Sherlock Holmes: Super Fraud

I've long thought Sherlock Holmes stories to be some of the most original I've ever read, and so individual that any author taking any elements from them easily results in shameless parody. Now it turns out that, though the adventures of Holmes are still as exciting and original as ever, the character and premise themselves may not be as quite a unique product of Arthur Conan Doyle's mind as I assumed.

In researching my own series of surreal detective stuff that I plan to write, I decided to read the Edgar Allan Poe detective stories, the genus for the genre. And I've come to the conclusion that if Doyle and Poe were writing in the lawsuit-happy modern era rather than the mutually-respectful Victorian one, Doyle may well be getting dragged around the courts by Poe for some compo after stealing his ideas (STOP PRESS: Poe had been dead for forty years before Holmes appeared, so court cases were easily avoided). The Poe stories feature a detective called Dupin, and the similarities to Holmes stories in their structure are staggering: both are written from the point of view of the detective's friend, both focus on analytical abilities as being more important than intelligence, and both detectives are depicted as insular characters who ruminate over problems by themselves, before revealing their deductions in a manner that initially sounds ridiculous, but when explained make perfect sense. Poe only wrote three Dupin stories, and while it's clear that Doyle developed the detective a lot from Poe's initial blueprint, I was still surprised at how much seemed to be pinched from the American author, rather than being a wonderfully original creation as I had previously been led to believe. Perhaps, in the fiery depths of the afterlife, Poe is preparing a lawsuit for a cut of the profits of the numerous Sherlock adaptations doing the rounds, while Dupin, the original, lies buried and forgotten. A profit-share in the Jonathan Creek DVDs is next on the agenda.