{"id":6160,"date":"2012-06-23T00:01:05","date_gmt":"2012-06-23T06:01:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/?p=6160"},"modified":"2012-06-23T15:43:56","modified_gmt":"2012-06-23T21:43:56","slug":"book-review-hound-baskervilles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/book-review-hound-baskervilles\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: The Hound of the Baskervilles"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Hound of the Baskervilles marked Sherlock Holmes return to literature after he was killed off by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in \u201cThe Final Problem\u201d eight years previously. Doyle had not yet brought Holmes back to life. This story was set prior to \u201cThe Final Problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sir Henry Baskerville is the heir of his late uncle Charle\u2019s Estate. However, his uncle passed away under mysterious circumstances and one of Sir Charles\u2019 friends, Dr. James Mortimer comes to Holmes to ask for assistance. Local legend is that Sir Charles was killed by a ghostly hound that haunts the moor to avenge the sins of one of the Baskerville ancestors. Mortimer confides to Holmes that he found a hound\u2019s footprint at the scene of the death.<\/p>\n

Intrigued, Holmes takes the case, and the case gets more interesting when Holmes spots a man following them inLondonand someone steals one of Sir Henry\u2019s boots. Surprisingly, Holmes doesn\u2019t go to Dartmoor, but sends Watson to investigate and report his finding to Holmes.<\/p>\n

Watson find strange goings on: suspicious-acting servants, a dangerous convict on the moor, and of course, the legend of the hound.<\/p>\n

This remains perhaps the most oft retold Holmes story and a pioneering mystery story that has been ripped off repeatedly over the years. While its a Holmes story, with Holmes absent from the main action for about half the book, it gives Watson a chance to shine and show his intelligence and resourcefulness.<\/p>\n

Despite its popularity, I didn\u2019t enjoy this as much as The Sign of Four<\/a><\/em>. However, this is a matter of taste. Sign of Four<\/em> was an action packed thriller while Hound of the Baskervilles<\/em> relied much more on a build up of suspense. This one builds slowly and in a less skillful hand, it would have been easy for The Hound of the Baskervilles<\/em> to become boring, but Doyle sensibly used Watson\u2019s reports to Holmes and Watson\u2019s diary entries to avoid bogging the story.<\/p>\n

Overall, the Hound of the Baskervilles deserves its reputation as a true detective fiction classic.<\/p>\n

Rating: 4.75 out of 5.00<\/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":"

The Hound of the Baskervilles marked Sherlock Holmes return to literature after he was killed off by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in \u201cThe Final Problem\u201d eight years previously. Doyle had not yet brought Holmes back to life. This story was set prior to \u201cThe Final Problem.\u201d Sir Henry Baskerville is the heir of his late…<\/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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[63,123,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","category-golden-age-article","category-sherlock-holmes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pECdK-1Bm","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6160","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=6160"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6170,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6160\/revisions\/6170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}