The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (94th Book)

Sherlock Holmes is a character that has stood the test of time. I had some time to kill after reading My Antonia and I decided I should tackle Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's character as he actually wrote him. I am obsessed with Sherlock Holmes, but I recently realized that I haven't actually read the REAL books. I have watched several Sherlock Holmes movies and TV shows. BBC's Sherlock being the best and an Asylum movie "Sherlock Holmes" from 2010 being the worst....it involved dinosaurs and was as cheesily horrible as one can imagine.

I have also read just about every novel adaptation you can think of including "The Baker Street Letters", "The Sherlockian", the Mary Russell series and "The Art of Deception".

I have even visited "221B Baker Street" or the Sherlock Holmes Museum while on a trip to London.

All this and yet I have never been formally introduced to the man by the author himself! I started my novel 100 challenge because I believed there would be many free novels that were available on my kobo that had become public domain. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes just so happened to be one of these novels. This was an excellent read! I was not let down and thoroughly enjoyed the little puzzles that filled this compilation of short stories. This book includes such famous stories of the "Red Headed League" and "A Scandal in Bohemia". I see why the world went crazy over this intelligent detective.

One of the adaption novels that I read ,"The Sherlockian", gave me some insight into Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the history of the infamous detective. Apparently Conan Doyle grew to hate Sherlock Holmes whose fame greatly exceeded his own! This novel followed a group of Sherlock enthusiasts as they try to solve the murder of one of their own, a man who had just announced he had found the lost diary of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This novel pointed out why Sherlock was so accessible to people. Doctor Watson is nothing more than a plot aid to make Holmes accessible to the masses by allowing the overly intelligent detective to tell their bumbling assistant how they figured out the crime. I realized that this is a common tool in mystery novels including one of my other favourite Victorian detectives, Poirot by Agatha Christie. In her novels, Captain Hastings, does the work of Doctor Watson quite nicely! (Speaking of which I just finished an adaptation of Poirot called the Monogram Murders which wasn't too bad.)

At any rate. I LOVE Victorian mystery novels I am happy to say I have joined the ranks  of people who have actually read Sherlock Holmes. I immediately went and downloaded all the rest of novels and short stories and will hopefully find time to get to know the REAL Sherlock Holmes personally.