The Hound of the D'Urbervilles: Difference between revisions

# A Volume in Vermillion: Colonel Moran takes employment with Professor Moriarty, and Moriarty is approached by a corrupt Mormon elder to deal with [[Literature/Riders Of The Purple Sage|a group of fugitives from their brand of justice]].

# A Shambles in Belgravia: The opera singer Irene Adler hires Moriarty to retrieve a set of photographs depicting her knocking about with [[The Prisoner of Zenda|a certain European nobleman]].

# The Hound of the D'Urbervilles: The new heir to the estate of the [[Tess of the D'Urbervilles|D'Urbervilles]] is having trouble with uppity peasants and a mysterious and murderous blood-red hound, and hires Moriarty to sort them out.

# The Adventure of the Six Maledictions: Mad Carew, late of Her Majesty's Army, [[Literature/The Green Eye Of The Little Yellow God|stole a holy artifact in Nepal]] and wants Moriarty to save him from the attendant curse. Moriarty's solution begins with seeking out five ''more'' cursed artifacts, including [[Literature/The Jewel Of Seven Stars|The Jewel Of Seven Stars]] and [[The Maltese Falcon]].

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* [[Celebrity Paradox]]: Many of Professor Temple's helpful historical footnotes refer to fictional works, such as [[Arthur Conan Doyle]]'s [[Sherlock Holmes]] stories, as if they were factual historical accounts -- including one of Newman's own [[Diogenes Club]] stories, which Temple dismisses as "fanciful".

* [[Celebrity Resemblance]]: Dame Philomela Box, the inheritor of Moran's manuscript in the frame story, is a tall, unnaturally thin woman with a [[Skunk Stripe]].

* [[Combat Haircomb]]: Ilse von Oberstein has a haircomb that's really a dagger.

* [[Deliberate Values Dissonance]]: Used both within the story itself (as a parody of the kinds of Victorian/Edwardian travel memoirs popular at the time) and in-universe as a part of the framing device. Prof. Temple draws attention to Moran's racism and homophobia in the introduction and endnotes, although she takes pains to note that Moran "especially loathed straight white male British Christians."

* [[Evil Counterpart]]: Kim Newman loves this trope. A major theme of "The Problem of the Final Adventure" is the rise of opponents (good counterparts?) for the world's criminal masterminds. Irene actually refers to Watson as being in thrall to an "angelic mastermind," while Moran mentions that Holmes has the "Moriartian trait" of not sharing anything with his second-in-command. In a more straightforward manner, you have Prof. Moriarty as this for Holmes, Col. Moran for Watson, Mrs. Hallifax for Mrs. Hudson, the Conduit Street Comanche for the Baker Street Irregulars, and Col. Moriarty for Mycroft Holmes.

{{quote|Pigeons fell dead three streets away. Hitherto-enthusiastic customers in Mrs Halifax's rooms suddenly lost ardour at the worst possible moment. Vampire squid waved their tentacles. I quelled an urge to bring up my mutton lunch. }}

* [[Evil Versus Evil]]: How do you get away with having a criminal mastermind and a murderous womanizing misanthrope as the protagonists? At least partly by crossing their paths with other people who are at least as unpleasant as they are.

* [[External Retcon]]: There was a lot more going on during "The Final Problem" than Watson ever knew.

* [[False Reassurance]]: Moriarty gives one to a client who stiffs him on the bill once the danger appears to be over. {{spoiler|He promised Carew that he wouldn't be killed the priests of the yellow god; he didn't say anything about being killed by somebody else first...}}

* [[Foregone Conclusion]]: "You know how this ends. Someone goes over a waterfall."

* [[Freudian Excuse]]: Moriarty and Moran are both revealed to have had unhappy childhoods with unpleasant fathers. Moran's was the usual sort of unhappy childhood for a man of his period and social class; Moriarty's was uniquely horrible.

* [[Historical Domain Character]]: [[H. G. Wells]] has a cameo in "The Red Planet League".

* [[Kick the Dog]]:

** {{spoiler|Mabuse.}}

** Usually subverted with Moriarty, whose successes in this area require people not to be paying much attention.

* [[Mythology Gag]]: Far too many to list individually.

* [[Not His Sled]]: {{spoiler|Two people are proposed as Moriarty's archenemy over the course of the book; neither is Sherlock Holmes, whom Moriarty never regards as more than an occasional nuisance.}}

* [[Precision F-Strike]]: An uncharacteristic one from Moriarty in "The Problem of the Final Adventure," when he realizes that they've been tricked into killing the wrong man.

* [[Public Domain Character]]: Probably at least half of the characters in the book, including Moriarty and Moran.

* [[Reassigned to Antarctica]]: Moriarty has one of his underlings permanently shipped off to Alaska as a warning to another underling who had been disrepectful but is, for the moment, too valuable to be dispensed with himself.

* [[Running Gag]]: Every time the Vampires, a notorious French criminal gang, is mentioned, they've just got a new leader after the previous one died violently. This is a shout-out to their film serial of origin, ''[[Film/Les Vampires|Les Vampires]]'', which burns through at least three head Vampires in the course of its ten episodes.

* [[Scary Shiny Glasses]]: The cover illustration depicts Moriarty as a sinister silhouette with a gleaming monocle. (There is no mention of any monocles in the book itself.)

* [[Sherlock Scan]]: Inverted for parody; when Moran first meets Moriarty, Moriarty appears to do this to Moran, rattling off all kinds of facts about him without being able to know them. Moran snottily points out that he's aware of this kind of technique. Moriarty then slaps him and informs Moran that anyone who needs to rely on this kind of trickery is, in Moriarty's estimate, a fool; Moriarty had, of course, bought, bribed and otherwise swindled everything he knew about Moran from others.

* [[Significant Anagram]]: Several characters in "The Red Planet League", particularly the purported King of the Martians, the ''Roi Marty''.

* [[Skunk Stripe]]: Dame Philomela Box has long black hair with a white streak. It's pointed out that, considering her age, it's likely to be a deliberate affectation achieved with black hair dye.

* [[What Measure Is a Non-Cute?]]: The attitude generally taken toward the "Marsians". Moran notes that even people who "would be generally happier to see children whipped, starved, laughed at, shot and mounted in the Moran den than brook any abuse of their 'furry or feathered friends'" don't have any sympathy for things with tentacles.

* [[Whole-Plot Reference]]: All of the stories parody the Holmes canon, with Holmes (the Thin Man) and Mycroft (the Fat Man) occasionally appearing as a [[Hero of Another Story]].

[[Category:The Hound Of The Durbervilles]]

[[Category:Literature]]