Sherlockian Shorts – The Yellow Face

First published 1893 in The Strand magazine, (The Adventure of) The Yellow Face is the third story in the second short story collection, The Memoirs Of Sherlock Holmes.

What’s It About?

Mr Grant Munro wants Holmes to find out what the secret is that seems to be driving his wife away from him. What is the secret of the strange face in the window of the nearby house? And what about the case makes it one of Sherlock Holmes’ failures?

Is It A Mystery?

Given that Holmes himself doesn’t solve the case, then no. It’s a guessing game, and Holmes guesses wrong. There’s not even any real deduction from Holmes towards the wrong solution, just a guess really.

Is It Any Good?

Yes, it’s rather sweet actually. As a mystery tale, it’s weak, but there’s a heart to it that is missing from some of the other tales.

Anything Else?

This was one of the eighteen episodes not adapted for the Jeremy Brett series and probably for good reason. Despite the sentiment – a rather progressive one for the 1890s – this would be very hard to film without being SPOILERist. Although apparently Doyle undoes a lot of the good work here in a later tale. And also, in terms of filming it, there’s actually not a lot of story here.

Also worth noting that when mentioning this is one of Holmes’ failures, Watson mentions The Musgrave Ritual as another, despite that tale being later in the collection.

NB For the full index of my Sherlockian Shorts, please follow this link.