In 2026 I plan to read all the Conan Doyle “Sherlock Holmes” works – 56 short stories and 4 novels (here’s why and how). If you haven’t already read it, Michael Green’s “undiscovered letter” from John Watson is fricking hilarious.
In February my target is to read all (or at very least most) of the 12 stories in Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
I may also read various Holmes homages/pastiches etc. Who knows? (btw I’d recommend the Seven Per Cent Solution, by Nicholas Meyer where Watson has to trick Holmes into going to Vienna to be treated by Sigmund Freud).
Published: December 1892
Wikipedia here
Online here
Review: I would recommend this one – it’s a classic of the genre, with plenty of quotable bits.
The key idea – that what you DON’T hear may tell you a lot – is kinda cool and useful. You have to listen to the silences…
Also, Mark Haddon’s book “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night time” is excellent, imo.
Best sentence(s):
“It is one of those cases where the art of the reasoner should be used rather for the sifting of details than for the acquiring of fresh evidence. The tragedy has been so uncommon, so complete and of such personal importance to so many people, that we are suffering from a plethora of surmise, conjecture, and hypothesis. The difficulty is to detach the framework of fact—of absolute undeniable fact—from the embellishments of theorists and reporters. Then, having established ourselves upon this sound basis, it is our duty to see what inferences may be drawn and what are the special points upon which the whole mystery turns
“At least I have got a grip of the essential facts of the case. I shall enumerate them to you, for nothing clears up a case so much as stating it to another person…”
“Inspector Gregory, to whom the case has been committed, is an extremely competent officer. Were he but gifted with imagination he might rise to great heights in his profession.
“A more perfect compound of the bully, coward, and sneak than Master Silas Brown I have seldom met with,” remarked Holmes as we trudged along together.
“Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”
“To the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime.”
“The dog did nothing in the night-time.”
“That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes.
“I confess,” said he, “that any theories which I had formed from the newspaper reports were entirely erroneous. And yet there were indications there, had they not been overlaid by other details which concealed their true import
Words I didn’t know:
| penang-lawyer | Pe*nang″ law″yer (?). [Prob. fr. Malay pīnang līar.] A kind of walking stick made from the stem of an East Asiatic palm (Licuala acutifida). |
marchudson.net 
Leave a comment