Watson can entirely explain, causes the reader to return again and again to the tales. Detective stories may seem to be about plot more than any other work of genre fiction, but given the popularity of detective series, perhaps this is an error -- character, more than revelation might be the real reason readers return again and again to read about Holmes in action. By seeing Holmes deduce and explain the strangeness of something like "The Red-Headed League" or try to chase after Professor Moriarty, the reader seeks tantalizing clues about why Holmes is so driven, with a single-minded intensity, to solve crime, rather than to establish friendships, seek out love, or experience any other of the pleasures that complicate most of our lives.

Arthur Conan Doyle, more so than the strangeness of his plot, thus created one of the greatest and most iconic characters of all time in Sherlock Holmes. But beyond this flashy and showy creation of coldness and passion for intellectual stimulation, love of art and self-sacrifice for justice, even to the point of...

Watson that was as equally compelling. As unrealistic as the stories may seem, and far-fetched, Watson is always there to assure the reader that things are real, as he writes 'in the moment,' talking to the reader as if he is real from the page: "I have endeavored to give some account of my strange experiences in his company from the chance which first brought us together at the period of the 'Study in Scarlet,' up to the time of his interference in the matter of the 'Naval Treaty'" he notes in "The Final Problem," causing even the modern reader to feel that somehow Holmes and Watson 'really' exist, no matter how foreign the format of the Victorian detective potboiler may be to contemporary eyes and ears. Holmes and Watson continue to speak to readers, Holmes because he poses problems through his apparent psychological contradictions and hidden depths, and Watson because he is an ordinary man, observing the extraordinary and writing it all down for the reader's perusal.