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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - The Best of Sherlock Holmes

ISBN: 85326 7482

This Wordsworth Edition of Sherlock Holmes' stories combines the stories elected by Conan Doyle as his very best, with a group selected by the editor. The resulting edition is pure pleasure!
I found reading Holmes a very comforting experience, like settling down into a favourite chair, with warm drink and snoring pet dog! Each tale surprised me in some way and many of the characters though slightly 'stagey' still had the capacity to unsettle. Indeed it is the very consistency of Holmes' friendship with Watson which manages to allay any creeping horrors and I gained lots of pleasure from the illustrations too which seemed to confirm the ascendancy of Holmes through his singular appearance. The melodrama of the narratives is interestingly heightened through the black and white illustrations all adding shape and nuance to the setting.

Yet what is 'it' that enchants in Holmes? Is it the implied combination of calibration, detachment and tobacco?! The overriding trust we have in Holmes' ability to out think any enemy or criminal? Perhaps it is just that. Reading Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes makes us feel safe in what is a profoundly 'unsafe' world. The measured words of Holmes give us security and hope. Holmes' talent for peculiar attentiveness is unsurpassed in the tales, even when he is threatened by the most brilliant and wicked men in Europe. Where in today's world could we ever hope to rendezvous with such a mind?

Reviewed By: Janet Lewison

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