The case-book of Sherlock Holmes

About the book

These cases return Sherlock Holmes to problems involving endangered reputations, puzzling behaviour, concealed histories, and apparently impossible events. Doyle also varies the narrative arrangement: Watson does not tell every story, giving readers opportunities to encounter familiar methods from a different position. Some investigations begin with suggestions of the grotesque or supernatural, while others depend on the ordinary dangers of jealousy, coercion, and greed. The shorter form gives each opening disturbance room to become a compact test of interpretation. Readers familiar with earlier collections can notice both continuities in the partnership and experiments in how its stories are presented. The volume's range makes it suitable for reading one case at a time, attending to the particular assumptions each mystery invites and then unsettles.

• Interpretation
• Hidden histories
• Narrative perspective

Why read it

For late Holmes cases that vary the familiar storytelling pattern while retaining the pleasures of close observation.

Short-story collection · English text