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This volume includes the complete canon of Doyle's original stories -- four novels and fifty-six short stories, from "A Study in Scarlet" to "His Last Bow." While there are a handful of cases that bore significantly on international affairs (e.g. "The Bruce-Partington Plans"), most of them are of interest simply because of that touch of the _outre_ that Holmes loved so much and that provided such stimulating material to the ideal reasoner.
There are some clunkers in the canon, of course, but the vast majority of these stories -- especially the earliest ones -- are just brilliant. If you are reading them for the first time, I envy you; the sturdy Dr. John Watson is about to introduce you to a new world, a world of Victorian gaslight and Stradivarius violins, of hansom cabs and cries of "The game's afoot!"
For in reading this volume you will find such classic tales as "The Red-Headed League" and "The Man With The Twisted Lip"; you will encounter the famous dog that did nothing in the night-time ("Silver Blaze") and several versions of Holmes's favorite maxim ("When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth"); and you will meet one of the most fascinating and memorable characters ever to spring from the printed page: Holmes himself.
Perhaps most importantly, you will catch a glimpse of the world as an ideal reasoner might see it -- not as a grab-bag of random atomic facts in which our own role is negligible, but as a vast interconnected whole in which each part bears some necessary relation to the rest, and in which the reasoned pursuit of justice in all matters great and small is the business of each and every one of us.
Incidentally, the twentieth-century philosopher who presented that vision most consistently and cogently is, to my own mind, Brand Blanshard, and any Holmes readers who are interested in philosophy may enjoy investigating Blanshard's works as well.
As for the stories themselves, you simply can't go wrong in rediscovering or reading Holmes for the first time. Sure, Conan Doyle's stories sometimes lacked an internal logic (my favorite tale, 'The Adventure of the Red-Headed League," is riddled with plot holes). But there's a reason these have remained as classics that have never gone out of popular fashion, over a hundred years since publication: they're entertaining, cleverly written, wonderfully detailed, and often edge-of-your-seat thrilling. Included are all 57 short stories (ideal for a quite hour in your armchair, or for a commute during which you can escape to Victorian London) and the four longer novels (the most popular of which is "The Hound of the Baskervilles," but don't pass up the sublime and underrated "The Valley of Fear"). This is the ideal book for a long vacation (especially to London!), and, if I were stranded on a desert island, this is the book I'd want most with me (well, after that 'How to Build an Island-Escaping Raft from Coconuts' book).
If you haven't discovered Sherlock Holmes, this is the edition of his adventures to buy. If you read Conan Doyle long ago but haven't picked him up since, this is the edition to buy. If you've got several other Sherlock Holmes books on your shelf but want a single-volume complete edition, this is the edition to buy. As it's been said, 'There's no police like Holmes.'
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