Holy Clues: The Gospel According to Sherlock Holmes

Perhaps we are drawn to detective stories because they represent our hunger to solve the ultimate spiritual mysteries of humankind. "After all, if the sleuth can discover the darkest and most guarded and protected stories within the human heart, can that of God's inscrutable will be far behind?" suggests parish minister and author Stephen Kendrick. In this ambitious yet highly successful book, author Kendrick explains how Sherlock Holmes's crime-solving methods of attention and observation can indeed help us solve and understand our own spiritual mysteries.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the writer who created Sherlock Holmes, certainly appreciated these parallels. Doyle himself had a strong interest in metaphysical and spiritual studies and inserted many of these references into his stories. Kendrick catches them all--from Holmes's Zen-Buddhist gleanings to the detective's painful bouts of soul-doubting despair. Kendrick also shows how Holmes's five basic detective principles can be applied to spiritual sleuthing: nothing is irrelevant; notice what we see; beware the deceptiveness of the ordinary; the bizarre is not necessarily the mysterious; and never presume anything. With his insightful and engaging writing style, Kendrick will gratify mystery fans and mystics alike. --Gail Hudson