Young Sherlock Holmes

I loved this film as a child!

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

My first book to finish in 2012 is Sherlock Holmes.

There are two reasons why I’m sure I ended up picking a copy of this book 1) it was at the bargain price of 99p in HMV and 2) there was a new BBC series (due) out!

I thoroughly loved reading the stories and it reminded me just how much I love reading detective fiction and my love of Nancy Drew books as a child -that and episodes of ‘Columbo’ that were on tv in the school holidays! I remember totally loving the puzzles and conundrums and the ‘Ahhha’ moment at the end when all was revealed though I have never really been bothered about trying to puzzle over who did it and how it was all going to work out.

At the start of my reading challenge 01/01/12 I was already about half way through this and have probably felt inclined to pick it up again because of the latest series of ‘Sherlock’ starting on tv, I suppose that is the joy of short stories because you can dip in and out whenever the mood takes you. Some of my favourites in this selection are ‘The Man with the Twisted Lip’ which takes Holmes to an opium den and the seedy East End of London. I love Conan Doyle’s description of the dark, hazy rooms and the pained, twisted faces of the bodies laid in wooden berths. I also liked the puzzle of ‘The Boscombe Valley Mystery’  with the man found bludgeoned to death and his son accused of the murder. Another from the collection that I loved was ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’ which I’d like to revisit after seeing the ‘Sherlock’ episode, this story introduces us to Irene Adler and with the tv series I liked the way that Irene was reinvented for modern television and the sense that Holmes had met his match, in fact Watson describes her as “the woman” who “eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex” and that came through successfully on screen.

After reading this book I’m left with the need to read more Sherlock Holmes and after my year of reading at home I’ll definitely be checking out ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ and ‘The Sign of Four’.