T ISN’T UNUSUAL to find our favourite detective used to illuminate some modern mystery, and especially those political ones mused by pundit journalists. A case in point — the Palm Beach Post of July 31st has a dialogue between Holmes and Watson in which they discuss Valerie Plame: Watson, the Plame game is afoot.

“You know, Holmes,” I said, “there is still something about the Valerie Plame matter that mystifies me.”

“No doubt,” the great man replied. There may have been a note of condescension in his response, but it was a relief from his infernal violin scraping. It was partially to stop the violin that I had spoken up. As we talked, however, I realized our thoughts were headed for the case book. Call it the Singular Case of the Missing Victims.

For those of you not in North America, or who don’t care enough to follow American political scandals (they do tend to bore me), Plame was a CIA agent “outed” by a high profile politician in the Bush entourage after her husband wrote an article criticising the U.S. invasion of Iraq. More details can be found in the Wikipedia entry for Valerie Plame.