Conan Doylean

English

Etymology

From Conan Doyle +‎ -an.

Adjective

Conan Doylean (comparative more Conan Doylean, superlative most Conan Doylean)

1. Resembling or characteristic of British writer and physician Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930), who created the character Sherlock Holmes.
   • 1935 April 6, Malcolm D. Phillips, “When Friends Fall Out”, in Picturegoer, volume 4, number 202, page 8, column 2:

     Connie, at great length and with great patience, explained the difference between Conan Doylean and Shakespearian heroes.

   • 1987, Diganta Rāẏa, Untold Stories of Shop-Lifters, New Delhi: National Publishing House, →ISBN, page 43:

     For a while I smoked away making rings in the air and then attempted a Conan Doylean approach. Necessarily a poor imitator of Sherlock Holmes, I said, ‘If I’m not mistaken, you’re not only rich but rolling in affluence. You make even your shortest trips in a car—you’re not used to going around on foot. You travel by air instead of boarding a train and when passing a night outside home, your place is a five-star hotel, not a railway retiring room. Right?’

   • 1990, Gillian Gill, Agatha Christie: The Woman and Her Mysteries, The Free Press, →ISBN, page 39:

     Gaston Leroux is an early writer who spurns the Conan Doylean tradition and invents a detective with a doubting Thomas attitude toward material clues.

   • 2011, Neil McCaw, Adapting Detective Fiction: Crime, Englishness and the TV Detectives, Continuum, →ISBN, page 39:

     Thus, the Granada series became haunted by a ghoul of its own making, striving for the impossible dream of definitive, Conan Doylean episodes that dutifully brought Holmes to life for a later twentieth-century audience.

   • 2015, Zach Dundas, The Great Detective: The Amazing Rise and Immortal Life of Sherlock Holmes, Boston, Mass., New York, N.Y.: Mariner Books, published 2016, →ISBN, pages 94 and 249:

     If Jabez Wilson is a Conan Doylean Everyman, Clay sheds some light on how Conan Doyle adapted real criminal history and lore. […] Sherlock—which, as of 2015, consisted of ten episodes released over four years—contains the essence of such Conan Doylean details, remixing them with modern techno-thriller plotting and mesmeric film techniques.

   • 2017, Stephen Knight, Towards Sherlock Holmes: A Thematic History of Crime Fiction in the 19th Century World, Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, Inc., →ISBN, page 161:

     The London edition appeared in November 1887—in another Conan Doylean coincidence, only a few days before Sherlock Holmes first appeared in Beeton’s Christmas Annual, which carried the novella A Study in Scarlet.

Synonyms

• Conan Doylish