I've read a good number of Sherlock Holmes' stories in my life but never, until now, have I read the entirety of Conan Doyle's works about the most famous of fictional detectives (4 novels and 56 stories). I found each story superbly crafted, and there's probably not much to be said in this review that hasn't been said better (and by someone with authority to make literary declamations) elsewhere. So I will dispense with the idea of a literary review of these works and content myself with some comments on what I found to be the most compelling features of these stories.

First, Conan Doyle used the affable Dr. Watson to great effect to "hide" the solution to each puzzle and create a dramatic reveal at the story's end. What was perhaps most interesting to me is that, I progressed through the stories, I found myself more and more following the clues and beginning to guess what turned out to be the mystery's solution. Now, in most detective stories, that is a terrible flaw in the story's design. However, it works to an interesting effect in the Holmes' canon because the reader who begins to follow Holmes' deductive reasoning ends up with an advantage over the story's narrator, Dr. Watson! Thus, the reader still feels satisfied even when the solution is guessed early on. I find that an exceedingly clever play on the narrator-reader relationship.

The character of Holmes' himself to me has always been an icon of the "ideal modern man"...the one whose cool rationality, much like Spock's in an entirely different genre altogether, always asserts itself at the last minute to save the day. Here is a man who is "pure mind" and thus indomitable to his foes...even the great Professor Moriarty. Except Holmes is NOT that simple of a figure. Even if that is what he claims for himself, the Holmes that Watson paints for us is a more a man of IMAGINATION than intellect. The genius of Holmes is his ability to "embody" the criminals he pursues, imagine their motives, and thereby guess their essential moves. I would say Holmes is more ARTIST than SCIENTIST in these stories, especially given the lengths to which he goes to make each solution appear in as dramatic a way as possible. I'd never noticed the tremendous influence of these core Romantic ideals in the figure of Holmes until I took the time to work my way through the corpus.

Conan Doyle is an enviable talent because of the evenness of the collection (both in quality and tone). His preface to "The Return of Sherlock Holmes" indicated to me an author who had grown tired of the character; so often, when that happens, the quality of craftsmanship begins to noticeably slip. Admirably, Conan Doyle added an additional 32 stories as well as the finest of the Holmes' novels (in my opinion), "The Hound of the Baskervilles," after reaching that point. For me, there was no discovery of "hidden gems" within the larger collection because each story is so like the most famous pieces (think here of the "Adventure of Silver Blaze" or "The Red-Headed League").

I suppose there's nothing particularly admirable or noteworthy about completing a feat such as this. Calling it a "feat" is also an overstatement of the case. But I can say this: it was a very satisfying venture. in Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, Conan Doyle has gifted to the literary world two wonderfully-drawn characters that have raised these works to the level of classic literature. And deservedly so. ( )