REASONING MACHINES: THE FIGURE OF THE AMATEUR DETECTIVE

- Methodical Detective - a detective who employs a particular method.

- The emphasis on method is evident as early as Poe, who is largely responsible for
creating the template of the ‘Genius Detective’ borrowed by Doyle in the creation of
Sherlock Holmes.

- This figure of the genius detective, who is invariably depicted as a reasoning and
observing machine, is often accompanied by a friend and colleague who, in addition to
being the foil for the detective’s genius, is also the narrator of the stories

- This ‘Watson’ figure, so called because of the encapsulation of the role by Watson in
Doyle’s Holmes stories, becomes the eyes and ears of the reader, providing them with
all the clues necessary to solve the mystery.

- The Murders in the Rue Morgue’, the story’s narrator remarks on his friend Dupin’s
‘peculiar analytic ability’ (Poe 2002: 8), and provides an example of how Dupin seems to
read his though: The example is important for three reasons.

- 3 Reasons

o it prompts the narrator to demand to know the method that Dupin use
o identifies the two components of the method of Dupin: Observation and
Awareness of Causality
o , it sets a pattern followed by Doyle in which the story begins with a
demonstrable example of the detective’s method and genius, an example,
furthermore, which sets him above and apart from the mean represented by his
narrator which corresponds to that of the average reader

- two detectives share a number of significant characteristics. Both are reclusive, and
both have a private income that is sufficient for them to live in reasonable comfort
without having to rely on their detective skills to support themselves. In this respect,
they are amateur detectives, in the true sense of the word ‘amateur’, practicing their
profession more as a hobby than as a means of making a living like the professional
private eye or the police detective of the police procedural
- Holmes’s method: Application of Science and Knowledge
- scientific approach rooted in a Victorian faith in the accumulation and cataloguing of
data, and rational and logical analysis based on this scientific foundation

- Watson describes Holmes’s abilities in various fields, remarking that his knowledge of
literature and philosophy is ‘Nil’, and his knowledge of geology is ‘Practical, but
limited’, while his knowledge of chemistry is profound and his knowledge of British law
is ‘practical