12th Night Giveaway, Day 4

With the exception of a “Butchering Weekend” when I worked at a living history museum many years ago, I have been able to to live a nice, guts-free life. My mother’s tales of how much she hated liver growing up steered me away from organs, and Brett cleans the fish.* Those pre-bagged giblet-y things in frozen fowl are as close as I get to that sort of thing, and they’re bad enough.

I would never have found the blue carbuncle.

This makes me think, a little sadly, of Henry Baker. He was happy enough to get his hat back, and a new goose to replace the rather ripe one he lost, but how much happier would Mrs. Henry Baker have been had she found that “bonny blue egg”?  Then again, perhaps their problems ran deeper than anything £1000 could solve, and Peterson was, after all, the most deserving recipient. Perhaps, in the end, everyone got what he or she needed–even James Ryder. It may be a “Christmas story without slush,” but it’s hardly a story without meaning.

There are several film versions of “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle.” Both Jeremy Brett and Peter Cushing starred in adaptations, and there are both Russian and animated shows as well (the animated one being Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century, in which the gem is replaced with a microprocessor. Whatever that is.).  If you’ve never read the story, or never watched the Granada version, well–this is your chance. You’ll need to in order to answer today’s question:

Who discovers the blue carbuncle is missing in the Granada version of “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle”? How does this differ from what happens in the Canon?

Jeremy Brett simply shines in the Granada episode of BLUE.** So it’s only right that today’s prize is directed at his adoring fans. John the Elf among them, apparently.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This first prize consists of a Sherlock Holmes: The Detective Magazine from June, 1998. It features many Sherlockian goodies, including a David Stuart Davies interview with Jeremy Brett’s friend, Linda Pritchard. Also included is a photo print of Jeremy Brett taken as a promotion for Granada’s The Sign of Four, made in 1987.

 

Since I said “first prize,” then there must be a second–and that would be the 2014 BBC Sherlock calendar. As I will ship it to you using Amazon, I don’t have one for John to pose with, but it looks a little like this:

So–off to the books and the videos and the computers, all of you! Submit your entries to me via the blog comments, FB PM or Twitter DM, and please include the prize you want to win. If you do not include a prize, I cannot include you in the drawing. 

As for me, perhaps I should find some goose crops to examine.

Day 3 Winners….

Congratulations to Elinor and Stefanie Paeg!  They both knew (as did everyone–you lot never get anything wrong) that Inspector Tobias Gregson of Scotland Yard calls on Rathbone’s Holmes to capture the cold-blooded Woman in Green. In the Canon, he debuts in A Study in Scarlet, and, as “the smartest of the Scotland Yarders,” also appears in “The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter,” “The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge,” and “The Adventure of the Red Circle.”***  He’s also made a leap into the 21st century in the person of NYPD Captain Thomas Gregson, played by Aidan Quinn in Elementary.

*Seriously, my parents loved so many disgusting foods that if either of them didn’t like something,  I was sure it must be truly foul.

**Floppy hair and cigarettes. Lovely.

***We must assume that in using the term “smartest,” Holmes is not referring to his style of dress.