291. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famous book The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (FP: 1892; 302) is one of those books that manage to surprise you regardless of how familiar you have become with their titles. The surprise with this book was not in the character or the story-line(s) but the genre. I had always perceived this book as a complete novel. This perception might have been strengthened by the various movie adaptations I have watched. Even when I purchased it, this did not change. So you can imagine my surprise when I finally picked it up to read and suddenly discovered that it is a collection of short stories.

The story features the eponymous character Sherlock Holmes as he solved one mystery after the other, sometimes aided by his friend Dr Watson, and it was he who narrated the stories. The eccentric Sherlock Holmes did not care much about the mysteries he solved but to any observing eyes what he did is nothing different from the art of Houdini. Sherlock has more than five well developed senses. His sixth sense - the sense of intuition, and the seventh - the sense of extreme logical reasoning, helped him unravel cases that on the surface seemed insurmountable but which proved obvious to the reader after the little available facts had passed through his acute mind. As a polymath, no mystery was too strange, too difficult, or beyond the powers of Sherlock's mind.

In this collection of 12 short stories, the young reader is likely to develop some affection for this eccentric man of whom his friend, Dr Watson, said 

The stage lost a fine actor, even as science lost an acute reasoner, when he became a specialist in crime. [20]

Sherlock Holmes is an embodiment of passion and knowledge. It is no wonder that he has come to represent more than just a character in history. This story reminded me of Alexander McCall Smith's The Number One Ladies' Detective Agency, a collection of short stories about how one woman set out to resolve problems. Even though one always knew Holmes would solve the mysteries, even when the evidence seems to be not available, one still wondered how it was going to be done. This is what makes Doyle's work interesting over a century after its publication. A book such as this is always recommended. It makes for light and fun-filled reading and could be squeezed between difficult books to cure the wooziness that accompanies reading such demanding books.

Quotes from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. [7]

A Frenchman or Russian could not have written that. It is the German who is so uncourteous to his verbs. [8]

You do not know her, but she has a soul of steel. She has the face of the most beautiful of women, and the mind of the most resolute of men. [12-3]

it was not merely that Holmes has changed his costume. His expression, his manner, his very soul seemed to vary with every fresh part that he assumed. The stage lost a fine actor, even as science lost an acute reasoner, when he became a specialist in crime. [20]

Women are naturally secretive, and they like to do their own secreting. [21]

As a rule, said Holmes, the more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which are really puzzling, just as a commonplace face is the most difficult to identify. [42-3]

[L]ife is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outre results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions stale and unprofitable. 55

The larger crimes are apt to be the simpler, for the bigger the crime, the more obvious, as a rule, is the motive. [57]

The more featureless and commonplace a crime is, the more difficult is it to bring it home. [76]

Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing; it may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different. [79]

There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact. [79]

You must act, man, or you are lost. Nothing but energy can save you. This is no time for despair. [112]

The ideal reasoner would, when he has once been shown a single fact in all its bearings, deduce from it not only all the chain of events which led up to it, but also all the results which would follow from it. [115-6]

I have seen too much not to know that the impression of a woman may be more valuable than the conclusion of an analytical reasoner. [141]

Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another. [198]

Still, jealousy is a strange transformer of characters. [236]

We can't command our love, but we can our actions. [243]

It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. [273]