adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: No

« La mente paralizzata dalla spaventosa apparizione che era balzata di fronte a noi attraverso le spirali della nebbia.
Era un cane, un cane enorme, nero come la pece, ma non un cane che occhi mortali potessero aver mai veduto. Dalla bocca spalancata, quella creatura mostruosa eruttava fuoco e i suoi occhi lucevano di una fiamma smorzata, e il muso, la giogaia, la gola erano delineati da un vacillante bagliore. Mai neppure nei sogni allucinati di un cervello impazzito sarebbe stato possibile concepire qualcosa di più spaventoso, di più ossessionante, di più infernale di quella forma scura, di quell'apparizione selvaggia che ci comparse improvviso davanti uscendo dal muro di nebbia. »
adventurous mysterious fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: No

3.5 stars

La novela de Sherlock Holmes que más me ha gustado. No me extraña que sea la más famosa.
Muy atmosférica y con las características típicas de este detective.
Muy entretenida.

I read this as a book club with two of my students. The first 114 pages were very interesting. The rest--not so much!

I've seen too many film and TV versions of this, I believe Holmes's most famous case, to be able to judge the suspense of the plotting of the novel any longer. However, like all of the Holmes novels and tales that I've read (three collections of tales and three novels) it's well written and inimitably iconic. Seems like the moor--unconquered nature?--is the real villain here. At any rate, the scary moor and the Grimpen Mire into which one might sink and die--and a mysterious pursuer--are the threats throughout. Oh, and the hound itself--something of a MacGuffin if not a red Herring--and a Scooby-Doo precursor. The film versions always place the evil in some abandoned monastery or other--in line with Gothic representing various British self-repressions (here Catholicism and the Gothic ruins the banished monks and nuns left in the English countryside)--but there's only the cave of an abandoned tin mine. Didn't seem significant, merely useful as a hiding place.
mysterious slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: No
adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
mysterious tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: No