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Title: The Complete Sherlock Holmes: All 4 Novels and 56 Short Stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ISBN: 0-553-32825-5 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 October, 1986 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 2 List Price(USD): $13.90 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.79 (96 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: All the tales of the greatest detective in literary history
Comment: The complete adventures of Sherlock Holmes is an excellent gift for young and old alike. I first read these stories in Junior High School and loved them then. After reading the complete collection a second time, my appreciation of the excellence of these stories has only increased. Like Dickens's great novels such as David Copperfield, a second and even third visit to The Complete Adventures is both warranted and rewarded. Those people who loved the late Jeremy Brett's characterization of Holmes on PBS's "Mystery," are almost certain to find the stories on which this series is based equally entertaining.
From our first encounter with Holmes in Conan Doyle's introductory novel, A Study in Scarlet, and his meeting with Dr. Watson, with whom he shared rooms at the now famous 221B Baker Street, we are fascinated by the uniqueness of Holmes's eccentric character, his incredible intelligence in all things concerning the science of deduction, his total dedication to his craft, and the enormous resources of energy and determination he calls on to solve problems no one else can master.
Holmes is a consulting detective; that is, he is the court of last appeal when the police, government officials, and private citizens can find help no where else. What makes Holmes special is not only his vast knowledge related to crime and the master criminal, like the infamous Professor Moriarty, but his incredible powers of observation and deduction, which he uses in almost every story to amaze Dr. Watson and the various detectives of Scotland Yard who come seeking his help.
Conan Doyle is a fine writer and he wanted to turn his attention to other projects and so decided to kill off Holmes at a last meeting with Professor Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls in the Alps in the highly recommended story, The Adventure of the Final Problem. As we might expect, Holmes is not so easily disposed of. The demand for more adventures prompted Conan Doyle to publish a final volume of stories of the greatest detective in literary history.
Rating: 5
Summary: "You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive."
Comment: In Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created one of the world's best known and (arguably) most fully realized literary characters. Since Doyle's death, there have been plenty of people writing knockoffs of his stories. But with rare exceptions (Nicholas Meyer comes to mind), most have not lived up to the high standards Doyle set in at least the best of his Holmes tales.
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.
Rating: 5
Summary: The game is afoot!
Comment: The greatest detective in all of literature is between the covers of this excellent edition of the complete stories of Sherlock Holmes. Of all the editions out currently out there, the Doubleday hardcover version is by far the best. With 1122 pages, it's a hefty tome, but packed between the covers, in an edition that won't give you eye-strain to read, are all four full-length novels and fifty-six short stories, plus an excellent introduction by Christopher Morley. This is the version to get.
There has never been anything quite like Sherlock Holmes; he's in a class by himself. We meet him first in his late twenties, just starting a career as the world's only consulting detective, when he's introduced to his invaluable chronicler Dr. Watson. What is Holmes without Watson? He's not nearly as interesting alone; Watson is an absolute necessity. Holmes needs Watson's obtuseness as a foil for his own razor-sharp brilliance. In some of the later volumes, Holmes narrates a couple of his own cases. They fall flatter than a pancake. Let Holmes stick to what he knows; we must have Watson to show him to best effect.
There are so many great stories included in this volume that probably no two people's list of personal favorites will match; my own are "The Red-Headed League" and "The Copper Beeches" from "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes"; "The Yellow Face", "The Naval Treaty" and "The Final Problem" from "Memoirs", "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton" and "The Second Stain" from "The Return", and "His Last Bow" from the volume of the same title. The incomparable "Hound of the Baskervilles" rates as my favorite long novel. Conan Doyle not only gave us some wonderful tales, but some unforgettable secondary characters as well: the pea-brained detectives Gregson and Lestrade; brother Mycroft, even more brilliant as Sherlock and even more eccentric; and the scruffy gang of street kids known as the Baker Street Irregulars.
Holmes himself is one of the most fascinating and enigmatic characters in all fiction. Why doesn't he have (or seem to want)a life outside of solving crimes? We know he has an off-and-on cocaine problem, not to mention some peculiar habits, such as shooting holes in his parlor walls to spell out VR (Victoria Regina) in bullet pocks (why his landlady didn't throw him out is never explained), and except for the inscrutable Irene Adler, he seems to have a marked aversion towards women. Well, maybe it's just as well that his whole life was detecting and solving crimes, else how could he have been involved in so many delightful adventures?
As Morley says in his introduction to this volume, we should be grateful to those ophthalmic patients who kept missing their appointments with Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle, leaving him with enough spare time on his hands to write these stories. In the lanky figure of his consulting detective, Conan Doyle created one of the most popular characters of all modern fiction. There is no more compelling crime-buster, and never has been, and probably never will be, than Sherlock Holmes.
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Title: Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe by Edgar Allan Poe ISBN: 0385074077 Publisher: Doubleday Pub. Date: 15 August, 1984 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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Title: The Baker Street Companion by Ariel Books ISBN: 0836210085 Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing Pub. Date: 13 September, 1996 List Price(USD): $3.95 |
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Title: The Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companion to Sherlock Holmes by Dick Riley, Pam McAllister ISBN: 0826411169 Publisher: Continuum Pub Group Pub. Date: November, 1998 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Exploits of Sherlock Holmes by John Dickson Carr, Adrian Conan Doyle ISBN: 0517203383 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 11 May, 1999 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne ISBN: 0812550927 Publisher: Tor Classics Pub. Date: 15 October, 1995 List Price(USD): $3.99 |
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