{"id":23012,"date":"2019-05-11T00:01:04","date_gmt":"2019-05-11T06:01:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/?p=23012"},"modified":"2019-05-14T15:15:25","modified_gmt":"2019-05-14T21:15:25","slug":"book-review-the-sign-of-four","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/book-review-the-sign-of-four\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: The Sign of Four"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A version of this review <\/a>appeared in 2011.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Sign of Four begins when a young woman comes to Sherlock Holmes with a problem. Her father disappeared from his hotel in London on returning on leave from India. She began receiving a pearl a year for the past six year from an anonymous benefactor. She wants Holmes and Watson to accompany her to the mysterious rendezvous. The benefactor informs the party of a fabulous treasure that the young woman is entitled to. However, the benefactor\u2019s brother is found dead and Scotland Yard jumps to conclusions and charges the kindly gentleman as the murderer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Holmes has to uncover what really happened, free the innocent man, and find the real killer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story is wonderfully paced with plenty of excitement, from chasing down the criminals through the use of a dog to another appearance by the Baker Street irregulars, and a thrilling boat chase for the climax of the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than a century after it was first written, the novel shows little sign of its age.  The Sign of Four <\/em>is well-paced, exciting, and even action-packed story.  It represents Doyle at his finest in many ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The puzzle has a touch of the bizarre with its use of exotic weapons and strange footprints, but not too bizarre as seemed to me to be the case in some later Holmes stories such as \u201cThe Creeping Man.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While in Study in Scarlet, <\/em>we learned about Holmes, in this book we begin to see Holmes\u2019 personality: the genius driven to avoid a hum drum existence, who seeks out trouble to find some problem to keep his attention. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The novel is also noteworthy for its focus on Holmes\u2019 use of cocaine. \u00a0Dr. Watson (and by extension Dr. Doyle) were concerned about the use of cocaine in the late 19th Century and its negative effects. However, Doyle wasn\u2019t heavy handed in his approach, and so Watson\u2019s concern sounds more like a modern doctor\u2019s concern with eating too many trans fatty foods. And Holmes is blaise about it, leading to some interactions and statement that may seem surreal or humorous to the modern reader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you can get past that, Sign of Four <\/em>is truly a classic that every fan of detective fiction should read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rating 5.0 stars out of 5.0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note: <\/em>You can download this book free for your Kindle here<\/a>. It also should be available for free for other e-readers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A version of this review appeared in 2011. The Sign of Four begins when a young woman comes to Sherlock Holmes with a problem. Her father disappeared from his hotel in London on returning on leave from India. She began receiving a pearl a year for the past six year from an anonymous benefactor. She…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[63,123],"tags":[621,3067,359,705],"class_list":["post-23012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","category-golden-age-article","tag-book-review","tag-cocaine","tag-good-review","tag-sherlock-holmes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pECdK-5Za","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23012","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=23012"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23012\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23027,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23012\/revisions\/23027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}