The Tainted Cup

The Tainted Cup is advertised as featuring a “Holmes and Watson-style duo” (“The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett,” Penguin Random House, 2024). Such marketing materials connect investigator Ana Dolabra to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s iconic consulting detective character Sherlock Holmes, and Ana’s long-suffering assistant Din Kol to Dr. John Watson, Holmes’s friend and investigative companion. Holmes and Watson first appeared in A Study in Scarlet (1887). Ana indeed has many qualities in common with the odd, caustic Holmes, including her interest in mood-altering substances, which matches Holmes’s consumption of heroin and cocaine. Her affect, however, relies on modern interpretations of Holmes’s sensory acuity as related to neurodiversity or sociopathy (Sanders, Lisa. “Hidden Clues.” The New York Times, 4 Dec. 2009; Engelbrecht, Natalie. “Sherlock Holmes—Autistic or Sociopath?” Embrace Autism, 9 Apr. 2018).

In his author’s note, Robert Jackson Bennett cites another literary detective as the primary inspiration for Ana: Nero Wolfe, created by American author Rex Stout. Wolfe and his assistant, Archie Goodwin, appeared in 33 novels and 41 novellas or short stories (1934-1975). As an “armchair detective,” Wolfe, like Ana, does not investigate crimes in person, but relies on others to report the details of the crime; both Wolfe and Ana are avid readers.

Bennett also adds that Ana ended up “more like Hannibal Lecter than Wolfe” (526). Though Lecter, a brilliant, violent killer created by American suspense writer Thomas Harris is best known for the 1991 film adaptation of the novel The Silence of the Lambs (1988); he first appeared in Red Dragon (1981). Like in Holmes’s and Wolfe’s narratives, the Lecter novels rely on an external narrator, Will Graham.

What all three literary precedents have in common is observer narrators who are not the primary detectives. Watson narrates the Holmes stories, chronicling his friend’s unique adventures for posterity; Wolfe’s cases are described by Archie Goodwin, who does the detective’s legwork; and profiler Will Graham is the narrator of Red Dragon, given a more prominent character than Lecter. This parallels The Tainted Cup’s prioritizing of Ana’s assistant Din, above Ana herself.

At the same time, Ana and Din have a relationship that doesn’t completely mirror these inspirations. Din is not Ana’s biographer or her generational peer in the same way that Watson is to Holmes. Lecter is described by psychologists in his novel as a sociopath, though Will Graham considers this an inadequate description. By contrast, Ana’s evident affection for Din makes her more empathetic than Lecter—and, indeed, than Wolfe and Holmes, too.