Genre: British Detective, Classics, Short Stories

Narrative Style: First person, 

Rating: 4/5

Published:1904

Format: Paperback

Synopsis: Sherlock Holmes has been missing, presumed dead, after his encounter with Moriaty on the Reichenbach Falls. In the first story of this collection, he reappears, much to the surprise of Watson, his trusty sidekick. Together, they solve five more mysteries of varying degrees of complication. 

Reading Challenges: 2020 Alphabet Soup – Author Edition

Overall, I did enjoy this book but as always, whenever I read a Sherlock Holmes story, I have to overcome my irritation with the main character. Holmes is infuriatingly intelligent, able to spot things that most normal people don’t and always about three leaps ahead of everyone else. Unlike Watson, I don’t find these attractive attributes. I much prefer my detectives to be fallible – to be more human, in fact. But once you get over that – and Watson’s adoration which is also a little annoying – there is much to enjoy here.

The first story – which heralded Holmes reappearance – was perhaps the least satisfying. Holmes has information that Watson, Lestrade and the reader could not know. All that is left if for the reader is to admire Holmes’ abilities. Not much fun, to be honest.

The other four stories in this collection are all much more interesting and allow the reader to stretch their own powers of deduction a bit more. Indeed, I even worked out what one of the mysteries was. (Incidentally, I’m never sure if this pleases me or not. It shouldn’t be too easy to work out, nor too difficult. It’s a fine line or maybe I’m just difficult to please.)

The most enjoyable story was probably Black Peter. It was suitably twisty, it involved a policeman who jumped in the wrong direction, murder by harpoon and lots of cleverness from Sherlock including running through a pig with a harpoon to see how much strength it took.

Overall, I’m not a huge fan of short stories but they work nicely with detective stories. Obviously, if you have a full on police inquiry, you need a full novel but the quirky, interesting mysteries presented here are just complicated enough to sustain about 25 pages of text.