{"id":10758,"date":"2014-08-09T00:01:42","date_gmt":"2014-08-09T06:01:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/?p=10758"},"modified":"2014-08-08T20:06:35","modified_gmt":"2014-08-09T02:06:35","slug":"top-12-sherlock-holmes-stories-part-thee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/top-12-sherlock-holmes-stories-part-thee\/","title":{"rendered":"The Top 12 Sherlock Holmes Stories, Part Three"},"content":{"rendered":"

We continue our countdown of the top 12 Sherlock Holmes stories. (See:\u00a0Part One<\/a>\u00a0 and Part Two<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

3) The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902): It\u2019s no wonder that Sherlock Holmes’ third novel \u00a0is \u00a0the most often adapted Sherlock Holmes story. It\u2019s rich with atmosphere with its setting on the moor. It also has some genuinely scary moments with the menace of the titular hound as well as some great elements that add suspense such as the escaped convict. If the story suffers at all, it\u2019s from the fact that Sherlock Holmes is off stage for much of the story. But this really gives Watson a chance to shine as both an observer and a man of action.<\/p>\n

2) The Adventure The Red Headed League (1890) This is a good concept that comes with a built in moral. A man gets paid a fantastic salary by the Red Headed League for copying pages from the encyclopedia because he has an amazing head of red hair. However, the Red Headed League disappears as quickly as it appeared sending the confused shopkeeper to Holmes.<\/p>\n

There are two things that are really fascinating about this story. The first is the idea of a superior intelligence preying on people\u2019s greed and stupidity to victimize another person. This would be revisited (albeit without as much success) in “The Stockbroker\u2019s Clerk” and “The Three Garidebs.” The second thing is just seeing how Holmes puts this whole case together. It\u2019s one of his finest pieces of deduction as Holmes faces a worthy and underrated foe.<\/p>\n

1) The Sign of Four (1890): This is one of the best mystery novels of all time. The Sign of Four<\/em> has so much working for it. It\u2019s a book that was decades ahead of its time. The Penguins Classic edition of this book is only 160 pages. However, it\u2019s tightly written and manages to work so much in. You have a great puzzle mystery, combined with creepy and memorable characters, a fast-paced quick moving story, and even a good action and chase scene. It includes a flashback to the past that reveals what happened in backstory but unlike in A Study in Scarle<\/em>t, the flashback section is interesting and doesn\u2019t drag on forever.<\/p>\n

This story works on so many levels, particularly when you consider how dry and one dimensional detective fiction was for decades after that. While the Sign of Four<\/em> is often overshadowed by The Hound of the Baskervilles<\/em>, \u00a0from my point of view, \u00a0The Sign of Four<\/em> is the better novel. The Sign of Four was decades ahead of its time. Decades after\u00a0The Sign of Four,\u00a0<\/em>most mystery novels were rather one dimensional puzzle mysteries but\u00a0The Sign of Four\u00a0<\/em>showcases everything a good mystery novel can be and that it was written in the 19th century is a testimony to Doyle’s genius.<\/p>\n

That concludes my list. I’d love to hear about yours. Please share about your favorite Holmes stories in the comments.<\/p>\n

If you enjoyed this post, you can have new posts about Detective stories and the golden age of radio and television delivered\u00a0automatically to your Kindle<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We continue our countdown of the top 12 Sherlock Holmes stories. (See:\u00a0Part One\u00a0 and Part Two.) 3) The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902): It\u2019s no wonder that Sherlock Holmes’ third novel \u00a0is \u00a0the most often adapted Sherlock Holmes story. It\u2019s rich with atmosphere with its setting on the moor. It also has some genuinely scary…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[123,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-golden-age-article","category-sherlock-holmes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pECdK-2Nw","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10758"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10802,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10758\/revisions\/10802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}