Summer of Sherlock: His Last Bow

Summer. A time for driving cars, smoking cigars if you're band and pouring your friend another glass if you're good.

Summer. A time for pleasant old ladies to stroke their cats while thinking secret thoughts of divine mischief ahead.

Summer. A time for something a little good (like helping your country), a little bad (like cashing checks one may have gotten under false pretenses), and a little bit of both (spending two years as an Irish-American trouble-maker).

(Okay, that last line is because I'm totally enamored with Guardians of the Galaxy, having just seen the local premiere, so you will excuse the paraphrase.)

But all this is the goodness we get in the August tale that is "His Last Bow."

It is Sherlock Holmes needing a haircut and going out with one last victory, still proud about defying the wills of enemies like Moriarty and Moran along the way. He's even proud of his bees, though he really hasn't been taking care of them for two years. (Which begs the question: who did?)

And "The Dangling Prussian" will always be my favorite English inn, for the name as well as some other reasons you might find by clicking the link.

I'm a bit too happy this evening to be overly analytical about "His Last Bow" right now, and even still a bit under the spell of that revision of the East wind speech that BBC Sherlock gave us at the end of last season, reversing the foreboding of the original and making it a promise of making the wrong things right. But that show has always been talented at turning the Canon on its head and making one love the result.

So I'll leave you to your own August musings on Sherlock Holmes's last adventure. It's the perfect day to read it, at that point in the year it took place -- or close enough if you don't get to it until the weekend.

Have fun there on that great chalk cliff.

(And then he realized he had somehow gotten a day ahead in his "Summer of Sherlock" read . . . who knew July had 31 days? Yeah, anyone with a calendar.)