His Last Bow & The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes
Doyle pulled one over on me, I'll admit it. I thought 'His Last Bow' and 'The Case Book' would be as much a bore as the previous works were. The two collections here went frankly into the bizarre, and in only one or two cases did Holmes' traditional dry logic prevent my enjoyment of the stories.
Criminal rings, body parts in the post, ape glands, killer jellyfish and physical disfigurement all play an active role in stories that were rapidly becoming a nostalgic past. A few of the stories are Edwardian, but most were written in the 1920s and Victorian England, as seedy as Doyle makes it, has a rose-tinted, prewar hue about it. It was a time when a man could get things done!
It took far longer than I thought it would, and my Holmes-fatigue might never go away, but if you make it this far, these stories are worth the trouble.
Sherlock Holmes
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