Well definitely. Book Holmes is all-round superior in capabilities, and merely misanthropic. But if we look at most modern portrayals of Holmes, whether they're the Benedict Cumberbatch take or Dr House or whatever, there seems to be centering around a more "anti-social" character, who is brilliant, but struggles with dealing with other people.
My personal feeling is that this is a bit more plausible for a "real-world"-ish scenario than the original Holmes, but YMMV. Certainly the RDJ Holmes was more in line with book Holmes though, in that he was charming (it's hard for RDJ to be otherwise, of course!).
There does seem to be a tendency in that direction, probably in an attempt to bring a frankly super-heroic character down to earth. I'm inclined to say some portrayals take it too far--I eventually stopped watching Sherlock because they'd turned him into such a jerk that I lost all interest in that version of the character. Book-Holmes can be acerbic and arrogant, but he's nowhere close to a "high-functioning sociopath."
I doubt there are any DCs in the Sherlock Holmes books, but I'm willing to be wrong if you can cite an example. I'll wait.
There are, of course, no DCs in the Sherlock Holmes books. We can, however, make some guesses as to what they would be if we did try to take the events portrayed in the books and put them in the context of DnD, even though doing this is an inherently questionable process because DnD does not actually model any literary genre--not even Sword and Sorcery--all that accurately.
Holmes, Lestrade, and Gregson are making Investigation and Perception checks all the time. Lestrade and Gregson, who are intelligent enough to have risen in the ranks of Scotland Yard and have a fair amount of experience, routinely fail. Ergo, the DCs must be pretty high. Holmes is basically never shown to fail an Investigation or Perception check. If there is a clue, Holmes usually sees it the moment he walks in the room, even if he doesn't understand it's significance yet. Ergo, Holmes must have sky-high Investigation and Perception.
He
does sometimes fail Insight checks, usually when he's matched against a worthy opponent. He's more likely to get the wrong answer because he doesn't have all the facts yet, or because his own prejudices are getting in the way.
The character I'm playing right now might be described as "What if Sherlock Holmes was even grumpier, and also a wizard?" He does not, of course, have anything even approaching Holmes' across-the-board competence and near-infallibility, because that's not really what DnD is designed for. Playing a magical Holmes-ish character works very well though, with heavy reliance on spells like Detect Thoughts and Clairaudience/Clairvoyance, and the ability to cast Lightning Bolt goes a long way towards making up for the inability to effectively punch people.
