1. Do you think you could solve a real murder using only the skills learned by reading detective stories? 2. Both Arthur Conan Doyle and Harold think that they can solve a real crime? Are they being naive? Imaginative? Foolish? Inspired? 3. Have you ever been so angry about the death of a fictional character that you could imagine physically accosting his/her creator? The Londoners of 1893 were evidently so upset about the death of Holmes that they became almost violent with his "murderer", Arthur Conan Doyle? Could you imagine feeling more hurt over the death of a fictional character than over the death of a real person? 4. Do you think the ending of The Sherlockian is happy or sad? Both Harold and Arthur are, in a sense, worse off than when they both began. And yet the last chapter suggests that at least the fiction endures. Is this consolation or redemption? 5. Arthur starts the book as a firm believer in chivalry, and he possesses a very typical--for the p