Classics Considered

Note: I am writing this review at the airport—and a day late, at that!—so I will be brief for once. 🙂

In this collection of tales, Sherlock Holmes returns to the reader in every way, wrapping up loose threads from “The Final Problem” and picking back up more or less where Doyle left off. The Return has him once again helping (plucky) damsels in distress, confronting the worst men in London (there are many), and taking on high-stakes cases for government officials. While lamenting the limits Holmes has imposed on his authorly endeavors, Watson nonetheless shares with us stories that have since become iconic, such as “The Dancing Men” and “The Six Napoleons.”

My experience with these stories was mixed, and I ended up giving them a heavily weighted 5 stars on Goodreads, mainly because the highs were very high, in spite of certain lows. “The Norwood Builder” and the aforementioned Napoleons are two of my very favorite Holmes outings from the Jeremy Brett TV series, and rereading them, I found the stories stood up well on their own for having delightful novelty and a little dash of humor. “The Second Stain” is another story I like very much, mainly for its quiet and yet enormously satisfying ending. Needless to say, some stories’ strengths lie mainly in their novelty, such as “The Solitary Cyclist,” and these were a bit boring for me this time around, since I already knew well what was coming. And, as my reading buddy Cyberkitten mentioned in his review, it’s clear to see some of the stories simply follow a formula that Doyle had used before.

Nonetheless, I liked the Return, and if this is your first time reading it, you are unlikely to be disappointed. It was pretty cheeky of Doyle to blame Holmes’s retirement for the ending of the series. But as we know, that was not to be long-lived, either. 🙂