My Thrilling Adventure as an Awesome Sleuth

Memories of a budding Sherlock Holmes

Tom Hanratty
E³ — Entertain Enlighten Empower
4 min readOct 10, 2024

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A photo of Sherlock Holmes with deerstalker hat and pipe
Photo by thoroe on Freeimages.com

It is, I admit, mere imagination, but how often is imagination the mother of truth? — Sherlock Holmes

By the time I was eight, my vivid imagination had me as a space ranger, a cowboy, and a combat hero. Then, some innocent soul presented me with a kid’s book about an English detective with the unlikely name of Sherlock Holmes.

I devoured the book, and the die was cast.

Holmes was the embodiment of the scientific reasoner, and each story in the book contained instructions on how to become a brilliant detective.

All I had to do was practice observing, make clever deductions, and carry a magnifying glass. The pipe would wait until later.

However, when you’ve been on this Earth for only eight years, determining what suspicious behavior is and what’s just random daily life is a mystery.

Fortunately, our neighbor was about as suspicious a character as any detective fantasy could desire. He was mean and yelled at me with a thick accent every time my ball came too close to his window.

We lived in a two-family home, with Mr. and Mrs. Gerke living upstairs and my family occupying the lower flat. The Gerkes were not friendly, never responding…

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Tom Hanratty
E³ — Entertain Enlighten Empower

Scribbler of stories, lover of mysteries, retired Forensic Investigator and Tracker of critters. tomhanratty@substack.com