Talk:Solar Pons

Did Derleth do this deliberately?
Every one of the Solar Pons stories I have read is flawed. Discounting the humorous ones, the serious ones have impossible things such as: In "The Adventure of the Intarsia Box" Pons gets a policeman to agree to put the hand of the murdered man into the box to unhinge the killer. That is ridiculous. A more subtle one: In "The Adventure of the China Cottage" people are killed when they burn poisoned incense (I am not sure if that would work in the first place) and we are supposed to believe that a "chemist" (pharmacist in the USA) manufactured the poisoned incense for the murderer, but kept it a secret, or, why? These are only examples. It's a mental exercise to read each story and find the flaw. I wonder if Derleth (who certainly knew better) left these plot holes intentionally, so as not to write stories that would overshadow Doyle's, or for his own amusement, or to prey on gullible readers, or because he was too lazy to sort out the details or just for the hell of it. (Plot holes in a few Sherlock Holmes stories are another matter.) Wastrel Way (talk) Eric