The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

My son is 10 years old. He is fairly good at reading but found the book is not easy to understand as it uses some old English from hundreds years ago.

I admit to being a fan of the great detective Sherlock Holmes. I had read several of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s books on Sherlock Holmes and this one (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes)is one of the very best. What makes this volume so appealing is that it has twelve wonderful short stories. Several of these stories are the best-known cases Sherlock Holmes and his loyal friend Dr. Watson has investigated. I just love the way Holmes always seems to amaze Dr. Watson with his excellent attention to detail, which is a skill all good detectives must develop if they are to succeed in being a good investigator.

This book is organized into twelve tales which include the following: A scandal in Bohemia, The Red-headed League, A case of Identity, The Boscombe Valley mystery, The five orange pips, The man with the twisted lip, The blue carbuncle, The speckled band, The engineer’s thumb, The noble bachelor, The beryl coronet and The copper beeches.

In conclusion, if you are a Sherlock Holmes reader you will want to have your own copy of this book for your personal library. On the other hand, if you are a true fan you probably have already read this book. However, if you are not familiar with the great Sherlock Holmes and desire to learn why he is one of the most popular and well-known detectives in the world, pick up a copy of this wonderful text. The twelve short stories will give you a sample of the legendary Sherlock Holmes method of solving mysteries. A great read.

Rating: 5 Stars. Joseph J. Truncale (Author: Predator Hunter: A warrior’s memoir)

Short stories. Watson is the narrator and friend of Sherlock. He leads the reader into various cases that he and Sherlock Holmes worked on. That Sherlock certainty saw clues the reader missed. I was able to guess better as I proceeded. It was mildly entertaining.

Frankly, classic novels terrify me a little bit. And it’s been a looooong time since I voluntarily picked one up to read (and as we’re all good friends here and in a safe circle, I must admit that I made it through about 5 pages of the last one…Wuthering Heights…before placing back on my bookshelf and walking away slowwwly so as not to anger it). So, I decided to read Sherlock with hesitant excitement – you see, I’m a sucker for British crime drama, which is furthered drastically when Robert Downey Jr. is involved in my mental picture of the main character.

But I digress…

Sherlock started out a bit slowly for me (as classics tend to do). It took me about an adventure and a half to get used to Doyle’s formal writing style. But once I got the hang of the lingo, it was smooth sailing from there. True, many of the 12 adventures were very similar to each other – almost a same story, different time sort of thing – but I still loved it. Sherlock is a charming nutcase, and I loved seeing Watson go along with all of his best buddy’s strangely genius ideas.

One aspect that has struck me whenever I have read any of the Sherlock Holmes stories is the lack of action in the sense of gunfire, chases, fights–the usual elements of action thrillers. Most of the overt physical action in the stories occurs off stage. Most of the action is mental and is a journey through the reasoning process of Holmes’ brilliant mind as he explains the steps he followed to reach conclusions that only seem obvious when Holmes explains that all the clues were hiding in plain sight.

Many of the stories involve lessons from Holmes to his friend, colleague and chronicler Dr. John Watson. He will explain, for example, how he can determine a man’s fall in fortune by the worn condition of his old business suit, the chaffing on his hatband or the depth his razor shaved his cheek as he looked at one side of his face in a mirror. These lessons in deduction have been parodied many times on film; indeed, the originals often seem to be consciously aware of their own absurdity.

One of the most celebrated Holmes stories is the first in the collection: “A Scandal in Bohemia.” This is one of the few examples where Holmes is unable to triumph as he is outmaneuvered by, of all people, a woman. On more than one occasion Holmes will refer to one case where he did not solve and wrap up all the loose ends of a mystery in his usual manner although he does not always specify that the person that outsmarted him was a woman. Holmes takes understandable pride in his mental prowess and this story, strategically placed as the first in the first collection of stories about him, reveals that this pride can be wounded. His repeated reference to it is proof that he has never forgotten this failure.

Often the stories include standard melodramatic elements–the unsuspecting governess in a vast household in which one forbidden wing of the estate contains scandalous secrets, obsessively jealous or possessive fathers exerting ironclad control over submissive daughters, The stories often pose Holmes’ outsider status against an inept police officer, usually the dense Scotland Yard detective Lestrade. This is a familiar pattern in detective fiction following down through non-comformist private detectives such as Philip Marlowe.

The stories are often self-referential as Holmes more than once refers to Watson’s distortion of the `facts’ of a case or observes that Watson has embellished some details to make the tales more readable rather than presenting Holmes’ deductive lectures in their pure or unvarnished state. Holmes is often the professor explaining his methods to his very astute student Watson, who inevitably always comes up short by missing sometimes just one trifling detail that makes all the difference in leading to the truth of the matter.

Often if one takes the mystery setup of the stories at face value they are fairly standard mystery fare. There are other more intricate, more masterfully constructed mysteries. The element that transcends the genre is Holmes himself. Doyle modeled Holmes on his medical doctor guru Joseph Bell and incorporated the teacher/pupil relationship of himself and Bell into the Holmes/Watson relationship. He even modeled Holmes’ physical appearance on the much less physically appealing Bell, despite the image that was projected by the original illustrator which formed the template for all future film and stage portrayals of Holmes.

Many heroes need a sidekick or witness and Watson fulfills both roles for Holmes. He is the Boswell to Holmes’ Johnson. He is also the surrogate ordinary man observing the observer, presenting his superior master in a way that renders him more understandable and relatable to mere mortals. The tales belong even more to him that they do to Holmes. We never get Holmes’ own account of any of these incidents; we only see him as Watson sees him. This dynamic between the genius and his witness is what has ensured that the Holmes stories are still being read over a century after they were written.

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