This is the shortest Holmes story collection: only eight stories and a preface written by Watson, explaining that Holmes is now retired to Sussex and keeping bees, and here are some stories he hasn’t yet published about their adventures, including their very last one. (All the stories in the last published book, The Case-book of Sherlock Holmes, apparently take place before “His Last Bow” as well.) Because of the shortness, you feel it a little bit more when a story is a dud. In particular, […]
Probably my least favorite of these books.
I liked this, I did. But the first half was just an extended Holmes story (a pretty good one!), while the second half was basically pointless. I don’t think this should have been a full length novel. The content of the story just doesn’t justify it. The Valley of Fear was published in full in 1915 (after being serialized in The Strand of course), so by this point, Conan Doyle had been writing the character for almost thirty years. (This was also around the time […]
“Holmes,” I cried. “Is it really you?”
While gathering my thoughts to start writing this review, I kept getting the feeling that this was my favorite of the Holmes story collections so far. With this feeling in mind, I moseyed on over to Goodreads to look at my status updates to try to collect evidence to back it up (I rate and do mini-reviews for every story), whereupon I found to my surprise that my reaction to most of the stories was just good, not great. It’s a solid story collection! However, only two out […]
But what of Barry the swim instructor? Does he get a happy ending?
A few years ago (I don’t know…maybe 2007?), back when I was addicted to watching Craig Ferguson’s Late Night show, he had an interesting episode in which he sat and talked to his friend Stephen Fry. No monologue, no questions on cards, no skits, no dancing horse. Just a conversation between old friends. It was fascinating. They talked about all sorts of stuff, but what I remember most was their discussion about writing fiction. Fry had several books, their good friend Hugh Laurie had just […]
“Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!”
So I’ve been reading all the Sherlock Holmes stories and novels since January now, and I’ve been having a great time with the audiobooks narrated by Stephen Fry (especially since my version also has these little personal essays written by Fry at the beginning of each novel or collection). But I think I might have done myself a little disservice by listening to this one in audio. I’ve read it before, when I was in grade school I think, but the only part I remembered […]
“Excellent!” I cried. “Elementary,” said he. #CBRBingo
Project: Catch Up On Review Backlog, review #4 out of 11 Of the four Holmes books I’ve read so far, this one has been my favorite. Even my least favorite stories are solid, and there are several that are excellent. For context, these stories were all published between 1892-1893, at the height of both Conan Doyle’s and his famous hero’s popularity. Conan Doyle was growing extremely tired of his creation, and he wanted to write other, newer and more challenging things (he did, almost none […]