The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

I made a road trip by myself last weekend up into Minnesota. Normally I don't drive well by myself, so I made sure this time that I had downloaded a couple of good books from LibriVox to listen to as I drove. I downloaded an audio version of The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. I read The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes back in junior high, and at the time I enjoyed that.

I loved The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. I really think those stories were the only thing keeping me awake as I drove on the mesmerizingly flat and straight I-90, across southern Minnesota. As a child, some of the language Sir Arthur Conan Doyle used was over my head, but that problem didn't exist in this encounter with Doyle's writing.

Some of the stories are more gripping than others, but they all display the inductive reasoning that Sherlock Holmes is famous for. I particularly liked the first story in the collection: "Silver Blaze." Murder, missing racing horses... wonderful. The last story in the collection, "The Final Problem" kept me on the edge of my seat, but I was incredibly disappointed with the ending.

(I'm giving something away here, so stop reading if you don't like spoiled endings.)

Sherlock Holmes dies. That in itself is an offense, but what is even more offensive is that I really didn't think he had to die. It almost felt as though he gave himself up for dead and walked right into the arms of a sinister criminal mastermind. (I read later that Doyle was irritated that he was becoming known as the author of the Sherlock Holmes stories. He wrote other things that he deemed more important, but the public loved this character. He killed Holmes off in this last story just to be done him. He concocted a lame story in vain, however, because the public outcry against Sherlock Holmes' death was so great that Doyle ended up reviving him for future stories.)

Check your weather forecast for an upcoming dark and rainy day, and check out a delicious Sherlock Holmes mystery to keep you company!