The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

When I was a boy, I found an old book in a jumble sale at the local school fete.  It was a large, pre-loved thing, with its covers missing and the binding coming apart; but inside it contained a treasure trove of entertainment for a growing boy: adventure stories, puzzles, jokes and riddles, and trivia.  It even had a blueprint for making balsa gliders.  It's gone now, and who knows where?  I think it probably got jettisoned during one house move or another.  That's life!

One of the stories in the book was a Sherlock Holmes tale, 'The Case of the Speckled Band'.  Well, when I was casting about for something to read recently, I came across a book of Sherlock Holmes stories, and I was reminded of that old book of mine.  So I bought it, thinking that it would be nice to re-read 'The Speckled Band'.  Also, seeing that my only other acquaintance with Holmes was via the Basil Rathbone movies, I thought it would be good to read the primary source (at long last).

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes contains a dozen short stories.  I was surprised by the diversity of tone in these stories: some are quite serious while others, like 'The Blue Carbuncle' are light-hearted, even comical.  I was also surprised to discover that sometimes Holmes gets outwitted by the perp.  Throughout, the reader  gets an insight into the attitudes and lifestyles of Victorian England, as well as being reminded that human virtues and vices are as familiar to the modern reader as they would have been to Doyle's original audience.

I did not manage to solve a single one of the stories I had not read before.  This is due to my limitations as an armchair sleuth, not Doyle's as a storyteller.  In fact, Doyle is very good at telling short stories that engage the reader and hold their interest.  Dialogue and action come in pleasing proportions if one is prepared to accept Holmes' necessarily extended expositions of his deductive reasoning.  In these passages we gain an insight into a mind of a superior calibre.  Interestingly, this contrasts with the darker and more anti-social aspects of Holmes' character.  

I bought the Penguin Books edition that also contains The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, and I am looking forward to a lazy, wet weekend in which to read another batch of Doyle's intriguing stories