Silver Blaze was written by Arthur Conan Doyle

Silver Blaze was written by Arthur Conan Doyle. The story is about a horse, called Silver Blaze, who is due to take part in the Wessex cup. A few days before the race, both the horse and its trainer, John Straker goes missing. Straker is later found dead, he appears to have been murdered. Holmes and his sidekick, Watson, are called into solve the mystery of who killed John Straker? Holmes then goes on to analyse and piece together all the clues, eventually revealing that the horse accidentally killed Straker whilst Straker was trying to cut his tendons so the horse could not take part in the race.

He also discovers that Silas brown then found the horse and painted its characteristic white patches so that the horse could not be recognised. There are many typical ingredients in a detective story. These include a crime, a victim, a villain, a motive, a detective, false accusations, evidence, suspense, red herrings and a twist at the end.

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Silver blaze contains a lot of these but they are not all typical. The crime is probably the most typical ingredient in a detective story. In Silver Blaze the crime is, of course, the murder of John Straker and the kidnapping of the horse.

In Silver Blaze there is a victim and a villain, however in this particular story, the victim is the villain. This means that silver Blaze cannot really be a murder story as the murder of Straker was not intentional, it is more of an 'accident story'.

The detective involved is Sherlock Holmes, he owns another typical ingredient, his sidekick Watson. False accusations also feature in Silver Blaze. Fitzroy Simpson and Silas Brown are both accused of committing the crimes, however it is later proved that they are innocent.

Both of these suspects have motives; in this story both of their motives are linked to betting, as Silver Blaze is the favourite to win the Wessex cup. There is a lot of evidence in the case, all of it pointing to different people. Eventually, Holmes uses all the evidence to reveal that Straker was killed by the horse in trying to 'nick' its tendons and prevent him from winning the race. However, a lot of the evidence turns out to be a 'red herring', for example Simpson carrying a large stick that could have delivered the blow that killed Straker, when really the weapon was a kick from the horse.