The Case Book Of Sherlock Holmes

Name: The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes

Author: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Published: 1927

“My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people don’t”

This is by far one of the oldest books I’ve ever read. For me, if the book is older than 10 years, they call kids by their last names or their phones are bricks, I wouldn’t read it. There is just that awkward time where a book is too old to be talked about any more and too young to be a classic. But Sherlock Holmes would have to be one of the originals (mainly because it came out with the dinosaurs…) Ever since I read Moriarty by Anthony Horowitz, see earlier post, I wondered what the genuine books were like. And:

“Elementary, my dear Watson, elementary”

This book is one to read with a dictionary. The victorians had a rather strange but beautiful language; it is really intriguing discovering new words and phrases. And while I doubt you will ever need to know what an axiom is, or why the man downstairs appears scorbutic, it’s interesting. Sort of. My other point would be that the mysteries are pretty compact. As in Holmes will explain what has happened and then that’s the end of that story. You often don’t find out how he figured it out or even whether the criminal got away. Even though Conan Doyle had to fit 12 separate stories into the book, he could have just aded a few more pages, because it’s not a particularly long novel (but old book = tiny text). Within that, the characters and clues aren’t particularly built up so it’s difficult to guess a solution as a reader or how the detective could have possibly worked it out. In some cases, it isn’t genius its just pure impossible.

“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains however improbable must be the truth “

SWEETENER: The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes – another reminder of its age, the length of that title! – is not one case, but 12 shorter, separate mysteries. It was the last novel Conan Doyle ever wrote about the famous detective, but this isn’t acknowledged in the book. To make it even more confusing, the cases aren’t written in chronological order and not all by Holmes’ companion Dr Watson either. However, this makes it more interesting in some ways because if murder isn’t your type, there are lots of other varieties of problems included in the book.

ROMAINE CALM AND CARROT ON! If blown out stories are more your type, with plot and characters and mysteries then this probably isn’t your type. But larger mysteries have been written about the great detective and Dr Watson such as The Hound of the Baskervilles or A Study in Scarlett that you might want to give a try. Sounding a bit like my English teacher here, but reading classics is pretty interesting. But hang in there. You never know. You right actually figure out what scorbutic means!

NOTE: I bet that you looked up what scorbutic means…
Tell me if you can actually create a sentence with it in. I’m stuck.

If you have read this book, want to share a book that you’ve read or have an opinion on other english related things about my blog, just click on the comments section. I really want to hear your opinion 🙂