"Włamywanie się zawsze stanowiło dla mnie alternatywny zawód, jaki chętnie bym wykonywał, i nie wątpię, że osiągnąłbym w nim niezły wynik."

Kocham

4,5

*Bill Hader voice* It's got everything: "Good for Her" moments, suspected supernatural creatures, a really elaborate scam, a bunch of wild animals and some really creepy murders. Good times.

Time to close the book on Holmes and Watson

This last collection of stories is by far the weakest in the canon, if I didn’t know that Doyle outlived the collection with 3 years I would expect most of the stories to be leftovers not intended for publication.

It’s also in this collection that Doyle’s xenophobia and slight antisemitism, which pops up in all the collections is most outspoken, more or less all the villains are from a foreign country and Jews are greedy money lenders.

These unpleasantnesses aside, it has been a joy to spend this time with Holmes and Fry, but I could have lived without this last collection.

“I am a brain, Watson. The rest of me is a mere appendix.”

3.5 stars. REREAD 2022. Still very remarkable to me that this collection houses one of the best Holmes stories ever (The Three Garridebs: fun, hijinks-y, great character moments and a glimpse of Holmes' heart) and also the absolute fucking worst (The Three Gables: racist as hell, dull, no good intrigue/deductions). The good outweighs the bad in the book, especially since we've got the Illustrious Client and the Blanched Soldier, which are both really dear to me. But the bigotry in a few of the stories is enough to sour me.

As always, the entire Holmes canon isn't something that I can ever approach with complete objectivity, because it's tied up in so much nostalgia and affection for me. So while I have some very real and pertinent problems with some of it, doing these rereads of the entire canon just always makes me really happy.

--

I love this book because "The Three Garridebs" goes so hard but I also hate it because "The Three Gables" is racist as shit.

:)

With this, I have read all the books in the Sherlock Holmes series!

Originally listened - Dec 2016
Relistebed - July 2017

The Holmes stories do tend to grow repetitive in the latter years, but it's as much the language and the style as it is the story elements. It feels nostalgic, as the author is continuing to write the world's most popular character 25 years later.

3.5 stars