Chapter 14: Detective Sherlock

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Zhang Bowen decided to give it a try and listen to his son's advice; perhaps it would yield miraculous results.

At this moment, Zhang Chu had already read through the plot his father had written in detail. The story centered on the serial killer known as the Balloon Man, who kidnapped a little girl and, as before, left a bunch of balloons at the scene. Following Holmes's investigation, the suspect he found turned out to be the first boy who was kidnapped...

"The story is quite well written. Why wasn't it chosen?"

Not only was Zhang Chu puzzled, even Zhang Bowen couldn't explain it, attributing it only to bad luck.

"What about you? Didn’t you say before you were going to write an article? Do you need any suggestions from me?"

"No need, no need. I'll write it soon and let you take a look."

Zhang Chu waved his hands repeatedly and hurried back to his own room. Sitting at his computer, he pondered deeply.

To be honest, in his previous life, his exposure to Holmes was mostly through TV and film adaptations, not literary works. He had never actually read "The Complete Sherlock Holmes Stories."

"The American and British TV shows I watched in my previous life could be considered fan fiction of Holmes, strictly speaking, right?"

His eyes lit up, and he tapped out the title "Sherlock" on his Word document—this was the very work he wanted to write!

"Sherlock," produced by the BBC, moved the story's setting from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first, narrating the series of dangerous and extraordinary adventures experienced by Sherlock Holmes and his friend John Watson in bustling metropolitan London.

This drama was both critically acclaimed and commercially successful, breaking Britain's viewing records since 2001. It was broadcast in over 200 countries and regions, garnering a vast following.

Moreover, it received ten awards at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, including Best Drama, and won over seven awards and twenty-one nominations at the Emmy Awards, the Oscars of American television.

The actors playing Holmes and Watson unsurprisingly became household names and stars.

He didn’t need to adapt the whole series—just one or two stories would suffice. This was a simple task.

"Elementary," by contrast, was much more conventional and unremarkable, possessing a charm of slow, steady storytelling. The American show did not focus on ingenious plot twists, but rather on the fundamentals of deductive reasoning, with rigorous and meticulous logic.

"Sherlock," however, is recognized as a milestone in the history of Holmes adaptations. Even if future generations do not like it, it cannot be ignored when Sherlock Holmes is mentioned.

Holmes embodies wisdom and courage, upright and unwavering in the face of evil; with extraordinary intellect and deep insight, he always finds the crucial clues amidst the tangled webs of cases, unraveling the truth step by step.

In terms of character portrayal, whether it’s a bowler hat, suit, cane, pipe, or hunting attire and deerstalker, Holmes fits the archetype of the British gentleman in people’s minds.

The more classic a character, the harder it is to innovate.

Yet "Sherlock" cleverly overcomes this challenge. Though old wine in a new bottle, everyone welcomes this new bottle with open arms!

British drama brings Sherlock Holmes and John Watson into the same era as the audience, successfully bridging the gap between the show and reality.

In the series, Sherlock is no longer the old-fashioned figure of yesteryear, but transforms into the perfect modern man—handsome and intelligent, the ideal hero "Cumberbatch Holmes."

When solving cases, he not only relies on superhuman observation, but also uses smartphones, the internet, GPS, and surveillance footage to aid his deductions.

The adaptation blends classic elements from the original stories with modern devices like phones, cameras, and microscopes, and it all feels remarkably natural.

Since others' works are so excellent, Zhang Chu decided to choose the best one he knew as his entry; otherwise, he would only watch his royalties slip through his fingers.

Nearly every episode of "Sherlock" offers a new plot, each suitable to be used as a submission.

So Zhang Chu spent reputation points from the Savior System to exchange for an external resource, needing to describe the events of "Sherlock" based on the video.

After all, rebirth does not make one a superhuman; though he could try using Memory Bread, that was quite expensive. External help was much more convenient, and allowed him to consult other materials!

This Holmes fanfiction contest only required about thirty thousand words, saving a lot of time but also posing a real challenge.

Zhang Chu chose the storyline from the first episode of "Sherlock," which was a substantial adaptation of "A Study in Scarlet" from "The Complete Sherlock Holmes Stories."

The London Police were overwhelmed by a series of suicide cases, with all victims dying from ingesting deadly poison capsules.

Desperate, Lestrade was forced to seek help from Sherlock Holmes, the unofficial consulting detective.

Sherlock deduced from the traces left behind that these events were not mere suicides, but orchestrated by a serial killer working behind the scenes.

221B Baker Street formally appeared in the story, and through Sherlock and Watson’s reasoning and pursuit, the murderer was finally revealed.

Sherlock confronted the killer alone in an empty church, where the perpetrator explained his method: holding a gun to the victim, forcing them into a Russian roulette-style gamble—two capsules, one harmless, one fatal.

This also introduced Sherlock’s nemesis, Moriarty. Zhang Chu didn’t intend to use "Sherlock" just once and discard it; since he started with the first episode, he couldn’t let the rest slip by.

If the fame became great enough, perhaps he could write the entire series as a novel or script for the television station, letting Cumberbatch Holmes shine with brilliance once more in this world.

["You’ve lowered the whole street’s IQ"—Sherlock Holmes]

Zhang Chu’s writing speed was not as rapid as he imagined. Even with the video available in the virtual interface as reference, crafting sentences was no easy matter.

"This is really troublesome; I’ll have to take it slow!"

His typing was not particularly fast, his thoughts severely limiting his speed. He wanted to write well, not spoil such an outstanding drama.

In a daze, it was as if Holmes traversed the yellowed corridors of time, standing on the streets of twenty-first-century London, long coat and scarf fluttering, speaking so quickly others could barely keep up, his keen gaze piercing the fog, as he hailed a cab and vanished into the dim evening, hurrying to the next crime scene!