The Adventure of the Empty House

The Adventure of the Empty House | Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir

#NoPlaceLikeHolmes @Cuilin
#TheEmptyHouse

Thoughts, Sherlockians?

Daisey, erzascarletbookgasm, CogsOfEncouragement, AnneCecilie, Born.A.Reader, Aimeesue, Larkken, Librarybelle, mom2bugnbee, Read4life, StayCurious, Sace, CatLass007, Mollyanna, curiouserandcurioser, eeclayton, dabbe, IndoorDame, kelli7990, TheAromaofBooks, 5feet.of.fury, Tineke, Blackink_WhitePaper, RayHallucinogen, Pageturner1, PageShifter, AllDebooks, AnnR, kimrenee, aroyse, CrystalE02

Pageturner1 Maybe to do with him having not fully fulfilled his life with joy and the only pleasure he gets are his cases???? 2mo

IndoorDame He talks about wanting to see Watson sitting in his old chair in their old house twice, he‘s clearly been lonely on his travels. Maybe Doyle is implying he missed Sherlock and his readers and wants to put everything back the way it was before? 2mo

dabbe I\'m thinking that his wife Mary has died and rather recently. It\'s been 3 years since Holmes \“died\“, so I don\'t think that\'s the reason for his \“own sad bereavement.\“ 2mo

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CogsOfEncouragement Thank you for pointing this out. I hadn\'t taken the time to consider this. Yes, Watson not only had lost SH, he has recently lost Mary. We don\'t know how or why - we are free to imagine that she died in childbirth and the baby was lost as well. Watson has been left in an empty house. Another reason he would be so quick to forgive SH for only telling Mycroft his secret. SH\'s return puts an end to some part of his immense grief & loneliness. 2mo

dabbe @CogsOfEncouragement Excellent point re: the \“empty\“ house. I don\'t know why, but I find it so sad that Mary\'s death is only mentioned so briefly when she was the client in THE SIGN OF FOUR. I like to think that Watson was so grieved that he could only scarcely mention it and leave it to us to understand why. 2mo

CogsOfEncouragement I like that way of thinking too. They were a great couple. Also, it could be implied that there had been an obituary, which would have obviously been how SH knew of it. Watson\'s readers would have read the obit too. They already knew. 2mo

Bookwomble Or, perhaps, Holmes wanted the old team back together without Mary as the spare wheel and... 🤨💭💀🔨🪦🧐 2mo

dabbe @Bookwomble Or the public? They wanted the bros back in 221-B Baker St. sipping their morning tea in front of a roaring fire. 🤩 2mo

Librarybelle I too thought it was an allusion to Mary‘s death, @dabbe . I like your thoughts, @CogsOfEncouragement …I had not gone that far in my thinking, but I think you raise a good point. 2mo

40 likes9 comments

dabbe

The Adventure of the Empty House | Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir

#NoPlaceLikeHolmes @Cuilin
#TheEmptyHouse

Thoughts, Sherlockians?

IndoorDame I love how he really is the prototype for the genre. Right after I read this story I happened to watch an episode White Collar where they stake out an apartment where their mark has set up a silver vase on top of a Roomba so the shadows would shift and it would look like someone was moving around inside. 2mo

eeclayton I thought of the scene in Home Alone where Kevin uses all kinds of dummies to fool the burglars 😁 2mo

dabbe @IndoorDame Holmes is ahead of his time, isn\'t he? With the fingerprinting, wax heads, knowing everything about tar and ash and footprints ... 2mo

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dabbe @eeclayton What a great tie-in! Someone on that movie had to have known about this story, right? 2mo

CogsOfEncouragement @IndoorDame @eeclayton I love it! 2mo

Librarybelle Definitely Holmes is ahead of his time and super clever. I can just see the readers gasping over the dummy and talking about it until the next story appeared. And great thought, @eeclayton ! 2mo

39 likes6 comments

dabbe

The Adventure of the Empty House | Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir

#NoPlaceLikeHolmes @Cuilin
#TheEmptyHouse

Thoughts, Sherlockians?

IndoorDame There are really lots of little mysteries to solve in this story. There are good clues that invite you to play along with the questions surrounding Sherlock‘s disappearance, reappearance, and attempted murder. But the way it‘s written is misleading in that it really invites you to completely forget about the framing mystery with Ronald Adair. 2mo

dabbe @IndoorDame Exactly. So much time is spent on setting up that mystery as a locked-room one, but it wasn\'t at all. It was just an expert-shot-through-the-window by Moran. 2mo

CogsOfEncouragement The only thing I thought maybe I could have picked up on was when Watson notices two men obviously keeping lookout on the street, that those were policemen, not bad guys. IDK, should I have realized that?

@IndoorDame I read this in two sittings, and I thought that was why I totally forgot about Adair lol but like you said it was written that way. 2mo

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Librarybelle Other than figuring the older man Watson bumps into has to be Holmes in disguise, I did not pick up on any clues. I‘m terrible at that! 2mo

dabbe @Librarybelle Lordy, so am I! I just like to follow along and read; I don\'t really even try to solve the mystery--that goes for all of them, Nancy Drew included, of course! 🤩 2mo

Librarybelle @dabbe I‘m always surprised when I guess things! 😂 2mo

dabbe @Librarybelle #dittogirlfriend! 🧡🤎💛 2mo

34 likes7 comments

dabbe

The Adventure of the Empty House | Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir

#NoPlaceLikeHolmes @Cuilin
#TheEmptyHouse

Thoughts, Sherlockians?

Saknicole 100% Watson forgives so fast. I remember when I first read that reunion scene when I was in high school. So little is said, but it gave me so many feels. I suppose if your BFF fakes his death, the only right way to resolve it is by pretending to be an old man and following you around for a while before the reveal. 2mo

IndoorDame It‘s a really extreme version of their usual dynamic. Watson is definitely too fast to forgive, but I think he always goes with the flow because he‘s dying to hear how Holmes figured it out, or in this case pulled it off. 2mo

dabbe @Saknicole 🎯😂🤩 2mo

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dabbe @IndoorDame His curiosity trumps his hurt feelings. In the Jeremy Brett tv version, Watson does get a little pissed off at first but then relents. 2mo

CogsOfEncouragement @Saknicole @INdoorDame I agree. I was not surprised to read that Watson (after the shock) was only happy to have SH back in his life. W already respected SH so much that I felt he would honor his reasoning for doing so. If SH said he had to do it this way, then it had to be done this way. 2mo

Bookwomble Avoiding Moriarty\'s henchmen was certainly a part of Holmes\'s motive for disappearing for a while, but then the Great Hiatus was surely also a response to his governments call to patriotic duty, as Holmes advanced the Empire\'s cause in many of the hotspots of Imperial intrigue and international commercial competition. \“The name\'s Sigerson...\“ (edited) 2mo

Aimeesue @IndoorDame I agree. And I don‘t think Watson has TIME to be upset - he‘s whisked off on another adventure as soon as Sherlock reappears. 2mo

Librarybelle Agreed, @Aimeesue …Watson is immediately whisked away into the next adventure, and so there‘s not a lot of time to dwell on hurt feelings. 2mo

33 likes8 comments

dabbe

The Adventure of the Empty House | Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir

#NoPlaceLikeHolmes @Cuilin
#TheEmptyHouse

Our boy is back! 🤩 Thoughts, Sherlockians?

eeclayton I enjoyed it. I kind of expected it to be more about the initial case, but it was neat how the two cases were connected. 2mo

IndoorDame I liked it a lot, and I think I would‘ve found it incredibly satisfying as a reader at the time. The wax dummy was pretty creepy, and then when it got shot 😬 But I like the slightly campy action-Sherlock scaling a cliff, and the super sweet Mycroft helping him fake his own death. 2mo

dabbe @eeclayton The initial case certainly grabs your attention, doesn\'t it? And then to segue to Sherlock ... pretty suspenseful all around. 2mo

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dabbe @IndoorDame The only thing that puzzles me, though, is I thought the room at Baker St. was set on fire from Moriarty\'s goons in \“The Final Problem.\“ How could it then have been kept in pristine condition by Mycroft? I\'ll have to go back and see. 2mo

CogsOfEncouragement Poor Mrs. Hudson!!!! I always knew she was underappreciated but this is too much! Much obliged for your assistance?! I would think so. When he said he had rigged it up for her to turn I had imagined something much safer. In one of the retellings I\'ve watched I think they gave her some other background, like a highly trained retired spy or something. This sort of thing would be why I\'m sure. 2mo

dabbe @CogsOfEncouragement Yeah, he scares her half to death upon his return, then asks her to crawl around on her hands and knees every 15 minutes to turn the wax head. She is a trooper! 2mo

kelli7990 I liked this story. 2mo

dabbe @kelli7990 🧡🤎💛

2mo

Aimeesue This was a good one! 2mo

dabbe @Aimeesue 🎯! 2mo

Librarybelle This was a great one, and like @IndoorDame I can imagine the readers of the time satisfied with the story and with the return of Holmes. 2mo

35 likes11 comments

dabbe

The Adventure of the Empty House | Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir

#FirstLineFridays @ShyBookOwl
#TheEmptyHouse (from THE RETURN OF SHERLOCK HOLMES)

“It was in the spring of the year 1894 that all London was interested, and the fashionable world dismayed, by the murder of the Honourable Ronald Adair under most unusual and inexplicable circumstances.“

Suet624 Great first line! And so it begins.... 2mo

dabbe @Suet624 🧡🤎💛 2mo

49 likes2 comments

Read4life

The Adventure of the Empty House | Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir

Ready for Saturday‘s #NoPlaceLikeHolmes discussion.

Cuilin, TheSpineView, CBee, dabbe, PuddleJumper

dabbe Quite a comeback, huh? 🧡🤎💛 2mo

TheSpineView Awesome! 2mo

45 likes2 comments

LitsyEvents

The Adventure of the Empty House | Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir

Via @dabbe
#NoPlaceLikeHolmes @Cuilin @LitsyEvents
#TheEmptyHouse
Hi, Sherlockians~
Sorry I'm a bit late with this. Next up: “TAO (The Adventure of) The Empty House“, the first story in THE RETURN OF SH (where SH comes back from the dead!) The link for more information re: the story is below (with a summary--spoiler alert!).
Next discussion will be THIS Saturday on 9/28 and will be led by @dabbe. Have a good week!
Link: https://shorturl.at/U9W6m

dabbe Thanks! 🖤🩶🖤 2mo

29 likes1 comment

dabbe

The Adventure of the Empty House | Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir

#NoPlaceLikeHolmes @Cuilin @LitsyEvents
#TheEmptyHouse

Hi, Sherlockians~
Sorry I'm a bit late with this. Next up: “TAO (The Adventure of) The Empty House“, the first story in THE RETURN OF SH (where SH comes back from the dead!) The link for more information re: the story is below (with a summary--spoiler alert!). Next discussion will be THIS Saturday on 9/28 and will be led by @dabbe. Have a good week! 🤩
Link: https://shorturl.at/U9W6m

Librarybelle Thank you! 2mo

AnnCrystal Love that Doyle revived his Sherlock Holmes 🔍🧐📚💝.

Thanks for the tag... unfortunately I must now bail out of this buddy read. Don\'t have all of Doyle\'s works at this time.

📚 Thank you 😉👍💝. 2mo

dabbe @AnnCrystal I\'ll take you off the list. 🧡🍁🧡 2mo

AnnCrystal Thanks @dabbe 😎👍💝. 2mo

52 likes4 comments

Ke633

The Adventure of the Empty House | Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir

Love these kinds of coffee table books. It has evidence envelopes with newspapers, maps, letters, and drawings. Fun to look at all of the evidence while rereading some of my favorite Sherlock books #SherlockHolmes

41 likes

mom2bugnbee

The Adventure of the Empty House | Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir

Working my way through Sherlock Holmes!

(Should mention that I'm in central time, so I'll be an hour behind you east coasters!)

#readinthenewyear #currentlyreading @hermyknee

hermyknee I‘m central time, too! I picked EST for the challenge in case I‘m too sleepy to stay up til midnight 😂😂😂 😳 6y

mom2bugnbee @hermyknee 😂 I'm a nightowl, but I know that hubby won't make it until midnight! 6y

readinginthedark I've been working my way through Holmes on audio! There are so many! 😆❤ 6y

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mom2bugnbee @readinginthedark There really are! What narrators have you listened to & particularly liked? 6y

readinginthedark I'm listening to them all narrated by Simon Vance. He's really well-suited to a narrative like this, I think. I might listen to some different versions in the future. Are you reading them all on Serial? 6y

mom2bugnbee @readinginthedark I have a print collection, but it isn't exhaustive, so I use Serial also. I'll have to check out Mr. Vance! Thx! 6y

33 likes6 comments

Eki

The Adventure of the Empty House | Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir

pick

Not much of a case, but I guess if Sherlock Holmes returns you have to explain how he managed to do so. #Sherlocked

17 likes

InLibrisVeritas

The Adventure of the Empty House | Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir

so-so

I am so glad to be back into the Sherlock stories! While the mystery of this one was kind of glossed over I did enjoy seeing what happened after the last time we saw Sherlock.

On to the next! #sherlocked

42 likes

CSeydel

The Adventure of the Empty House | Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir

Sherlock gives a compliment 😂😂😂
#sherlocked

tjwill He isn‘t the best at it. 😆 6y

63 likes1 comment

jpmcwisemorgan

The Adventure of the Empty House | Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir

pick

Sometimes I‘m saddened by Holmes not thinking he‘d be missed by someone who was his close friend and confidant. But, he is back (Watson took it well, I think).

#Sherlocked

GlassAsDiamonds Agree - Watson is such a lovely character, he‘s just so nice 😊 (but Holmes is frightfully clueless at the start of this, uncharacteristically so I think). 6y

jpmcwisemorgan @GlassAsDiamonds I think Sherlock is an interesting mix of aware and unaware - he knows people can‘t figure out things like him and he knows that other people feel things differently but he doesn‘t always KNOW. He‘s that person who would forget to eat because he‘s so into some project and he‘d probably forget that you need to eat too. He‘s not absent-minded, just incredibly focused and maybe a bit single-minded. 6y

JazzFeathers @jpmcwisemorgan Really like that description of Holmes. I've only just started to read his story last year and l was surprise how different he is from how l expected him to be, you know, based on the film adaptations. He's a more complex character. 6y

jpmcwisemorgan @JazzFeathers Yes, he is different than the current BBC version and the RDJ movies. I think earlier depictions might have been a little closer. There are some other discussions under the #Sherlocked tag you might find interesting. I think Sherlock is one of those characters everyone sees a little differently. 6y

Daisey @jpmcwisemorgan I agree with your description above too, and I also think in many ways the original is more complex and more compassionate than most of the adaptations I‘ve seen (all newer). @JazzFeathers 6y

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Mdargusch

The Adventure of the Empty House | Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir

My reading crew this morning as I read my serial installment for the #sherlocked readalong 🐱🐶

Daisey, tjwill

ladym30 Adorable! 6y

AlaMich It looks like they take up all the prime real estate on the couch! 😂 6y

tjwill Perfect! 6y

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Daisey Looks fantastic! 6y

Slajaunie Looks similar to my crew who have abandoned me this afternoon! 6y

Reviewsbylola You‘re missing one. 6y

Mdargusch She was on my other side @Reviewsbylola don‘t you worry 6y

Cathythoughts You have a full house 👍🏻💕 6y

112 likes8 comments

InLibrisVeritas

The Adventure of the Empty House | Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir

1. I think I have read them all up to this point except for Hounds of Baskerville
2. #serialreader
3. I love the BBC show, but I also enjoy a game called Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishment

#sherlocked

Daisey I had forgotten about that, but I did read Hound of the Baskervilles separately this spring. 6y

InLibrisVeritas @Daisey I'll have to carve out some time for it in the next year or so. It's one that I have really wanted to read for a while now. 6y

JazzFeathers @InLibrisVeritas @Daisey l've never read The Hound of the Baskerville, though l've meant to for a long time. Really need to find space for that. So many people think it's Sherlock's best. 6y

41 likes3 comments

InLibrisVeritas

The Adventure of the Empty House | Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir

I have missed #serialreader and the readalongs I used to so on there, so I joined back up with the #sherlocked group to get some more Holmes stories in!

Daisey So glad you‘re joining us! 6y

tjwill Yay! I‘m glad you are! 6y

42 likes2 comments

jpmcwisemorgan

The Adventure of the Empty House | Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir

#LitsyPSA: Tomorrow a new #Sherlocked read-along starts. You can find the stories in the @SerialReader app. Be there, or be guilty of something that only Sherlock can figure out. Or something. Is that how this works? 🤷‍♀️

🕵🏻‍♀️🕵🏻‍♀️🕵🏻‍♀️🕵🏻‍♀️🕵🏻‍♀️🕵🏻‍♀️🕵🏻‍♀️🕵🏻‍♀️🕵🏻‍♀️🕵🏻‍♀️🕵🏻‍♀️🕵🏻‍♀️🕵🏻‍♀️🕵🏻‍♀️

DivaDiane Cool! I‘ll join in! 6y

mom2bugnbee Awesome! Me, too! Are we reading one installment a day? Or is it short enough to read it in one day? 6y

jpmcwisemorgan @mom2bugnbee Check our @Daisey & @tjwill because I think they have the full schedule posted. It looks like one installment a day but most of the stories are only a couple of installments so they could be read in one day. 6y

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jpmcwisemorgan @DivaDiane Excellent! I think @Daisey and @tjwill will have discussion posts too. 6y

tjwill @jpmcwisemorgan I‘m so glad you are reading with us! It wouldn‘t be the same without you! 6y

tjwill @DivaDiane @mom2bugnbee Welcome! They are short, but Serial Reader still splits them up into more manageable pieces. (edited) 6y

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Ke633

The Adventure of the Empty House | Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir

Sherlock Holmes faking his death for 3 years is a pretty good #hoax #quotsyapril18 @TK-421 #sherlockian #sherlock #illustration

Richryan52 @Ke633 how big a Holmes fan are you? 7y

Ke633 Lol! @Richryan52 I do love Sherlock Holmes.. 😂😂 but I‘ve probably only read the whole collection all the way through twice. 7y

Richryan52 I write Sherlock Holmes pastiches 7y

Ke633 That‘s nice. I‘ve read some but not yours. I‘ll have to check it out. Thanks! 7y

Richryan52 The Vatican Cameos just received a novel of the year award 7y

36 likes5 comments

Cinfhen

The Adventure of the Empty House | Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir

Another excellent #serialreader completed and this is the first one I've read that mentions Sherlock Holmes archenemy, "The Napoleon of Crime" ~ Professor James Moriarty ?I'm sort of bummed that I started reading the series out of order?

SerialReader

ReadingEnvy Do you know which book is first? Serial Reader doesn't seem to organize them that way. 8y

Cinfhen @ReadingEnvy I wish I did...I'm clueless...ha, I need Sherlock to solve the mystery or probably Wikipedia 😉🙃🙄 8y

28 likes2 comments