THE CANON PART ONE

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - 56 short stories and four novels and here on the Archive over the next two days we will offer brief reviews of them all. We'll kick off with A Scandal on Bohemia which was actually the third Holmes, published but the first short story and the first appearance of Holmes in The Strand.

A Scandal in Bohemia

Holmes is asked by a King to recover compromising letters he has written to an opera singer named, Irene Adler. It's played largely for laughs but does introduce us to Irene Adler, described as the only woman who has ever affected the great detective. Holmes in fact refers to her as, "the woman". It's not one of the best but I'd give it 7/10.


The Red Headed League

A pawnbrokerer visits Holmes and tells him a strange story of how he landed a mysterious job on a fine wage and all because of his mop of red hair. However when he turns up for work one morning he finds that everyone has vanished and the offices are empty. There's some great surreal moments - artificial knee cap manufacturing and we learn that Holmes judges the difficulty of cases by the amount of pipes he smokes while cogitating - this is a three pipe problem. I'd give this one 8/10


A Case of Identity-A office clerk vanishes just before his wedding day and Holmes is asked to solve the mystery. This one doesn't work that well since the plot is too silly and the twist at the end feels cheated. There are some good moments but it only rates 5/10


The Boscombe Valley Mystery

In a West Country district, a young man is accused of murdering his father. In this one we get a taste of Watson's home life until he is called away to aid his good friend, Sherlock Holmes solve another case. The most notable thing about this story is that it featured the deerstalker cap for the first time. Well it's not mentioned in the story but Sidney Paget's illustration featured Holmes in the cap. Otherwise a poor story.5/10

The Five Orange Pips

The first of the truly classic short stories. The plot concerns a man receives an odd gift which he is sure spells his doom. It is one of the rare cases where Holmes is seen to fail and the story is all the better for it. It works on more than one level and Doyle seems to delight in creating a story where it is the powers of nature that delivers justice rather than the great detective. Got to be a big 9/10