Quote:
Originally Posted by Mike L
I see you headed your comment "Sherlock Holmes Mysteries" (my italics). Maybe that's part of the issue. The Sherlock Holmes stories are not intended to be mysteries. They're not like Agatha Christies or Raymond Chandlers, where a crime has been committed, and the reader is invited to choose the culprit from a short list of suspects.
Rather, they're meant to offer an insight into the character and methods of Holmes himself. In fact, in many of the stories (more than half, I think), there is no crime at all, or, if there is, the perpetrators are never brought to justice.
That said, I agree with you that some of the stories are uninspiring. That's especially true of the later ones (say, those in the Case-book of Sherlock Holmes), which can almost be described as pot-boilers. In many of those later stories, you get the impression that Conan Doyle was writing them only because he felt he had to. He had clearly lost interest in Holmes long before.
Mike
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Thanks for the feedback!
Maybe I'll run through a couple more. Have you read The House of Silk by any chance?