Typical Sherlock Holmes crime settings are normally dark, damp and gloomy places. These are normally places such as dark alleyways and streets. Also big stately homes made to look like eerie haunted places. Another setting is out on the moors in Hound of the Baskervilles, the moors are foggy and it is usually raining.
The Manor House settings used in the Hound of the Baskervilles and The Speckled Band contain large portraits on the walls of large old rooms. They also contain old wooden doors that creak as they open and the doors lead into large open passageways. A large wall surrounds the whole manor and at the entrance were two large iron gates. This enhances tension because it makes the reader feel the tension that the characters are feeling and it places a picture of the setting in their mind. The moors around the manor house in Hound of the Baskervilles are foggy and mysterious, they are barren and inhospitable. They seem abandoned and lonely. The moors contain dangerous quicksand. This creates tension, by the reader knowing, that something spooky or dangerous is about to happen. The opium den in The Man with the Twisted Lip is dark, dank and smoky. There are bodies spread all over the floor in different positions. The untypical story is the Hound of the Baskervilles because it’s set out of London, on a moor whereas all of his other stories are set in homes or London.
The criminals in Sherlock Holmes are not typical because they have obscure ways of doing things. We know that Dr Roylott has a criminal nature because he is aggressive and shows his strength when he comes to see Holmes. This quote shows Dr Roylott when he bends the poker in Holmes apartment “He bent it into a curve with his huge brown hands.” This shows his strength and aggressive nature.” Another quote that shows how everyone became scared of him, because when ever he went out he either got into brawls or quarrelled with the locals. “He became the terror of the village”
We doubt Hugh Boone as a criminal because he doesn’t really commit a crime, he was a man in lots of debt so he ran away and disguised himself as a beggar and started life again. Which suggests he is a proud man but not a criminal
Sherlock Holmes is a typical detective in the following way. He’s observant and intelligent. He also has a good reputation because when he investigates a crime he always gets to the bottom of it. He is observant in that he always thoroughly observes things: for example: he smells the letter, in The Man with the Twisted Lip, and looks at objects very closely using a convex lens. Also in the Hound of the Baskervilles he found a hair on the wheel of the cab and he noticed from the footprints outside Baskerville Hall, that Sir Charles Baskerville was running before he died. Sherlock Holmes always paid attention to the little details that other people would overlook and usually these turn out to be important clues. In The Speckled Band he notices the bell rope doesn’t ring a bell and that the vent in the room does not go outside but into another room. He is intelligent in that he always works out the method of the crime by fitting together the clues. In The Speckled Band he found out that the snake came through the vent in the room and down the false bell rope to the bed, which he discovered was bolted to the floor. In The Man with the Twisted Lip he worked out the beggar was Hugh Boone. He is cold and uncaring because he laughs when threatened. He laughs when he sees the dead people. He also laughs at Watson when Dr Roylott’s baboon scares him. He beats the cabbie up with no remorse. He also injects cocaine.
What was going on in Victorian England at the time influenced Conan Doyle because there was such as large divide between rich and poor people. His stories were aimed at the rich people because they were well educated and they could read the newspapers that Sherlock Holmes stories were printed in, also in his stories he stereotypes the poor and the rich describing the poor as dirty and dressed in rags. He describes the rich men wearing Suits, Top hats and carrying canes or newspapers and the rich women as wearing long beautiful dresses and wearing bonnets or hats. In Victorian England the police force weren’t as effective as they are today. There were loads of murders and the police force could not catch the criminals, so there were loads of unsolved crimes
My most preferred criminal is Dr. Roylott in The Speckled Band and he was a believable criminal, whereas in The Man with the Twisted Lip there was not really a major crime and it was obscure in the way that the clues went together. In the Hound of the Baskervilles the hound was the “criminal. My most preferred setting out of the stories was the Manor House and the moors in Hound Of the Baskervilles because they created the most tension and were the most mysterious of all the settings. My least preferred setting was the manor house in The Speckled Band because there was no real cause of tension by the house and the surrounding area. In conclusion I don’t think that Sherlock Holmes stories are typical murder mystery stories because they don’t all contain the main parts of a Mystery/detective story. The Hound of the Baskervilles is missing a motive and a real criminal. The Man with the Twisted Lip didn’t have a criminal or a crime either, but on the other hand The Speckled Band is a typical murder mystery story because it contains all of the aspects of a typical murder story.