Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

 What is there left to say about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories?  A Study In Scarlet, published in 1887, introduced both Holmes and his chronicler, Dr. John Watson to the reading public and also introduced the public to the idea of the application of scientific methods to the study of crime.   For those reasons, I would give A Study In Scarlet a B, although this time around I found Doyle's American narrative and language more irritating than entertaining.  Grade:  B.   

The Hound of the Baskervilles still gets an A, though.  I first read it when I was about twelve years old; my mother caught me reading it late at night and made me turn out my light before I found out that the hound was a real dog and not a demonic apparition, and I couldn't sleep for envisioning a spectral hound slathering at my bedroom door.  Well plotted, well written, it still gets Grade:  A.  

I also re-read the short stories collected by Sir Arthur's son Adrian Conan Doyle in A Treasury of Sherlock Holmes, which were published over the years in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, The Return of Sherlock Holmes, His Last Bow, and The Case-book of Sherlock Holmes.   After the first several books of Holmes stories, Doyle apparently tired of writing them and decided to kill Holmes off.  To accomplish this, he introduced the criminal mastermind, Professor Moriarty in the story "The Final Problem", in which he has Holmes, pursued across Europe by Moriarty, grapple with Moriarty on the edge of the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland, with the result that both men apparently fell to their death.  Later, bowing to public pressure and financial needs, Doyle resurrected Holmes in "The Problem of the Empty House", in which Holmes reveals that Watson had misinterpreted the confused footprints on the edge of the Reichenbach Falls and that Holmes had climbed up to fake his own death.  This never made much sense to me because it's apparent during the course of the story that Moriarty's chief lieutenant, Colonel Sebastian Moran knew from the start that Holmes was still alive as he dislodged boulders above him in an attempt to kill Holmes then and there, so why the need to pretend to the rest of the world that he was dead?  

At any rate, it was a very satisfying exercise to revisit the Sherlock Holmes stories.  Grade:  A overall.  

Anthony Boucher

     I don't recall having read The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars, published in 1940, in the past, but probably did so.  The Baker Street Irregulars, as any fan of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories knows, were a rag-tag gang of street urchins who assisted Holmes on several of his cases.  In this book, they are a literary Sherlock Holmes fan society, dedicated to the preservation of "the Sacred Writings", the Sherlock Holmes stories.  There is, in fact, a real Baker Street Irregular society, founded in 1934 by Christopher Morley that continues to this day and upon which the society in the book is based.  

    The society in the book is a tongue-in-cheek nod to the real group; the fictional members are concerned about the proposal of a Hollywood film studio to make a movie of the Holmes story The Speckled Band, a story that caused me nightmares when I read it as a child.  The Irregulars believe that the scriptwriter chosen by the studio, an ex-detective named Stephen Worth, has nothing but contempt for the Holmes stories and will turn out a screen play that will make a mockery of the Sacred Writings, so some of their members converge on Hollywood to make sure that does not happen.  

    Worth is apparently murdered shortly after they arrive at a mansion provided by the movie studio, but the corpse disappears, and a series of adventures evoking the Holmes stories befall the Irregulars over the next few days, until a very real corpse turns up.

    I found the story an interesting Golden Age puzzle, even if it's a bit labored with all the references to the Holmes stories crammed into it, down to having a housekeeper named Mrs. Hudson and a not-too-bright police sergeant named Watson.   

Grade: B.  

    I found The Case of the Seven Sneezes to be a disturbing book, mainly because of a series of cat killings that may or may not relate to several human murders.  Members of a wedding party have gathered on an island to celebrate the Silver Anniversary of the wedding of the owners of the island.  Shortly after they arrive, they find they are completely cut off from the mainland with no means of escape, and a servant on the island is found injured after an attempt was made to cut his throat, echoing an unsolved murder that occurred on the eve of the wedding in 1914.  With a cast of unpleasant characters so confined, is it any surprise that more murderous attempts follow?  

Grade:  C.  I'm not reading this one again.