Not all literary fiction characters are the hero of their own story. 

The narrator is less of a main character and more of a personified fly on the wall in first-person peripheral books. This unique perspective is told by a character type coined as ‘The Watson,’ whose purpose is to tell the story and to act as a representative of the audience, sharing some of the same questions readers might have. There’s no better example of this than Dr. John H. Watson himself from Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes books.

In the short story The Problem of Thor Bridge, Holmes’ newest client, rich, powerful ex-senator Neil Gibson comes to the duo after his wife is found mysteriously shot on Thor Bridge with his governess as the primary suspect. However, it becomes clear that the situation isn’t exactly as it seems from the very start with a frantic employee of Mr. Gibson warning Holmes and Watson that his employer isn’t as loving of a husband as he seems and the quickly apparent realization that Gibson is more concerned with clearing his children’s governess’ name than finding justice for his late wife. 

As a short story, the plot line was easy to follow but not too boringly predictable. In fact, one criticism could be that the ending was a bit far-fetched and too perfectly planned out. The writing was nice, on the other hand, and easy to read as well, and while Doyle chose to forego dialogue tags for the majority of the time, Watson didn’t often speak and it was generally understood that the conversation was between Holmes and a secondary character. 

Despite Watson not taking a particularly active role in the mystery and its solution, Holmes readily and regularly answered his questions so that the readers and Watson weren’t completely in the dark and could make their own assumptions on what had happened. As a whole, The Problem of Thor Bridge was a clever short story with engaging characters and a mysterious case worth cracking open.