The trouble with short stories is they are often published as a collection only AFTER they first appear in print. Watson says this is the woman who pretty much stole Holmes’ heart….she was always ‘the woman’ to him but yet she is absent for the entire series. For instance, in the first short story of the collection called A Scandal in Bohemia, we meet Irene Adler for the first and only time in this collection.
This leads me to the one question not answered by the books yet….why DOES Watson start documenting their adventures in the first place?īecause Holmes’ character is underdeveloped at this point in the series, his relationships with all other characters are a little off. Watson must not get out much or else he has a very bad memory because to him EVERYTHING is amazing! Watson starts almost every story with some sort of preface like ‘blah blah blah of all the cases Holmes and I worked together none amazes me more than blah blah blah (I’m paraphrasing horribly here)’ and then he launches into the case. So I suppose one must not look too far into the essence of the characters and plot line as it much of it is period related but it does get old after a while….I suppose that is why these were published in magazines etc. I am sure for most Victorian era readers this was considered very very very fantastic writing and very visionary so I tried to keep that in mind as I read….for the period it was SHOCKINGLY good and different. The one question I kept coming back to throughout this collection was it’s lack of unoriginality.
Perhaps when I finish the entire book series he will develop more but really he seems flat. Holmes does have his moments of humor but overall his character seems a little underdeveloped for me. This collection of short stories was a fun fast read which satisfied my need to read but I did not feel committed to an entire long novel however after the first five short stories I found myself wondering if I was simply re-reading the same story over and over again?Įvery short story seemed to follow the same pattern, a client came to see Holmes, he enlisted Watson’s help, Holmes found some small detail in the client’s story that no one else could and made it look easy and eventually he solved the case. I have just finished The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes which actually went pretty fast compared to the four novels I read earlier.