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Book Description From his rooms in Baker Street, Sherlock Holmes's brooding figure emerges into the foggy streets of Victorian London to grapple with the forces of treachery, intrigue, and evil. About the Author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) was born in Edinburgh and studied medicine. He began writing while he waited for his practice to grow and, with 1887's A Study in Scarlet, created Sherlock Holmes, one of the most famous literary characters of all time. He was a volunteer physician in the Boer War and wrote a book on spiritualism. Reader Reviews 2 of 2 people found the following review helpful: Inconsistant in quality., November 21, 2002 Reviewer: Shawn Watson from Badger's Brook, Scotland I like most of the stories in this book (a merger of 2 seperate anthologies) but some are quite bad. Still tho, I like Holmes and he gets plenty of room here to show off his skills. These stories are presented in chrological order of their publication in 'Strand' magazine and follow immediatly after 'A Study in Scarlet' and 'The Sign of Four'. Tho their timelines bounce around all over the place and it's hard to keep track. My fave stories would be 'The Speckled Band' or 'The Engineer's Thumb'. Both of which are from 'Adventures'. The only story I really enjoyed from 'Memoirs' is 'The Silver Blaze'. Many of them seem to be rehashes of his older plots. Tho highly regarded in the literary community I find Conan-Doyles writing style to be confusing and inappropriate. As most of you know the stories are told from the point of view of Watson, Holmes' sidekick. But his narration of the events takes a backseat to very, very lengthy dialogues (which are mostly overwritten monologues). The narrative shifts back and forth and all over the place. It's not uncommon to see '''" before a typical line of speech. If you get lost, don't worry...I did too. The story 'The Musgrave Ritual' especially is badly told, plain and simple. Plus Watson's function in most of this hardly ever reaches out of 'The Casual Observer'. All he does is witness Holmes' crime-solving techniques. Which usually only last a couple of pages as most of each story (typical length 21 pages) devotes about 13 pages to set-up. Hardly well balanced is it? The last story 'The Final Problem' isn't even a mystery at all and just seems like a badly thought-out excuse for Conan-Doyle to kill of a character he felt totally indifferent about. Even tho the public loved Holmes. Why Moriarty is seen as a massive villain is beyond me because he hardly does anything at all. The overall quality of the short stories is average. The full novels is where Holmes and Watson REALLY have something to other than fool around in low-level stories. You'll definitely be interested in some of the stories in this certain edition, but they lack meaning or purpose. This particular edition comes with extensive notes at the back with numbers for each story to help clear up any confusion. Some of them are helpful for when you are reading and the rest give away plot points and ruin some of the developements. As I am a Holmes completist I stuck it out and finished every one of these stories. If you are too then I'd recommend this Penguin edition over the others. They seem to always print the best copies of Holmes.
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