The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes & the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

This book included 12 adventures: 1. A Scandal in Bohemia 2. The Red-Headed League 3. A Case of Identity 4. The Boscombe Valley Mystery 5. The Five Orange Pips 6. The Man with the Twisted Lip 7. The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle 8. The Adventure of the Speckled Band 9. The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb 10. The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor 11. The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet 12. The Adventure of the Copper Beeches Great classic literature. I really enjoy reading Holmes and Watson's adventures, solving the mystery, and putting the puzzles together.

My 9 year old carried this edition of Sherlock around with him for a week. The replica images are cool; the type is a bit difficult to read. A great gift.

This well-bound hardcover book is a medium brown color without the dust jacket, and has gold lettering on the spine. There's also a lightly embossed picture of the front cover on the hardcover. The inside pages are made of high quality paper, and there are about 11 illustrations throughout the book, including the front cover. The illustrations are printed in color on glossy paper, and are not the original illustrations. They look like oil paintings, mostly of the characters in the book, and the faces have an intentionally "blotchy" but artistic look to them, in higher contrast than portraits meant to capture real life. The print looks to be about medium height (say, 10-12 point) printed without columns on each page. Each page has a fairly wide margin -- almost like a textbook designed to allow the student to take notes. At a few points in the book there are footnotes that describe words that may not be understandable to the modern reader. For example, in The Man with the Twisted Lip, there is a footnote to the phrase "mouseline de soie". The footnote clarifies that this means "silk muslin". The book's weight and size makes it comfortable to hold and carry around with you if need be. If you're looking for a book that captures the feel of the Strand magazine, along with the original illustrations, this is not the book for you. But if you'd like a good quality book with a modern feel, I think you'll be very happy with this edition's construction. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes contains some of the best stories in the collection such as the Red Headed League, A Scandal in Bohemia, The Five Orange Pips, The Man with the Twisted Lip, The Blue Carbuncle, and The Speckled Band. There are 12 stories in all, as well as an Afterward that describes the growing popularity of the stories as well as some parallels between the author, Arthur C. Doyle and John Watson. Given the quality of the stories, I think the beginner or the veteran Holmes enthusiast will enjoy reading this book, and will think it money well spent for its entertainment value.

You can't go wrong here. The book is light, the type is large and the original illustrations and reproduced in their original sizes. Plus you have the charm of seeing the actual type laid out when these now classics stories were first read.

Who can say more about Sherlock Homes? Except that he still remains one of the most fascinating characters in the annals of fiction (with the possible exception of "The Sea Wolf" by Jack London). And his latest portrayer, Jeremy Brett, in the PBS series, is just dead-on. He is a joy to watch after you've read the real thing. Why Watson is as old as he is is a mystery, however, as in Doyle's stories he is quite a young man, being at most no more than thirty-five, and in most of the tales, married, and living apart from Holmes. My book had 612 pages, and a page-turner til the last. Especially great to read over the holidays when time is at a premium, and no story is very long. Easy to pick up and put down. The stories are not in the least dated, and if you think that, you are sorely mistaken. A good mystery is a good mystery, in any century. No serious reader should be without Holmes in his collection.