The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Reviewed.

Itmust all have been said, of course. So, this review is likely to say more aboutme than about the author or his tales. In common with most people, I'vewitnessed the transfer of the written words onto the small screen in manyversions and for many of the stories held in this collection. That connectionnaturally informs the reader. I enjoyed the reading, but, unusually for me,found the TV programs more entertaining and even more credible.
Thereare passages of fairly wooden dialogue and some of the descriptions of eventsleave a lot to be desired. The plots are, of course, wonderfully intricate,surprising and satisfying, as you'd expect. But there is a lot that thereader's expected to accept on trust. I suspect that much of the 'deduction' isopen to question if analysed in any depth. Holmes expresses certainty aboutmatters than can often only really be conjecture. But none of this detractsfrom the experience, of course.
ConanDoyle is as much a part of the English psyche as Dickens and Shakespeare andit's a brave man who would criticise such genius.
Ittook me rather longer to read this anthology than I'd expected; all sorts ofinterruptions took me away from the reading, but I also found I wasn't ascompelled to read as I have been with many other books.
Gentleand often quite homely, apart from the more violent stories, the style isdefinitely of its time. I suspect many young readers will find some of thereferences so obscure as to be meaningless, but that's part of the charm. Likemost readers, I approached this book fully aware that my previous exposure tothe characters and some of the stories was bound to influence the experience.
Onesmall technical niggle: whoever formatted the book for the Kindle, on which Iread this, made a poor job of work on the symbols and the foreign punctuation.There's hardly a story that doesn't contain an odd set of characters eitherrepresenting the £ sign or some of the French accents.
Thiswas an interesting read without being astounding or particularly instructivefor a writer. Would I read more? Probably not. Did I enjoy what I read? By andlarge, yes.