Customer Reviews

His Last Bow: Some Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes (Oxford Sherlock Holmes)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Although he also wrote several novels featuring the world's greatest fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, it was especially in his short stories that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle perfected the Holmes formula. "His Last Bow" (published in 1917) is the fourth of the five collections of Holmes short stories. The other collections all featured a dozen stories, but only eight stories make up "His Last Bow". The title is based on the final story of the same name, which portrays the retired Holmes active in bee-keeping, and emerging from retirement only to protect English secrets during the First World War. Doyle was arguably past his prime in producing Sherlock Holmes stories, but this is still a very good collection of stories, and although there are only eight stories, unlike some of the other collections there is no obviously inferior story among them. The Bruce-Partington Plans, The Dying Detective and The Devil's Foot are especially outstanding, but all the other stories in this collection are very good as well. It may not match the brilliance and popularity of the first three collections ("The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes", "The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes" and "The Return of Sherlock Holmes"), but it's not far behind, and Holmes fans will find every one of the eight stories of "His Last Bow" most enjoyable.

Here's a list of the stories in this collection (with the better stories marked with stars):
Wisteria Lodge, 1908 - This two-part story recounts the strange experiences of Mr. John Scott Eccles, whose Spanish host Garcia and his two servants mysteriously vanish overnight. How is the exiled tyrant Don Murillo, the Tiger of San Pedro, behind these events?
The Cardboard Box, 1893 - Susan Cushing opens a parcel in a box, horrified to find two severed human ears - but whose are they and why are they sent to her?
The Red Circle, 1911 - Mrs. Warren has a mysterious lodger who never emerges from his room, and how is this connected to a secret society called "the Red Circle"?
*The Bruce-Partington Plans, 1908 - Some top-secret plans for a Bruce-Partington submarine are found in the pockets of a dead man who falls off a train, but where are the rest of the plans, and how and why did they get stolen?
*The Dying Detective, 1913 - Holmes is delirious and dying of a tropical Chinese disease. His only hope for survival appears to be Mr. Culverton Smith, a specialist in such diseases, but unfortunately also a criminal who would be glad to see Holmes die.
Lady Frances Carfax, 1911 - When Lady Frances Carfax goes missing, her life is unwittingly threatened by Holy Peters, an unscrupulous criminal from Australia who is now posing as someone else.
*The Devil's Foot, 1910 - A thrilling and convincing story, as Mortimer Tregennis reports the bizarre death of his sister and sudden madness of his two brothers. The story complicates with the death of Mortimer himself, and the involvement of the African explorer Dr. Leon Sterndale. Holmes discounts supernatural involvement, and looks for some natural explanation.
His Last Bow, 1917 - Holmes emerges from his retirement (spent beekeeping and completing his magnus opus "Practical Handbook of Bee Culture") to thwart the German spy Baron Von Bork from disclosing secret English documents on the eve of World War I.
- GODLY GADFLY

The thing I like about a good Sherlock Holmes short story is its brevity and muscular leanness, so when I see backstory, even for a few pages, I roll my eyes - I want Holmes, detection, maybe a bit of action, not some tale of jealousy or treachery from the tropics or wherever. The first three stories in this collection evaporate in a daze of backstory - they the had potential to be good but they blew it. As for the other stories, the Dying Detective is an interesting addition to the canon but nothing special. The Devil's Foot, whilst certainly above average, falls a bit flat in the end with Holmes doing his detection largely off stage. The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax is okay. His Last Bow feels like the last chapter of some John Buchan adventure novel and is hugely disappointing, just like that other endstop, the overrated Final Problem. "There's an east wind coming all the same, such a wind as never blew on England yet." And there was me thinking the Rathbone film had invented that naffness from scratch. The obvious winner is the Bruce-Partington Plans. It's got detection, action, and Mycroft. Worth admission price alone.

This is a collection of eight short stories, first published in October 1917, narrating some of the adventures of detective Sherlock Holmes, the last one entitled "His Last Bow." Sherlock Holmes is amongst the most famous characters ever created in literature, his popularity overshadowing his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, to the point that some people are under the impression that Sherlock Holmes in fact existed. The inspiration came from Dr. Joseph Bell, a friend and tutor to Conan Doyle and who shared many personality features with the famous detective.
The author had Sherlock Holmes killed but public demand was so high for further adventures that we find him back in action. Determined to have a permanent retirement, Sherlock Holmes moves into a small farm and dedicates himself to other matters, refusing to offer his intellectual ability to the government. With World War I approaching he backs up on this determination and his return into action is narrated in "His Last Bow." The cases range from theft, burglary, kidnapping, to murder, and in all of the them Sherlock Holmes is a master in the science of deduction and analysis.
By those considered expert "Sherlockians," this is not Holmes at his best and certainly not as good as his masterpiece "The Hound of the Baskervilles."

Now most Sherlockians would say this is not Holmes at his best, and at times I would agree (hence only 4 stars) but some of my personal faves are in here. In order, the stories are: 1)"Wisteria Lodge" 2) "Cardboard Box" 3) "Red Circle" 4) "Bruce-Partington Plans" 5) "Dying Detective" 6) "Lady Frances Carfax" 7) "Devil's Foot" 8) "His Last Bow" In particular, I like "B-P Plans," "Dying Detective," and "Devil's Foot." These are some of the more obscure cases. Definately try this book, especially if you're read "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" already.

Although a big fan of Sherlock Holmes, I was not a big fan of the book, THE VALLEY OF FEAR, which preceded this collection of stories. Fortunately, HIS LAST BOW found Sir Arthur Conan Doyle back in form. The eight stories in this volume, for the most part, hold up well when compared to those in earlier works. Sure, at times it feels a bit old hack, but that is only because this volume, book eight out of nine, comes so late in the Sherlock Holmes' canon. If this book had come earlier, with some other collection of stories coming later, the relative feeling of freshness would be reversed.

Of the eight stories, five are routine detective stories, of which The Devil's Foot, in this reviewer's humble opinion, stands out. Of the remaining three stories, The Adventure of the Dying Detective is rather interesting, as Holmes makes use of one of his noteworthy skills other than detection and logic. As Watson said in an earlier work, when Sherlock Holmes decided upon a career as a private detective, it meant that several other arenas, such as science or the stage, lost an exceptionally promising practitioner. True, true.

The other two stories, The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans and the title story His Last Bow, show Holmes to be the admirable patriot, using his skills for the benefit of Britain. Mycroft, Sherlock's smarter but lazier brother, appears in one and we learn some interesting tidbit about him.

If you have made it this far into the Holmes' canon, there would be no reason to stop now. Surely nothing in HIS LAST BOW would make one want to anyway.

The last of Conan Doyle's Holmes stories go out on a whimper I'm afraid to say with very little atmosphere, defining moments or spellbinding mystery. It's safe to say that Sir Arthur was bored of the character by this point and grudged bringing him back from the dead after his tussle with Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls.

I know I am repeating myself, I mentioned this in a review for a previous book but it's clear Conan Doyle was running out of ideas. With only eight stories making up this book (a couple of them less than 20 pages) he still ends up being quite repetitive and pretty much condenses his Holmes novel The Valley of Fear (Classic Crime) into a short story called 'The Red Circle'.

The final story has a bittersweet, if unremarkable, ending and has very little story or point to it. Many writers have kept Holmes alive over the years with various books, radio plays and films and have done so with more affection than Conan Doyle. He created one of the most popular characters in history but thought so little of him.

After being killed in an adventure, Holmes suddenly reappears. Of course, the first thing he does is to tell how he came back alive. And then new, last stories, come up. The edition I read includes "The valley of terror", a convoluted and terrifying story in which Holmes participates indirectly. One can not go wrong with Holmes. Inevitably, the quality of the stories is varied, but they are always fun to read. Doyle is indeed a great writer, who must be counted among the best writers, right there with the big language-innovators and "serious" literates.