Philosophical Logic
For the most part, this is not a novel that delves deeply into imagery of the metaphysical and philosophical variety. It is a Sherlock Holmes story, after all. And yet, there is inexorable movement away from the logic of the rational into the logic of the irrational, culminating in an explosion of almost pure imagery by the end:
“Already the heavens were wavering as the sun declined; the moon, too, occupied the sky while reflecting the sun's light, and hung there obscurely like a transparent half circle in the blueblack firmament. Briefly, he considered the sun and the moon—that hot, blinding star and that frigid, lifeless crescent—finding himself made content by how each one traveled in an orbit with its own motion, yet both were somehow essential to the other.”
The Irrational
Before reaching that point, however, there is one point in the novel where the imagery appears to be describing not just the irrational, but the illogical. Is Holmes on the case of a house under the spell of a haunting? Not quite:
“She materialized, gravitating toward the boy's bedroom, her head floating like a formless white sphere amid a pitch background; yet the darkness itself was not of one shade, and looked as if it were fluctuating and swaying beneath her: the fabric of her dress, Holmes suspected, the attire of mourning. Indeed, it was a black dress she wore, fringed with lace and austere in design; her skin was pallid, and bluish circles were visible under her eyes”
The Aged Mr. Holmes
This Sherlock is elderly, fragile and still filled with the fires of curiosity and imagination. The soft underbelly of is his relationship with a young boy which provides ample opportunity to make even starker the reminder that this is not the Sherlock you already know:
“Already the waning sunlight and the burgeoning ocean breeze enveloped them. Holmes inhaled deeply, squinting his eyes against the setting sun. With his sight blurred, the ocean beyond appeared like a blackened expanse fringed with a massive fiery eruption.”
The Scars of Hiroshima
Central to the narrative is a trip Holmes takes to post-WWII Japan. The specter of the atomic bomb hangs over that visit and is made perhaps most tangibly manifest in pone of the book’s most powerful images:
“the passenger car door had opened and a slender young woman with sunglasses on had entered the carriage…her profile suddenly displaying a broad, disfiguring keloid scar, which slithered like tentacles from underneath her collar (up her neck, over her jawline, across the right side of her face, vanishing into her immaculate black hair)...Holmes found himself thinking, You were once an enticing girl. Not so long ago, you were the most beautiful vision someone had ever seen.”
