![]() ![]() He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen, but as a lover he would have placed himself in a false position. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. He admires her wit, which rivals his own, and the fact that she is one of very few people who have ever outsmarted him. Some portrayals of this story of Holmes cast her as a love interest, but in this story she is not that. This book contains twelve stories: probably the most notable is “A Scandal in Bohemia” for the mention of Irene Adler. Some involved a crime that had already been done, some involved a crime that had yet to be committed, some involved other mysteries. In a few Holmes let the perpetrator go for various reasons (in one, the man did not have long to live another involved a young man whom Holmes thought would go right after the scare of almost getting into big trouble). Though there are similar characteristics in each story, Doyle did an excellent job in keeping them from becoming formulaic and predictable. At the beginning of many of them Watson explained why he chose to chronicle that particular case out of the many Holmes had solved. The ones in this volume are not told in chronological order: some occured while Watson still lived with Homes, others occured after Watson married. The format of the stories is much the same as the novels. I enjoyed the audiobook read very nicely by actor Derek Jacobi. I’m not a great fan of short stories, but it was a nice break to have each case end with the chapter rather than having novel-long plots and twists and characters to keep up with. All were originally published in magazines. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is a collection of short stories published after the first two novels.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |