Review 1: Atkinson's The Secret Marriage of Sherlock Holmes, and Other Eccentric Readings takes an off-centre look at 9 of the stories, reading each in an appropriate way. He approaches A Scandal in Bohemia as classic romance, follows the theme of the snake in The Speckled Band and psychoanalyses A Study in Scarlet. This is literary criticism that actually adds to the reader's appreciation of the text. Highly recommended. Reviewed by: Roger Johnson, [District Messenger 165, 1996]
Review 2: Sherlock Holmes was secretly married? I thought myself well-acquainted with the Canon, but this title quite threw me (for a loss). Happily, it turns out that Holmes was not secretly married, but, if you read A Scandal in Bohemia with the conventions of romance literature (not to be confused with 'romance novels') Holmes would seem to have entered into a knight-errant relationship with Irene Adler, and so to have 'married' her (without her knowledge, and so in secret).
Atkinson has given us interpretations of A Scandal in Bohemia and eight other Sherlock Holmes stories as they would be made by applying eight other modes of interpretation (or 'reading') found in current literary criticism. He terms these readings 'eccentric' because they come from outside the detective fiction tradition in which the stories were written, and are intended to suggest to us how we might also 'read eccentrically.' These are essays well outside 'the game,' but open a way of seeing, or looking at, the stories which can offer surprising insights.
Reviewed by: David Richardson 2003