Sherlock Holmes is often remembered as an engine for logic: cold observation, perfect deduction, reason triumphing over chaos. Watson famously calls him ‘an automaton, a calculating machine’.

Over the years, I’ve realised Conan Doyle’s best stories are rarely that simple.

Again and again, Holmes discovers that solving a mystery is easier than judging the human beings trapped inside it. Some of Doyle’s most memorable endings do not conclude with handcuffs or courtroom speeches, but with uneasy acts of mercy.

Take a tour of the 4 novels and 56 short stories, and you might be surprised how few perpetrators end in police custody.

In The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle (1892), Holmes allows a frightened thief to walk free, remarking:

I suppose that I am commuting a felony, but it is just possible that I am saving a soul.

It’s a striking line because it reveals the hidden humanity beneath Holmes’ reputation for cold rationalism. Doyle’s detective may worship logic, but he increasingly recognises that justice and legality are not always the same thing.

Perhaps that is why Holmes still endures. Perhaps that’s why he’s one of my favourite writers.

Not because he always finds the truth, but because he understands that truth alone is not enough.

Reading makes us see what we’ve stopped noticing.