Last August I set out on a project to read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes cannon, from the first book to the last. It was my intentions to read and review a book each month. Following that schedule, I should’ve finished this project in April, but I encountered a couple hiccups along the...
Imagine an elderly man, sitting in a parlor before a fire, rocking in a chair, and telling you stray stories about his adventures as the comrade to a famous detective. The detective is now retired in obscurity–a beekeeper, we are told–but the truth of his many mysteries have yet to be told. So now...
The cover of my Kindle edition of The Valley of Fear is pulp. It shows a scantily clad woman, screaming, as a muscular arm–its hand curled into a fist–threatens her in the foreground. The attacker’s arm is branded with a triangle enclosed in circle. The publisher’s logo appears in the upper left corner: Hard...
Spoiler alert! In The Return of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle’s sixth Sherlock Holmes book, Sherlock Holmes, the famed detective, returns. “The Final Problem,” the last story of The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, was set in 1891. “The Adventure of the Empty House,” the first story of The Return of Sherlock Holmes, is set...
A beast haunts the moors of Devonshire–a giant hound, ghostly in appearance, demonic in purpose. It is the curse laid on the Baskerville family by the evil done by one of its ancestry. The ancestral lord abducted a local girl and planned to rape her, but when she escaped, he hunted her with his...
One doesn’t have to dive deep into Sherlock Holmes research before he learns that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle grew to resent the character and regret his success. He began publishing Sherlock Holmes tales in 1886, and by 1893, when these stories that make up The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes appeared in The Strand, Doyle...
I close my eyes and imagine Sherlock Holmes. I see a tall, thin man, a long hooked nose, and sculpted cheeks. He had deep-set eyes and thin lips. Both his arms and legs are long and lanky. His demeanor is serious, humorless, even stoical. Though he enjoys explaining how he came to the solutions...
I have an image of Sherlock Holmes in my mind. On a dark and foggy night, following the trail of a murderer, Holmes and Dr. Watson wander narrow London streets. Where does this image come from? For years I wondered. I knew it wasn’t from any movie or television show. It must’ve been something...
Returning to London from the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878-1880), Dr. John H. Watson seeks a flatmate to share expenses. After a colleague introduces him to Sherlock Holmes, the pair rent a flat at 221B Baker Street. Watson finds Holmes curious, an enigma, but one morning, Holmes confesses to being a consulting detective. That same...
