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akj26 's review for:
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
by Arthur Conan Doyle
It would be an easy assumption that the stories of Sherlock Holmes would quickly get boring. Though each story has a cast of colorful characters and unique details, they all follow the same general structure. The stories are so short that you soon pick up a rhythm of what is about to happen based on how far into the story you are. It was to my complete surprise, then, that I was thoroughly captivated by every single one of Holmes’ tales. It was not so much about what happened in each story, but rather how Doyle strung together seemingly incoherent facts into a continuous scheme. There was something so cathartic about the “Ha!” I felt when Sherlock explained the villain’s plot in the most common-sense terms. The variety of stories Doyle created out of such a simple “mystery-hunt-solve” formula was also impressive. My personal favorite was the Redheaded League, simply for how nonsensical the premise was.
Another really cool thing was reading this book as I traveled the UK for the first time. Sherlock’s journey from Paddington to Swindon was far more enjoyable when I had taken the same journey myself just days prior. As they described the scenery and towns outside of the 19th century train, I tried to imagine matching those buildings and hills to the ones I had seen on my travels. Instead of my American brain trying to imagine towns and streets in a land across the globe, I was able to be far more immersed in the ambiance of Holmes’ London.
My one and only gripe about this book was that the last story, The Final Problem, was so disconnected and out of nowhere. I did learn that Doyle had wanted to conclude the series at that point in time, and that he did later retcon this ending. Even so, making such a compact conclusion to this behemoth of a series lessened its impact and made it feel very rushed. Unlike the other Holmes cases in which the end is only the cherry on top after all of his calculated discoveries, The Final Problem felt like Doyle wrote the end and just wrote in anything to get the story to that point.
Another really cool thing was reading this book as I traveled the UK for the first time. Sherlock’s journey from Paddington to Swindon was far more enjoyable when I had taken the same journey myself just days prior. As they described the scenery and towns outside of the 19th century train, I tried to imagine matching those buildings and hills to the ones I had seen on my travels. Instead of my American brain trying to imagine towns and streets in a land across the globe, I was able to be far more immersed in the ambiance of Holmes’ London.
My one and only gripe about this book was that the last story, The Final Problem, was so disconnected and out of nowhere. I did learn that Doyle had wanted to conclude the series at that point in time, and that he did later retcon this ending. Even so, making such a compact conclusion to this behemoth of a series lessened its impact and made it feel very rushed. Unlike the other Holmes cases in which the end is only the cherry on top after all of his calculated discoveries, The Final Problem felt like Doyle wrote the end and just wrote in anything to get the story to that point.