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His Last Bow (Sherlock Holmes #8)

by Arthur Conan Doyle

4.24 of 5 stars 4.24 · rating details · 6,338 ratings · 149 reviews

"His Last Bow" is a collection of eight detective stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's most famous literary creation, Sherlock Holmes. Contained within this collection are the following tales: The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge, The Adventure of the Cardboard Box, The Adventure of the Red Circle, The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans, The Adventure of the Dying Detective...more

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Published January 1st 2011 by Neeland Media LLC (first published January 1st 1917)

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Jul 23, 2012 K.D. Oliveros rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: british, series, spy, detective, crime

The Sherlock Holmes collection that has the fewest number of short stories: 8. It is even a story-less in its British edition. This is called His Last Bow because it shares that title with its anchor (last) story. Other than that reason, I could not associate any of the other stories with Holmes bowing out as they all have the same ingredients or formula as the earlier Sherlock Holmes literary pieces.

The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge. John Scott Eccles consults Holmes and Watson regarding the deat...more

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Oct 14, 2012 Jefferson rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery

Reader SImon Prebble does a great Holmes and a spot on Watson, and His Last Bow (1917?) does have its moments, and Conan Doyle is ever a fine writer, and I like the device he frequently uses of the story within a story (as when Watson depicts suspects or clients telling their stories to Holmes). But… am I beginning to tire of Sherlock Holmes stories, having worked through all of them except those in The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes?

"The Adventure of the Wisteria Lodge" opens with a conservative b...more Reader SImon Prebble does a great Holmes and a spot on Watson, and His Last Bow (1917?) does have its moments, and Conan Doyle is ever a fine writer, and I like the device he frequently uses of the story within a story (as when Watson depicts suspects or clients telling their stories to Holmes). But… am I beginning to tire of Sherlock Holmes stories, having worked through all of them except those in The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes?

"The Adventure of the Wisteria Lodge" opens with a conservative bachelor who feels ill used by a mysterious new acquaintance called Garcia and his grotesque servants and then morphs into a tale of patriots trying to achieve justice against the cruel and greedy dictator who traumatized their Central American country San Pedro and then absconded with his ill gotten gains. Throughout the story, Holmes has, for once, a competent local detective rival.

"The Adventure of the Cardboard Box" features severed human ears packed in salt and some ungovernable adulterous passions.

"The Adventure of the Red Circle" concerns the long reach of Italian American organized crime (and feels like others of Holmes' stories that deal with organized crime and star-crossed lovers).

"The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans" deals with a corpse found in the London tube without his ticket and with some top secret plans for a new type of submarine. It reminds me of the earlier Holmes story "The Naval Treaty" and disappointingly depicts Mycroft Holmes as a man with an important job.

"The Adventure of the Dying Detective" features a brilliant villain who is to microbes as Holmes is to criminals (but the best part of the story may be its title).

In "The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax" autumnal love is interfered with by an amoral Australian con man.

In the entertaining "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot" we witness an egregious example of Holmes' reckless experimentation that ends up displaying the depths and powers of Watson's affection for him.

"His Last Bow," published in 1917 during WWI, is an uninspiring third person story not narrated by Watson and deals with international intrigue between patriotic Brits and cocky and slimy Germans. The best part of it shows Holmes' interests after retirement from crime solving.

Diehard fans of the genius detective will find nourishment here, but first timers would do better with The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes or The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, when things still felt fresh.
(less)

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Feb 11, 2012 Peter Dunn rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

So I have now finished the Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes story collection entitled 'His Last Bow' as I work through a one volume complete collection of the all the novel s and stories (so ignore the random 'His Last Bow' book cover I have chosen for this review).

This collection includes some great Holmes tales including a bit more Mycroft, and Sherlock’s enforced Cornish holiday, but the very last tale is set at the end of Holmes’s career and is essentially a spy story in which Conan Doyle shoe ho...more

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Dec 04, 2011 Ali rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

There are times when only certain types of books will do, when one is feeling in need of some consoling literary friend. At such times I often reach for Agatha Christie, although another old and comforting literary companion is Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes.

This fairly slight volume contains eight fascinating Holmes stories, each of them a fairly decent length, utterly perfect to curl up with on a chilly December evening. I adore the character of Holmes, it matches exactly the mood that Doyle cr...more

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Jan 17, 2012 Angela rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I only recently found out that there were two more books of Sherlock Holmes stories that I had yet to read. I can't believe my 14-year-old self didn't discover this when she had to resort to Sherlock Holmes fanfic. I'm kind of disappointed in her. However, it's also kind of an exciting treat for me now, so I guess I can't get too upset about it. This set of stories has some interesting character development between Holmes and Watson that I don't remember seeing in the earlier stories. Then again...more

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Jul 24, 2011 dragonhelmuk added it · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. His Last bow is a selection of short stories, only one of which is the titular piece – his last bow, no matter what Gutenberg might say. The stories are in general not as good as others from the Sherlock Holmes series, but still pretty good, although I could second guess a few of them pretty well. Their best parts are the way they show the characters who are by this point very old and well developed – Three quotes highlighting this then:

(Good old Watson…)
To Holmes I wrote showing how rapidly an...more

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Mar 15, 2011 Sammy rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery

(Three-and-a-half stars, really...)

Conan Doyle's penultimate collection of Holmes short stories really shows the central elements of his work so well: bracing atmospheres, a delightful central pairing, and an eye for acts of murderous legerdemain on the one hand; stilted dialogue, lack of suspects, and often one-dimensional characters on the other.

All of the stories here are very enjoyable, although I'd probably rank none of them on my list of "Top Ten". Wisteria Lodge, which opens the collectio...more (Three-and-a-half stars, really...)

Conan Doyle's penultimate collection of Holmes short stories really shows the central elements of his work so well: bracing atmospheres, a delightful central pairing, and an eye for acts of murderous legerdemain on the one hand; stilted dialogue, lack of suspects, and often one-dimensional characters on the other.

All of the stories here are very enjoyable, although I'd probably rank none of them on my list of "Top Ten". Wisteria Lodge, which opens the collection, is almost a novella and certainly has a lot in common - thematically and structurally - with the early novels. The Red Circle and Lady Frances Carfax also offer nothing new in terms of ideas. However, all three stories have an expertly-rendered atmosphere, and play well along the relationship of Holmes and Watson. The Devil's Foot does the same, although it has the added benefit of a truly unsettling mystery set-up. It's easy to see from these stories that, by this point, Conan Doyle knows his strengths lie in the Holmes/Watson pairing and the unsettling atmospheres, and he jumps at the chance to provide those.

As with all his works, the dialogue can sometimes be stilted. Not so much with the main characters, or the recurring police inspectors, but with the guest characters, who often lack strong voices (although I'm sure some fans will ascribe this to errors on Doctor Watson's part, and not on the author's?). And interestingly (or unfortunately?) most of the stories have very few suspects - indeed, sometimes we only seem to meet one person connected to the deceased in any detail, which may give the game away. In fact, the question tends to be not "whodunnit?" but "howdunnit?". But perhaps this is fair enough, since the overall emphasis is often on the implausibility or seeming incomprehensibility of the case, rather than the nature of the crime itself.

The Bruce-Partington Plans is an intriguing story, a fusion of spy and detective work which - although, again, means the revelation of the culprit is relatively unimportant - has a fun, pulpy sense of 'the chase'. It allows Holmes and Watson to work as a wonderful team, with a cameo by Holmes' evasive brother Mycroft. The Dying Detective's plot twists will fool no one, but if you've read all the rest of the stories to date, there's plenty to enjoy in a story that so feeds off the relationship of our two heroes.

And finally there is the title story, His Last Bow. I'm not sure if it was written genuinely as a finale, but it certainly is chronologically. This is a disappointment in some ways, since our heroes feature in it only for a short time. But there's a true sense of separation and loss at the end which affected me a little. Unfortunately, the story itself isn't very good: the dialogue is arch, the villain zero-dimensional, and the actions of our heroes at the end (especially given it is set just days before WWI breaks out) would probably not be advised by the Home Office.

In closing: this is not a collection for Holmes newcomers. But it's certainly a vital part of the canon, and well worth a look.(less)

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Jun 24, 2012 Victoria rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"There are times when only certain types of books will do, when one is feeling in need of some consoling literary friend. At such times I often reach for Agatha Christie, although another old and comforting literary companion is Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes.

This fairly slight volume contains eight fascinating Holmes stories, each of them a fairly decent length, utterly perfect to curl up with on a chilly December evening. I adore the character of Holmes, it matches exactly the mood that Doyle c...more

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Apr 10, 2012 Muhammad rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: my-library

Dari semua buku kumpulan kisah Sherlock Holmes, buku inilah yang paling tipis. Di dalamnya hanya ada sembilan kisah kasus-kasus Sherlock Holmes yang—seperti biasa—ditangani dengan metode deduksinya yang luar biasa.

Kasus pertama yang diceritakan dalam buku ini adalah Petualangan di Wisteria Lodge. Sebuah kasus yang nampak sepele pada awalnya, tapi ternyata menyimpan banyak misteri yang menarik untuk ditelusuri. Menurut saya kasus ini adalah salah satu kasus terbaik dan paling rumit yang ada dalam...more

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Jul 27, 2010 Sri rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: short-stories

Inilah buku Sherlock Holmes pertama yang berhasil aku selesaikan. Berbeda dengan hasil ngobrolku dengan Shinta dulu bahwa, dalam istilah Shinta, kisah Sherlock Holmes lack of emotion. Oh tidak! Ternyata Sherlock adalah tipe orang dengan karakter yang aku sukai yaitu ANEH hehe. Sense of humornya mungkin tidak bisa dinikmati oleh semua orang terutama oleh korbannya. Dan yang sering menjadi korban adalah Dr Watson yang malang hu hu hu. Sering kali aku memposisikan diri sebagai Dr Watson sebagai ora...more

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Feb 01, 2013 Ryan rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'd read some of these stories in other collections years ago, but a few were new. The final story is almost an epilogue. Holmes returns from retirement to thwart an evil German spy as the world moves toward the Great War. His retirement has kept him distant from Watson, but for his last hurrah, he naturally calls upon his dear and consistent friend. Holmes comments at some point that his appreciation for Watson is Watson's constant amazement, that everything was new each time. He says that a fr...more

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Jan 29, 2012 Kati rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012, het, in-czech, mystery, sherlock-holmes, anthology

3.5 stars. Not as good as the previous collections, maybe because it was a bit shorter, with only a handful of stories and very little was revealed of Holmes and Watson, of their background and personal life, in them.

My favorite stories were The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans where we found out more about Mycroft and The Adventure of the Dying Detective where Holmes took ill.

The last story in this collection, His Last Bow, the epilogue to all Sherlock Holmes stories, was not a mystery...more

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Aug 28, 2012 Adam Stone rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: short-story-collections, crime

His Last Bow contains 8 stories of the great detective. The best of the stories in my opinion is the title story His Last Bow which is the final story in the collection. It is rather unusual for a Sherlock Holmes story in that it is written in the third person. What I liked about it was that it was quite different from most of the other Holmes stories and is the the most modern of all the Holmes stories that I have read so far.

The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge was the first story of the collectio...more

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Apr 07, 2011 David King rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"His Last Bow" is a collection of eight Sherlock Holmes short stories and is Conan Doyle's penultimate Holmes book. As always, the stories center around Sherlock Holmes, a consulting detective who uses his intellect and wits to solve various crimes and mysteries.

One thing I did note about "His Last Bow" is that all the stories seemed a little bit longer than those in previous short story collections. I was glad of this as I felt it let Conan Doyle write more thorough stories. The stories themsel...more

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Aug 15, 2012 Chris Munson rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery, fiction

"His Last Bow" is the next to the last book in the original Sherlock Holmes set of stories and also the next to the last collection of short stories. The plot lines are probably the most creative of the Holmes stories that I've read so far...but they aren't as much fun to read. Doyle doesn't provide all of the necessary clues for the reader to solve the mystery. Almost all of the stories' solutions involve things that Holmes found out while he was away from Watson...so key pieces of evidence are...more

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Aug 22, 2012 Tempo de Ler rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

{Blog} http://tempodler.blogspot.pt/2012/08/...
Como já me é (infelizmente) típico, comecei completamente fora de ordem e o que é «A Última Aventura de Sherlock Holmes» foi, para mim, a primeira!
Chego assim ao mundo do brilhante detective quando este já se reformou da investigação criminal...
Através dos simples e directos relatos de Dr. Watson, somos apresentados à resolução dos mais misteriosos e intrigantes casos, observando a forma como a mente de Sherlock associa diversos pequenos detalhes, e...more

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Mar 19, 2011 Nicholas Whyte rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It struck me that a lot of the stories in this collection were a bit longer, allowing Doyle to work through his ideas in a slightly more thorough way without resorting to the padding which fills up space in three of the four novels. This collection includes "The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans", which so memorably features an Underground train, and (in my edition) "The Adventure of the Cardboard Box", in which the said box, containing two gruesome objects packed in salt, is sent by post...more

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Dec 17, 2012 Rob rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012

I was surprised at how good 'His Last Bow' was. While not an absolute masterpiece like The Adventures and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, it is easily on par with The Return of Sherlock Holmes. I think part of the genius of Sherlock Holmes is how easily the primary charcter allows for adaption to the patterns of the time and the age he is read. Sherlock Holmes is like a literary dress form stand, upon which the fashions of every age can and do hang.

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Sep 15, 2012 Ann Jacob rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A collection of Sherlock Holmes adventure. I had so much fun reading this book. It was just amazing! Many adventures did not fail to amaze but some may have been a bit boring. But most of them were enjoyable. One of my favourites are The Adventure of Devil's Foot. I loved that story and the way Sherlock Holmes investigated that. The Adventure of the Dying Detective was also just awesome! It was kind of easy to understand that he wouldn't die but still the suspense and the story was really good....more

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Jul 28, 2012 Iksandi Lojaya rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiksi, detektif, punya-iksan

Buku Sherlock Holmes pertama yang berhasil kuselesaikan. Kumpulan ceritanya memang cuma sedikit, tidak seperti biasanya karena hanya ada 8 kisah, tapi menurut saya semuanya JOSS! semua ceritanya aneh, unik dan menarik.

"Petualangan Detektif yang Sekarat" merupakan salah satu cerita favoritku, teknik Sherlock Holmes dalam mengelabui Penjahat yang diincarnya benar-benar rapi dan cerdas, ternyata selain pandai mereka-reka suatu kasus, Holmes juga pandai dalam berakting -yang dalam kasus ini- menjadi...more

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Feb 02, 2012 sabisteb rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: buch, classics

Audacity and romance seem to have passed forever from the criminal world
1. The Adventure of the Cardboard Box (1892)
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2344
August 1888: Miss Susan Cushing, eine fünfzigjährige, alleinstehende Dame, erhält per Post zwei abgeschnittene Ohren.
2. The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge (1908)
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2343
Ende März 1892: John Scott Eccles verbrachte eine Nacht bei einem befreundeten Spanier. Als er morgens aufwacht, ist sein Gastgeber fort und wird einige Z...more

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Nov 07, 2012 Sunil rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: own, 2012

The penultimate Holmes collection contains seven stories that are kind of a mixed bag. Most of the time the flaw is that the culprit is either completely out of left field or ends up being completely boring and then we spend several pages listening to his motivations. A couple are huge flops, like "The Adventure of the Red Circle," in which the mystery basically solves itself, and the titular "His Last Bow," which has no mention of Holmes and Watson for so long you start to think that there must...more

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Mar 25, 2012 bakanekonomama rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, detektif, misteri, sherlock-holmes

Ada delapan kisah dalam buku kumpulan kasus Sherlock Holmes ini. Sembilan kisah yang sebenarnya dulu pernah saya baca, tapi lagi-lagi saya lupa. Karena saya bacanya waktu SMA dan saya nggak pernah urut baca bukunya. Tapi nggak papa, karena ada beberapa cerita yang saya benar-benar lupa.

Nah, sekarang saya akan mencoba membahas satu per satu kasus yang pernah ditangani oleh Sherlock di buku ini.

Petualangan di Wisteria Lodge
Kisah ini adalah petualangan 'fantastis' Sherlock Holmes yang dicatat oleh...more

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Feb 25, 2013 Bev Hankins rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: holmes, mystery, shortstories, vintage-mystery, victorian, british-mystery

His Last Bow (originally, Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes) is a collection of 7-8 Holmes tales, including the title story. "The Adventure of the Cardboard Box" appears in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes in British editions, but is added to the American edition of His Last Bow. A story that deals with adultery, it was thought when Memoirs was published to be too risqué for the American public at the time. So, the story was held back and added later to His Last Bow. These are all quite good. I tho...more

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Oct 15, 2008 russell barnes rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, crime

So, as I said previously, Not the last Sherlock Holmes book, although chronologically the last as it finishes at the dawn of The Great War. 'Great' as in 'Huge' rather than 'Spiffing'...

Anyhoo...

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are taking a trip across a desert by hot-air balloon. There are not many landmarks; so eventually, they become lost. Luckily, while flying quite low, they see a man.

Holmes shouts, "Sir, could you please tell me where we are?"

The man looks up, ponders for a moment, and then...more

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Mar 24, 2013 Dark-Draco rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: crime, short-story-collection

Another collection of short stories about Holmes and Watson. From foreign tyrants to severed ears, from stolen plans to poisoned detectives and missing ladies to German spies. I enjoyed this collection better that some of the previous ones, mainly as the stories are so different to what has gone before. My favourite stories was probably 'The Adventure of the Devil's Foot', for it's gothic feel, and 'The Adventure of the Dying Detective', which had a great twist to it. But all the stories were we...more

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Jul 13, 2012 Michelle rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery, short-stories

His Last Bow is one of the final Sherlock Holmes works, but confusingly not the last (although I hear the ultimate set of stories is not as good - oh well!). The subject matter is classic Holmes material, but with an interesting view of the early 20th century and the looming Great War, and some pro-Britannia nationalism. My favorite stories were The Adventure of the Devil's Foot and The Adventure of the Dying Detective - the former had me stumped entirely, and the latter had clear facade by Holm...more

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Apr 23, 2013 Chris Cook rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I am close to having completed all the Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes books in the original collection. It's been interesting to read them and find out what all the hullabaloo was about. I have learned that for the most part, Sherlock didn't have the supposed drug problem. He used it in exactly one story (so far). And the beekeeping was mentioned only once as well, in the last story of this collection. He did smoke a lot, though...Some of the stories are a lot more far-fetched than I would h...more

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Aug 23, 2012 Alisha rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Wasn't as familiar with some of these stories. I liked "The Adventure of the Dying Detective," "The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax" and "His Last Bow." Some of the others were more or less gruesome in detail, but not more than the other collections of Holmes stories. "His Last Bow" was very different, being written, not from Watson's point of view, but in the third person, and taking place right on the eve of World War I, when the world was about to change big time. Interesting.

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Aug 20, 2011 Kate rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is a great writer, don't get me wrong. He's very famous and talented and credit is given where it is due. However, Sherlock Holmes isn't my style. I think it's interesting how Holmes solves cases, but I don't find the stories interesting. Therefore, the two stars is because of personal preference, not because of literary merit.

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About Arthur Conan Doyle

Arthur Conan Doyle was born the third of ten siblings on 22 May 1859 in Edinburgh, Scotland. His father, Charles Altamont Doyle, was born in England of Irish descent, and his mother, born Mary Foley, was Irish. They were married in 1855.

Although he is now referred to as "Conan Doyle", the origin of this compound surname (if that is how he meant it to be understood) is uncertain. His baptism record...more

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Books by Arthur Conan Doyle

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock Holmes, #3)

A Study in Scarlet (Sherlock Holmes, #1)

The Hound of the Baskervilles (Sherlock Holmes, #5)

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“Education never ends, Watson. It is a series of lessons, with the greatest for the last.” — 185 people liked it

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His Last Bow (Sherlock Holmes #8)

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