Customer Reviews

Sherlock Holmes on the Stage: A Chronological Encyclopedia of Plays Featuring the Great Detective

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This book was written for people passionate about Sherlock Holmes. It's an homage not only to Holmes but to all those who have loved him over the years. The book is, of course, an encyclopedia of all the Sherlock Holmes plays, but it's the anecdotes within the work that arrested me: William Gillette, who co-authored the first Holmes play with Sir Conan Doyle, portrayed Holmes more than 1,300 times in his life, and his final performance was on a radio broadcast when he was 82 years old, two years before his death. If that moves you (and it did move me very much, especially after reading about his life-long affair with the fictional sleuth), you'll be delighted to find an author who shares this enthusiasm. The book travels from 1890 to the present day, and Sherlock Holmes and his environment change drastically as the plays evolve to reflect the changing times. In the end, the book is useful as a reference, but for me it was also an entertaining tribute to the author's, society's and my own passion for the `great detective story.'