The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Volume II (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

This is an awesome book. It comes in hardback for a great price and it is huge. I already owned the 1st volume of sherlock holmes too. The only dispute I had was that this volume and the first volume overlap. So up to page like 400 or something were stories I had already read in the first volume. But, the second half of the book were stories I had never read, and all in all it was a satisfactory product.

This book offered some of the lesser known writings of Doyle, as well as, some of the better known stories like "The Sign of Four". My only gripe was that the font was bit small and I was feeling like a detective myself holding a magnifying glass just to make out the words. Arthur Conan Doyle captures my interest with each little detail and surprise that awaits our true Bohenian Detective and his companion Watson. The dialogue is always fluid and natural. And the stories are so involving. I recommend anyone hoping to become a writer someday to tackle Doyle's works headon. You'll be better for it.

I find that most "Complete Collections" tend to be presentation copies meant to look pretty on bookshelves rather than to be read. Nothing wrong with this, unless you actually want to enjoy the stories.This set of the complete Sherlock Holmes is a highly readable and portable collection. The stories are split into two paperback novels, of the spinner-rack size, collected in a slim box. The type is standard size, so there is no loss in cramming them all into these two volumes. No frills here, just the stories.As to the content, of course all of Doyle's Sherlock Holmes tales are delicious. I look forward to enjoying old favorites, and discovering new gems in this complete collection.

If you're only going to buy one of the volumes of the Complete Sherlock Holmes, then this is the one I would recommend. The later stories are very good, too, but the ones in this one are better.

In Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created one of the world's best known and (arguably) most fully realized literary characters. Since Doyle's death, there have been plenty of people writing knockoffs of his stories. But with rare exceptions (Nicholas Meyer comes to mind), most have not lived up to the high standards Doyle set in at least the best of his Holmes tales.This volume includes the complete canon of Doyle's original stories -- four novels and fifty-six short stories, from "A Study in Scarlet" to "His Last Bow." While there are a handful of cases that bore significantly on international affairs (e.g. "The Bruce-Partington Plans"), most of them are of interest simply because of that touch of the _outre_ that Holmes loved so much and that provided such stimulating material to the ideal reasoner.There are some clunkers in the canon, of course, but the vast majority of these stories -- especially the earliest ones -- are just brilliant. If you are reading them for the first time, I envy you; the sturdy Dr. John Watson is about to introduce you to a new world, a world of Victorian gaslight and Stradivarius violins, of hansom cabs and cries of "The game's afoot!"For in reading this volume you will find such classic tales as "The Red-Headed League" and "The Man With The Twisted Lip"; you will encounter the famous dog that did nothing in the night-time ("Silver Blaze") and several versions of Holmes's favorite maxim ("When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth"); and you will meet one of the most fascinating and memorable characters ever to spring from the printed page: Holmes himself.Perhaps most importantly, you will catch a glimpse of the world as an ideal reasoner might see it -- not as a grab-bag of random atomic facts in which our own role is negligible, but as a vast interconnected whole in which each part bears some necessary relation to the rest, and in which the reasoned pursuit of justice in all matters great and small is the business of each and every one of us.Incidentally, the twentieth-century philosopher who presented that vision most consistently and cogently is, to my own mind, Brand Blanshard, and any Holmes readers who are interested in philosophy may enjoy investigating Blanshard's works as well.