The Return of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

The Return of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of 13 stories, the first of which tells the story of how Holmes, contrary to popular belief, survived his fall over the Reichenbach Falls and remained hidden for three years in order to protect himself and further foil the evil plans of Moriarty’s remaining gang. Holmes returns to reside with Watson, who has taken it upon himself to draft their exploits for publication in the future.

I quite liked this collection. The stories are short and sweet and less likely to lose you than the novels are. I’m tempted to dub it a children’s version of Sherlock Holmes since you don’t have to have a terribly long attention span to be able to enjoy them. Personally, I often found the novels long and complicated and often got lost in the twistings and turnings, which is actually the point I suppose. Sherlock was supposed to be the genius, not the reader, so you had to get lost to make him look good. However, with these, I was often able to keep up and see where he was going with his research before he got there and even guessed at what happened a couple of times. The only thing I didn’t like about these was that Watson was depicted as especially stupid. Obviously this was supposed to make Holmes look all the cleverer, but it really just made me think Watson was a complete idiot. It kind of made the two look like a Pinky and The Brain combo. I’m not sure that’s exactly what Doyle intended.

5 out of 5. If you like mysteries and Holmes, you should like these.