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Popular Culture Review
Similarly, Holmes’s sketchy past of heroin addiction and affiliation with the
criminal world make him a complicated hero (or heroine’s partner).
While the power to divine to the shock of others is not an unusual
characteristic for the protagonists of detective fiction, Bucket and Holmes share
the related feature of cold rationality and a lack of outward expression, despite a
disguised, much-referenced, powerful inner passion. These elements seem to
arise out of personality very organically. Their relationships with Mrs. Bucket
and Esther, and Russell, respectively, are all that seem to make them vulnerable
humans who need the help of their juniors to inspire and assist them.
Demonstrably the two are matched in their ability to think in revelations
without revealing the slightest change in their appearance. Dickens writes,
.. Bucket notices things in general, with a face as unchanging as the great
mourning ring on his little finger” (358). Holmes also rarely betrays his thought
processes. Russell repeatedly remarks on this, “.. . he studied me without a trace
of expression . . . ” (King Beekeeper’s 23), and she feels rewarded when she can
inspire any reaction from him at all.
It is not, however, the male detectives who take center stage, but the
suspicious women in each novel. Lady Dedlock is a source of mystery right up
until her demise. Her muddy past clouds her identity for so long that it leads to
her being accu ͕