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Watson's Last Case by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Reader Reviews 3 of 3 people found the following review helpful: Mainly a scrapbook...., January 23, 2001 Reviewer: Rory Coker from Austin, TX USA Although the back cover optimistically refers to six stories, there are only two present. In "On Active Service" Watson tells "young" Stamford of his Mycroft-assigned job to dog the footsteps of Lawrence of Arabia, to keep him from giving away to his Arab cohorts the British plans to betray them. In "The Report," Mycroft tells Stamford about an earlier mission of Watson to Russia, to investigate the situation of the Tsar and his family, just before and just after the Tsar's overthrow. These stories make up only about 1/5 of the book. The remaining material is "backstory" on Holmes, Watson and Stamford. Holmes never actually appears in either of the stories. The narrative structure of the tales is almost absurdly complicated. For example, "The Report" is as told by Mycroft, but in parts Watson speaks in the first person, while other parts are in the third person. It seems to me, as in the case of the author's earlier book ELEMENTARY CASES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, that the various parts of the book were written at widely separated times with no overall plan in view, and stitched together with the minimum possible revision. With Holmes off-stage, the focus is on Watson just before, during and just after WWI. Can you picture Watson driving racing cars as a hobby? He does here, even though he is poor enough to have had to pawn his pocket watch. Can you picture Watson as a rugby three-quarter? He was, here. I think readers will be mainly interested in "The Solitary Student," which gives some speculative details of Holmes' family situation and university days. It's a good guess by Charnock that he would have started out studying theology, because of his frequent, quite peculiar theological references as recorded by Watson. Don't expect too much here and you won't be let down. This is in no way a collection of stories involving the adventures of Holmes, of Watson, or of Holmes and Watson together. It's more of a scrapbook than anything else.
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