The Search for A Man of Feeling within Sherlock Holmes in Praveen Radhakrishnan’s The Adventure of Black Drop

Abstract

In answering the why is and why nots of a pre-existing story, a new story is born. Such stories are independent because of the author's penmanship, but they do live under the shadow of either original or popular existing versions. The Adventure of Black Drop (2011) by Praveen Radhakrishnan is an extension of Arthur Conan Doyle's detective collection featuring the iconic detective Sherlock Holmes. The story records the complex life of the detective with crimes and chaos by showing him as a man of feeling against his clichéd representation as a man of brain games. Even though this novel is exclusive, it is not the first literary piece that tries to animate Holmes as a man of feeling. In addressing the problem of anxiety of influence in literature, the answer that the researcher arrives at by tracing the inventiveness of stories in the timeline of English literature is thought-provoking, as this transition is evident in almost all genres, including non-fiction. Even when this novel is seen as a tale that owes its credit to Doyle, its story stuff does define the authorcraft of Praveen and claims him a place in the literary world.