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 and also the 13 in The Return 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 1903
Wikipedia here
Online here
Review: I would recommend this, with reservations. It’s got some holes, or at least, gaps. But still, classic “womjep,” and Holmes does some boxing!
Best sentence(s):
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“But a girl always knows”
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And now, Watson, not another word of the matter until we have a few solid stepping-stones on which we may hope to get across to our solution.”
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You really have done remarkably badly….
“What should I have done?” I cried, with some heat.
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Holmes’s quiet day in the country had a singular termination, for he arrived at Baker Street late in the evening, with a cut lip and a discoloured lump upon his forehead, besides a general air of dissipation which would have made his own person the fitting object of a Scotland Yard investigation. He was immensely tickled by his own adventures and laughed heartily as he recounted them.
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He had a fine flow of language, and his adjectives were very vigorous.
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but we hastened onward at such a pace that my sedentary life began to tell upon me, and I was compelled to fall behind. Holmes, however, was always in training, for he had inexhaustible stores of nervous energy upon which to draw.
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“You’re too late. She’s my wife.”
“No, she’s your widow.”
His revolver cracked, and I saw the blood spurt from the front of Woodley’s waistcoat.
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“Well,” said I, “you call that love, Mr. Carruthers, but I should call it selfishness.”
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so you can put that in your pipe and smoke it, Mr. Busybody Holmes!”
See also:
An Observance Of Trifles: The Adventure Of The Solitary Cyclist–Who The Heck IS Bob Carruthers?
marchudson.net 
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