Sherlock Holmes primarily relies on abduction: inferring an explanation for observed details. "From a drop of water", he writes, "a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other". In "A Scandal in Bohemia", Holmes infers that Watson had got wet lately and had "a most clumsy and careless servant girl". When Watson asks how Holmes knows this, the detective answers: In the first Holmes story, "A Study in Scarlet", Dr. Watson compares Holmes to C. Auguste Dupin, Edgar Allan Poe's fictional detective, who employed a similar methodology. Alluding to
Harry Devlin (fictional detective) woman he loved. The book was nominated for the John Creasey Memorial Dagger for the best first crime novel of 1991 (the winner being Walter Mosley). The first seven novels appeared between 1991 and 1999. Harry Devlin returned in 2008 in Waterloo Sunset, a novel which reflects the changes in his life and in his native Liverpool during the intervening years. Harry Devlin (fictional detective) Harry Devlin is a fictional detective created by the British crime writer Martin Edwards. He has appeared in eight novels and eight short stories, and was described by Marcel Berlins in ‘The Guardian’ as ‘a