The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Book Review

Summary

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle is the first collection of short stories featuring our favorite detective. Holmes’ amazing powers of deduction are put to the test in 12 new cases, many of which are downright bizarre.

In “The Red-Headed League,” Holmes is asked to investigate an exclusive society that offered a redheaded man a part time job copying the dictionary. After he worked for a few weeks, the league mysteriously vanished without a trace.

In “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle,” a man recovers a lost hat and goose, but is unable to locate the owner. He eats the bird himself, before the meat goes bad, but is amazed to find a valuable jewel inside.

In “A Scandal in Bohemia,” Holmes is tasked with recovering a compromising photo that could cause political upheaval if it fell into the wrong hands. However, the woman who has the picture just might be Holmes’ intellectual match.

My Thoughts

I like the short story format for Holmes better than the full-length novels. It allows us to focus on the mystery without getting bogged down with too much backstory, which was my biggest complaint with the first two books.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes contains some of the detective’s very best cases, and it added some variety, since Holmes investigates more than just murders this time around. There’s even some instances where no crime was committed, just bizarre circumstances. This collection is where Sherlock Holmes truly began to shine.

My Rating: 4/5