The Valley of FearSir Arthur Conan Doyle
The two-part device used here serves exactly the same role as it did in A Study in Scarlet, the book which introduced Sherlock Holmes to the public.
In A Study in Scarlet, the background is a general account of the very earliest days of the Mormons. In The Valley of Fear, the background is a re-telling of a particular incident in the coalfields of Pennsylvania in about 1876.
At that time many of the miners were Irish immigrants and, it must be admitted, they were pretty badly treated by the mine-owners. In order to get some improvement in their conditions the miners formed themselves into large gangs and perpetrated many acts of sabotage and violence (including murder).
The whole thing was getting out of hand (violence ruled) to the point that 'something had to be done'. The man who did the undercover work was Detective James MacParlan who, unlike Conan Doyles' account, was not subsequently murdered in an act of revenge. A film was made, based on this true incident, in 1970. Richard Harris played the part of MacParlan and Sean Connery was the (fictitious) gang leader, Jack Kehoe. Conan Doyle renamed the 'Molly Maguires' as 'The Scowrers' which was an old name (in England) for some gangs of an entirely different kind. Go to the Index to The Valley of Fear or The Complete Sherlock Holmes or the Main GRoL menu |