Coincidences...

I'm reading a book called 'The Girl who Played with Fire' by Stieg Larsson, a thriller that's translated from its original Swedish and is the second part of a trilogy. And very good it is too. In a chapter I read when I got home from work a detective is examining a murder victim's apartment and discovers that something is missing. He then thinks of the following quote:

'The strange thing about the dog is that it did not bark, my dear Watson.'

Half an hour later I was doing an online quiz (because I'm a geek like that) about literary allusions in literary titles - titles of books and plays that have been lifted from other written works. The questions are multiple choice and the second question was this:

British writer Mark Haddon's first adult novel is entitled "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time." It tells the story of a 15-year old boy with high-functioning autism who excels in mathematics. On what is the title based?

It turns out the answer is this: An 1894 Sherlock Holmes short story by Arthur Conan Doyle entitled "Silver Blaze".

The "Silver Blaze" is a short story about the disappearance of a race horse and the apparent murder of its trainer just before a race. It contains the following dialogue:

Detective Gregory: "Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"
Holmes: "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."
Gregory: "The dog did nothing in the night-time."
Holmes: "That was the curious incident."

Now having never read this Sherlock Holmes story before and having been completely unfamilar with the quote I appear to have stumbled across two references to it within the space of half an hour.

Isn't that WEIRD? Do you get a tingle up your spine when that sort of thing happens? I can only assume that the reasons the quotes are slightly different is because one was translated from English to Swedish and then back again.

Completely irrelevant picture by the way, that's the awesome courgette, chorizo and broccoli pasta bake that Mr D made for dinner :)