clues to his identity. the typewriter is the only thing that has any "personality" that Holmes can analyze himself.
Illustration by Gaston Simoes da Fonseca, 1909
digital typing has effectively removed this typewriter clue from ever existing in the modern day, but it does make me think about the voice i write with in my own text that would make even anonymous letters from myself be able to be tracked to me. if i were being casual about it, i think it's obvious that i hate capital letters, i like to use very specific/explicit words, i use periods as if trying to translate speaking pauses, etc. very... homestuck typing quirks i think.
but also in the age of AI writing, how can a digital "voice" become identifiable? most people my age have been on the internet since the advent of web 2.0, if not the tail end of web 1.0, and that has come with a lot of passive absorption of language that exist in semi-permanent sections of the internet that can be referenced later (forums, user created webpages). internet sub-communities all have their own dialect, much like the places people live and the the groups of friends they have inform the language that they use. how easy would it be able to identify the places i have physically lived in, internet eras i've lived through, the people i've been connected with, just by the way i type on the internet? will cohost develop a similar kind of sub-community dialect?
something very interesting to ponder, i think.
adaptions, aka i finally have a story where i can talk about the puppet show
i have been dying to talk about this fucking puppet show but i haven't been able to watch any episodes myself because the one place i can watch it without purchasing a japanese DVD is on a geo-locked website and it's driving me mad. i don't know if you know this about me, but i fucking love puppets and dolls so this show is so enchanting to me, even if everything about the design is so weird.
anyway, this puppet show is called Sherlock Holmes or Puppet Entertainment Sherlock Holmes, it's a 2014 TV series written by Kōki Mitani and produced and broadcasted by NHK.
i believe this is supposed to be the cover of the episode guidebook, and it shows the most amount of puppets from the show.
the puppet for Holmes in Puppet Entertainment Sherlock Holmes.
here's a video showing some of the behind the scenes work on the show so you can at least see how some of the puppets work in motion and how they've built the sets. i think it's so interesting and inspiring. one of my projects for this year was to try to make some puppets (unrelated to knowing about this show, i've known about the puppet show since like 2019), but i'm currently working on some commission work so i haven't been able to make them. once it's done though, it's puppet time.
in the show, Holmes and Watson are students at a fictional London boarding school called Beeton School. there are no murders and a lot of original characters, but the stories are loose adaptations or reinterpretations of the stories to fit the stories. this show adapted A Case of Identity where most of the story is kept the same, save for Windibank being Mary's childhood friend, and Mary has the truth revealed to her leaving her heartbroken.
oh i guess BBC Sherlock also does a thing with this case in the Empty Hearse where Holmes gets Molly to help him out with cases for a bit but i can't remember and i don't like considering the show for longer than i have to.