Ever evolving Sherlock Holmes

One drawback of detective stories is that they could easily become period pieces when their style and underlying technologies become antiquated

Literary critic Edmund Wilson published a much-hyped piece in The New Yorker in 1945, titled “Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?” Well, although most people no longer recall Wilson, it appears that Roger Ackroyd’s murder continues to be a topic of interest, as was mystified in a landmark Hercule Poirot adventure penned by Agatha Christie in 1926.

Yes, detective fiction can sometimes be immensely popular. When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle “killed” Sherlock Holmes in an 1893 story because he felt he “had such an overdose of” the detective, his admirers were outraged and inconsolable. Over 20,000 readers left The Strand