The Five Orange Pips
“No; I shall be my own police. When I have spun the web they may take the flies, but not before.”
In “The Five Orange Pips,” a young man named Openshaw comes to Sherlock Holmes with a strange problem - his reclusive but beloved uncle received five orange seeds in an envelope, and then drowned in his own garden. From The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, this story connects vanishing ships, the American Civil War, and what happens when Holmes’s considerable powers are not enough to save the day.
Sarah and Marisa discuss Doyle’s depiction of the KKK and his contentious relationship with racism, the kinds of adaptations we’re excited to see in the future, the hand of God, and why Lovecraft sucks.
Further reading for this episode - Find a clip of the film A Black Sherlock Holmes and check out our fiction recommendations!
Listen to our narration:
This episode is narrated by Courtney Herber. Courtney is a historian of early modern England and she studies performance, theatre, and power. She recently defended her dissertation on consortship in Tudor and early Stuart England and Scotland and has published her work on representation, memory, and popular culture in several peer-reviewed collected editions. She also has wanted to be a voice actor since she first watched Sailor Moon in the mid-90s and has always loved a good murder mystery. www.courtneyherber.com
Music credit: The songs “Denmark (Live)” by the Portland Cello Project and Symphony No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 68 - I. Un poco sostenuto - Allegro by Johannes Brahms, are featured with an Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Further reading:
Ring Shout, P. Djèlí Clark - we also mention The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin and The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle in this conversation
Of One Blood, by Pauline Hopkins
A Black Sherlock Holmes (1918)
“A Black Sherlock Holmes (1918): A Case Study in Racebending” by Ann McClellan
“Holmes and Watson: A Study in Black,” Karl Bollers (writer) and Larry Stroman (illustrator)
Other cases mentioned in our discussion: REDH, SPEC, GLOR, RESI