The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes - Nov 7-27

[Jenn, moderator]

Please discuss The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes here.

I have not been able to find a free edition of this yet. It is not on Project Gutenberg for some reason, and Amazon doesn't have a free edition. If anyone knows where we can get this for free please share! (Other than the public library)

[Leslie]

It is available as an ePub or Kindle book from feedbooks:

http://www.feedbooks.com/book/66/the-...

[Leslie]

I find it a bit odd that the story "The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone" is written in the third person. But I enjoyed Holmes doing the narration in "The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier"! He certainly is the master of the backhanded compliment ((view spoiler)["…Watson has some remarkable characteristics of his own to which in his modesty he has given small attention amid his exaggerated estimates of my own performances. A confederate who foresees your conclusions and course of action is always dangerous, but one to whom each development comes as a complete surprise, and to whom the future is always a closed book, is an ideal helpmate." What a nice way to call Watson an idiot! (hide spoiler)]).

[Alana]

I just picked this up yesterday but only got as far as the Preface before I was interrupted. But I found that to be interesting.... none of the others had a preface did they? I guess it's Doyle saying, "I mean it this time, I'm really done with these characters after this!"

[Leslie]

Alana wrote: "I just picked this up yesterday but only got as far as the Preface before I was interrupted. But I found that to be interesting.... none of the others had a preface did they? I guess it's Doyle say..."

I didn't read the Preface (actually I am not sure that I had one, as I read this as part of my The Complete Sherlock Holmes).

[Alana]

The Illustrious Client was ok, though the ending rather "meh."

I liked The Blanched Soldier ok, though.

[Phil]

I might be in a minority, but this collection was probably my favourite of the books of short stories. The others, for me, got very tiring in their routine format in which H & A would be lounging around complaining of boredom when in would step a client who would proceed to spend 6 pages speaking nothing but plot exposition with their only character description being whether or not they wore a hat, then Holmes would travel out and solve the problem with information you didn't have until the end. This collection had far more variety, including two stories written by Holmes rather then Watson, one written in the third person, a vampire, a werewolf, a grisly double murder and the story of the lighthouse keeper, the politician and his trained cormorant. On the whole, I've been disappointed with Conan Doyle's writing - he would have been forgotten had the character of Holmes not grasped the imagination of the public so much - but the Holmes we know, isn't really the Holmes of the books - so, all in all, i'm very glad that it ended with the best of the short story collections.

[Phil]

Sorry, can't edit posts on my phone. That should have said H & W, and I really should have inserted a few paragraph breaks. Apologies :-)

[Leslie]

Phil wrote: "I might be in a minority, but this collection was probably my favourite of the books of short stories. The others, for me, got very tiring in their routine format in which H & A would be lounging a..."

I agree that this collection was the most varied in literary style -- I noticed that too. I didn't think the cases were his best though.

[Alana]

What Leslie said. I agree the writing is more varied, which I certainly appreciate, but so far the stories are rather lacking. However, I've only read three of them, so we'll see.

[Phil]

To be honest, I wasn't impressed with ANY of the cases in ANY of the Holmes books. The genius of Sherlock Holmes is in the character of Holmes and not in the cases.