







This book will give you many insights into both Sherlock Holmes and Conan Doyle, along with other mystery literature. I have read the book through several times, and it has really deepened my appreciation of mystery literature and Holmes in general. I would put it into the "desert island" category of books.


One should also remember that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was committed to the Spiritualist cause at about the same time he started writing the Holmes stories, and these tales paid for and possibly helped propagandize his own religious views. Kendrick has simply uncovered the message that Doyle wrote in the stories a hundred years ago. He has done a very capable job.



Baring-Gould presents as good a chronology of the Doyle tales as anyone, and he "fills in the blanks" delightfully. (Imagine Holmes fighting a prehistoric bird in hand-to-talon combat on the deck of a freighter! It's true!!)
Baring-Gould obviously had a damn good time writing this extraordinary, and definitive, biography of Sherlock. And if you've already devoured the original 60 stories, dive into this book. Then set it alongside your copies of the Doyle books. It deserves a place there.


Readers of this work will also want to find a copy of Baring-Gould's masterly _The Annotated Sherlock Holmes_ if possible. These kids writing Holmes pastiches today just don't know what the hell they're doing :-).



Sherlock Holmes- Henry Comor, Dr. Watson- Gerard Parkes, Barrymore-Gillie Fenwick,
Heed the Baskerville family legend of the Hound: avoid the moors in those hours of the night when the powers of evil are exalted. Every Baskerville that has lived in the family home since the Legend began has met with a violent death. Dr. Mortimer writes to the one man that can help him, Sherlock Holmes, to exorcise the "Legend of the Hound" that plagues the Baskervilles. This radio adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's masterpiece traces Sherlock Holmes' adventure of superstition and revenge on the barren, gloomy moors in this thrilling mystery.


The BBC has once again done a masterful job of adapting the novel to the format of radio drama. When I first stumbled on to the BBC Holmes series, I thought Clive Merrison to be a scandalous over-actor, but going back and rereading some of the Holmes stories for the first time in decades shows that Merrison, of all the portrayers of Holmes, just might have gotten the oddball genius most nearly right. Holmes had a histrionic streak which caused him to keep his deductions secret until he could reveal them in the most sensational fashion possible, and Merrison captures this quirk of Holmes' character perfectly.
"The Hound" is unique among the Holmes novels because for a large part of the mystery, Holmes' character is offstage, appearing only at the last moment to bring events to a hair-raising denouement. Holmes' joint penchants for secrecy and sensation almost bring his client to grief, but all's well that ends well. This radio play begins, continues, and ends very well.



Now that I'm reading these stories again, the illustrations do enhance the stories greatly and adds more depth and understanding to the era in which these stories were written.
Although these stories are dated, some having been written over a hundred years ago and from the technological advances in criminology today, the suspense and pace of these stories will keep you glued until you get to the end of the mystery.
This book is well worth the expense and will be a fine addition to the collection of any Sherlock Holmes fan.





Klinger does a masterful job of using sources such as the 1883 Encyclopedia Britannica and the 1894 Baedeker's handbook of travel in Britain as well as recent scholarship. For example, in a footnote in the Noble Bachelor describing that there is food enough for four, "Holmes must have deduced that Lord St. Simon would not remain to share the repast; a point which Watson completely missed". Klinger also provided his own insights. The few appendices provide insight into such things as the identity of the snake in the speckled band or unrecorded cased recorded in the five orange pips. Perhaps the only annoying thing in the book is the use of abbreviations of some of the references. The Baring-Gold annotated Sherlock Homes is, still essential, and this is a welcome addition.

If you are new to Sherlock Holmes, this may not be the most economical way to pick up all of Conan Doyle's work. But if you are a long-time Holmes fan, or just want to experience the Holmes stories in a deeper and more informed way, I can think of no better purchase than this. ...


List price: $16.99 (that's 30% off!)




Who can really add to all that has been written over the years about this classic? The reader cannot help but be struck with Doyle's writing style. Its economy is a marvel. It is crisp and crackling, not to mention spellbinding. Even a straightforward introduction is masterly handled. Here, for example, is Watson telling us about the crime scene we are about to enter: "....I will.... describe events which occurred before we arrived on the scene by the light of knowledge which came to us afterwards."
Of course Doyle can establish a new scene with the same economy, but turn up the atmospheric temperature a good deal higher. He begins his retrospective "Scowrers" section in the snowbound Gilmerton Mountains, where a single track railroad leads us through a "long, winding tortuous valley," which is part of the "gloomy land of black crag and tangled forest."
This book is really two books woven together by the mysterious history of the central crime victim. The first is set in England, the second in the United States. Keep a sharp ear out for Doyle's deft handling of the King's English and then its transformation into the 19th Century Americanized version. The King's English is all about civility and civilization. In the American tongue, Doyle takes us to the fringes of civilization, to a Western mining town, where cruelty -- not civility -- is the order of the day.
I suppose one could argue that Holmes' deductive reasoning is the ultimate bulwark against chaos and violence. Perhaps for another Sherlock Holmes book. But I can't help but cite one example of Watson's obvious English sense of what is proper. Holmes' companion/narrator takes a stroll in an old-world garden surrounded by ancient yew trees, where he accidentally overhears the murder victim's wife laughing. Worse, she is laughing with her just murdered husband's faithful male companion. As Watson the narrator puts it, "I bowed with a coldness which showed, I dare say, very plainly the impression which had been produced upon my mind......I greeted the lady with reserve. I had grieved with her grief in the dining room. Now I met her appealing gaze with an unresponsive eye." Good ol' Watson!
May I suggest to the reader that, after this classic, you turn to R.L. Stevenson's, "The Master of Ballantrae"? Stevenson's masterpiece also jumps from the old world to the new, and like "The Valley of Fear" the new world for Stevenson also represents murder and mayhem. Something to ponder from these two great Scottish novelists.

List price: $27.95 (that's 30% off!)


Another comment that I have to make is Doyle's ability to write women characters. A lot of authors nowdays don't write good women -- they're either harpies, bimbos, or doormats. Doyle, this man from Edwardian England, writes people, sympathetic or otherwise, and his female characters are very real and very, very well done. There aren't many authors that cover everything -- sensitive characterization, awareness of people in this world who aren't just like them, an ability to put together a top notch plot, and the ability to write REALLY well. Doyle was one -- snag these stories and devour them as soon as you can!

As for the stories themselves, they're not only THE best mysteries in the English language, but fun to read as a picture of life in the Victorian era. There are some clinkers, and some of the situations and characters are rather absurd (Doyle shares with most of his fellow-countrymen an ineptitude for writing convincing American English!), but in general I'm still amazed at Doyle's ingenuity and his convincing portrayal of life in many different sectors of society. This is one of the few favorite books from my childhood that I still enjoy -- not as an exercise in nostalgia but as a Good Read.

The most fascinating aspect of these stories is the strangely modern character that Conan Doyle created in Holmes, a mystery man with an ill defined past, who plays the violin, possesses an encyclopedic knowledge of odd minutia that only the FBI labs could fully appreciate, thinks blindingly fast and always outside the box, is addicted to drugs and strangely indifferent to sex (as far as Watson knows, anyway). A far cry from what we have come to expect a detective to be, but SO entertaining in these very artificial melodramas. These stories are so far from what any kind of police or detective work have ever been that one could dismiss them, except then we would miss the fun.





