Review: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Since childhood, I’ve heard the virtues of the Sherlock Holmes’ stories and seen numerous adaptations of adventures such “The Hound of the Baskervilles”. In spite of this, I’ve spent a good portion of my life reading science fiction and fantasy. I had avoided the mystery genre due to my parents’ regular viewing of various BBC mystery series on the ABC. However, in lieu of my recent move to more classic literature, I finally downloaded the Lit2Go audio version which I listened to whilst on the exercise bike.
THOUGHTS
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of 12 short adventures. They range from the retrieval of blackmail papers to uncovering kidnaps. This variation in the mysteries makes the collection a worthy read.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had a gift for dialogue, allowing the reader to differentiate between the speakers. The clues are throughout, but the author occasionally throws in knowledge only revealed by Holmes in the latter moments of some stories.
CONCLUSION
Though well-written and highly entertaining, modern media has managed to desensitized the reader and viewer. If you are able to place yourself in the era that the stories were written and published then you will likely enjoy the collection a lot more. It has led to me downloading a bunch of other books and story collections by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, including “The Lost World”.

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