The Best Of Sherlock Holmes [Import] [Paperback]

Arthur Conan Doyle, Hrf Keating Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Phoenix; New Ed edition (1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0753807424
• ISBN-13: 978-0753807422
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars 12 From the Author, 8 from the editor. Can't fault the selection., December 6, 2010

By 

Abhinav Agarwal (Bangalore, India) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Best of Sherlock Holmes (Wordsworth Classics) (Paperback)

A hard-to-fault selection of Sherlock Holmes mysteries. 12 of the stories were selected by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as the best from the 44 stories that had appeared by then. David Stuart Davies adds a further 8 to the mix, which include such classics as The Man With the Twisted Lip, The Blue Carbuncle, and Charles Augustus Milverton. The mysteries seem to lose little of their charm and appeal more than a century after their writing. Short introduction by Davies is a useful bonus that reveals interesting tidbits.

"In the March 1927 issue of The Strand Magazine, a competition was held to choose the twelve best Sherlock Holmes stories from the forty-four already published in book form. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had made his choice and placed the titles in a sealed envelope and readers were invited to match the great man's selection. ... It is fascinating to note that not one entrant chose the exact same titles. The winner, a Mr R.T. Norman, managed ten."

These are the twelve stories selected by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

1. The Speckled Band - a personal favorite of mine
2. The Red-Headed League
3. The Dancing Men - fascinating
4. The Final Problem - a must-read for every Sherlock Holmes, where the detective meets his end, almost, at the hands of his nemesis, Prof Moriarty.
5. A Scandal in Bohemia
6. The Empty House - aka the Return of Sherlock Holmes.
7. The Five Orange Pips
8. The Second Stain
9. The Devil's Foot
10. The Priory School
11. The Musgrave Ritual
12. The Reigate Squires

and the 8 additional stories selected for this collection are:

1. The Man With the Twisted Lip
2. The Blue Carbuncle
3. The Copper Beeches
4. Silver Blaze
5. The Greek Interpreter
6. The Solitary Cyclist
7. Charles Augustus Milverton
8. The Illustrious Client

1 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good, not great, not bad, just...above average., February 1, 2003

By 

Inspector Gadget "Go Go Gadget Reviews" (On the trail of Doctor Claw) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Best of Sherlock Holmes (Everyman's Library (Paper)) (Paperback)

This edition contains `The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' short stories and the novel `The Hound of the Baskervilles'. I actually stole this book from my High School library but I didn't want to read it until I had read the stories which preceded. Since I've already commented on `Adventures' in another review I'll stick to discussing `Hound'.

Written after Conan-Doyle's `Final Problem' short story about Holmes' `death' this book takes place before his confrontation with Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls. Doctor Mortimer from Dartmoor comes to visit Holmes with the story of a beastly hound which has killed Charles Baskerville and will more than likely come after his heir Sir Henry.

Holmes promptly sends Watson off to Dartmoor to guard Sir Henry and report back with all developments. This is the point where Holmes disappears for almost half of the book. But he returns near the end to explain the mystery to all involved.

While it is better than Conan-Doyle's short stories in terms of a stronger narrative and a larger mystery `Hound of the Baskervilles' still suffers from long, ludicrous and unrealistic monologues and superficial contrivances. As always the story is told from the point of view of Watson. But it simply isn't a unique enough point of view to make the first person narrative worth it. I can honestly say that if the story was told in the 3rd person perspective it would make hardly any difference.

I cannot for the life of me work out how this book is sometimes regarded as a horror. Nothing in it scared me at all. The hound doesn't even show up until the end. And even then Conan-Doyle's description doesn't paint a very vivid picture in your head.

There just isn't enough intrigue or reason to keep turning the pages. The human and reality-based side of the story comes thru too strongly to allow any sort of fantastical creativity. As a classic it's a disappointment but compared to the short stories it's definitely better than the norm.