His Last Bow

Rating:
Summary: Last chance to enjoy Holmes
Review: After being killed in an adventure, Holmes suddenly reappears. Of course, the first thing he does is to tell how he came back alive. And then new, last stories, come up. The edition I read includes "The valley of terror", a convoluted and terrifying story in which Holmes participates indirectly. One can not go wrong with Holmes. Inevitably, the quality of the stories is varied, but they are always fun to read. Doyle is indeed a great writer, who must be counted among the best writers, right there with the big language-innovators and "serious" literates.

Rating:
Summary: Last chance to enjoy Holmes
Review: After being killed in an adventure, Holmes suddenly reappears. Of course, the first thing he does is to tell how he came back alive. And then new, last stories, come up. The edition I read includes "The valley of terror", a convoluted and terrifying story in which Holmes participates indirectly. One can not go wrong with Holmes. Inevitably, the quality of the stories is varied, but they are always fun to read. Doyle is indeed a great writer, who must be counted among the best writers, right there with the big language-innovators and "serious" literates.

Rating:
Summary: One of The Best
Review: All the Sherlock Holmes short stories collections are 5 star efforts, of course, but this one has some of my absolute favorites in it. Sure, they aren't as well known as those in "The Adventures" or "The Hound..." novel, but they are great nonetheless. Particularly of interest are "The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge" and "The Adventure of the Dying Detective", a very suspenseful story indeed! These are must read Holmes tales.

Rating:
Summary: One of The Best
Review: All the Sherlock Holmes short stories collections are 5 star efforts, of course, but this one has some of my absolute favorites in it. Sure, they aren't as well known as those in "The Adventures" or "The Hound..." novel, but they are great nonetheless. Particularly of interest are "The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge" and "The Adventure of the Dying Detective", a very suspenseful story indeed! These are must read Holmes tales.

Rating:
Summary: Fourth-best of the Sherlock Holmes short story collections!
Review: Although he also wrote several novels featuring the world's greatest fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, it was especially in his short stories that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle perfected the Holmes formula. "His Last Bow" (published in 1917) is the fourth of the five collections of Holmes short stories. The other collections all featured a dozen stories, but only eight stories make up "His Last Bow". The title is based on the final story of the same name, which portrays the retired Holmes active in bee-keeping, and emerging from retirement only to protect English secrets during the First World War. Doyle was arguably past his prime in producing Sherlock Holmes stories, but this is still a very good collection of stories, and although there are only eight stories, unlike some of the other collections there is no obviously inferior story among them. The Bruce-Partington Plans, The Dying Detective and The Devil's Foot are especially outstanding, but all the other stories in this collection are very good as well. It may not match the brilliance and popularity of the first three collections ("The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes", "The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes" and "The Return of Sherlock Holmes"), but it's not far behind, and Holmes fans will find every one of the eight stories of "His Last Bow" most enjoyable.

Here's a list of the stories in this collection (with the better stories marked with stars):
Wisteria Lodge, 1908 - This two-part story recounts the strange experiences of Mr. John Scott Eccles, whose Spanish host Garcia and his two servants mysteriously vanish overnight. How is the exiled tyrant Don Murillo, the Tiger of San Pedro, behind these events?
The Cardboard Box, 1893 - Susan Cushing opens a parcel in a box, horrified to find two severed human ears - but whose are they and why are they sent to her?
The Red Circle, 1911 - Mrs. Warren has a mysterious lodger who never emerges from his room, and how is this connected to a secret society called "the Red Circle"?
*The Bruce-Partington Plans, 1908 - Some top-secret plans for a Bruce-Partington submarine are found in the pockets of a dead man who falls off a train, but where are the rest of the plans, and how and why did they get stolen?
*The Dying Detective, 1913 - Holmes is delirious and dying of a tropical Chinese disease. His only hope for survival appears to be Mr. Culverton Smith, a specialist in such diseases, but unfortunately also a criminal who would be glad to see Holmes die.
Lady Frances Carfax, 1911 - When Lady Frances Carfax goes missing, her life is unwittingly threatened by Holy Peters, an unscrupulous criminal from Australia who is now posing as someone else.
*The Devil's Foot, 1910 - A thrilling and convincing story, as Mortimer Tregennis reports the bizarre death of his sister and sudden madness of his two brothers. The story complicates with the death of Mortimer himself, and the involvement of the African explorer Dr. Leon Sterndale. Holmes discounts supernatural involvement, and looks for some natural explanation.
His Last Bow, 1917 - Holmes emerges from his retirement (spent beekeeping and completing his magnus opus "Practical Handbook of Bee Culture") to thwart the German spy Baron Von Bork from disclosing secret English documents on the eve of World War I.
- GODLY GADFLY


Rating:
Summary: Master of deduction and analysis
Review: This is a collection of eight short stories, first published in October 1917, narrating some of the adventures of detective Sherlock Holmes, the last one entitled "His Last Bow." Sherlock Holmes is amongst the most famous characters ever created in literature, his popularity overshadowing his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, to the point that some people are under the impression that Sherlock Holmes in fact existed. The inspiration came from Dr. Joseph Bell, a friend and tutor to Conan Doyle and who shared many personality features with the famous detective.
The author had Sherlock Holmes killed but public demand was so high for further adventures that we find him back in action. Determined to have a permanent retirement, Sherlock Holmes moves into a small farm and dedicates himself to other matters, refusing to offer his intellectual ability to the government. With World War I approaching he backs up on this determination and his return into action is narrated in "His Last Bow." The cases range from theft, burglary, kidnapping, to murder, and in all of the them Sherlock Holmes is a master in the science of deduction and analysis.
By those considered expert "Sherlockians," this is not Holmes at his best and certainly not as good as his masterpiece "The Hound of the Baskervilles."

Rating:
Summary: Master of deduction and analysis
Review: This is a collection of eight short stories, first published in October 1917, narrating some of the adventures of detective Sherlock Holmes, the last one entitled "His Last Bow." Sherlock Holmes is amongst the most famous characters ever created in literature, his popularity overshadowing his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, to the point that some people are under the impression that Sherlock Holmes in fact existed. The inspiration came from Dr. Joseph Bell, a friend and tutor to Conan Doyle and who shared many personality features with the famous detective.
The author had Sherlock Holmes killed but public demand was so high for further adventures that we find him back in action. Determined to have a permanent retirement, Sherlock Holmes moves into a small farm and dedicates himself to other matters, refusing to offer his intellectual ability to the government. With World War I approaching he backs up on this determination and his return into action is narrated in "His Last Bow." The cases range from theft, burglary, kidnapping, to murder, and in all of the them Sherlock Holmes is a master in the science of deduction and analysis.
By those considered expert "Sherlockians," this is not Holmes at his best and certainly not as good as his masterpiece "The Hound of the Baskervilles."