The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

By Arthur Conan Doyle

This is a gathering of some of the more notable cases of the world-famous Sherlock Holmes, written by his faithful friend, Doctor John Watson. Among the stories is “A Scandal in Bohemia” where we meet the American woman Irene Adler, “The Adventure of the Speckled Band”, “The Man with the Twisted Lips”, and many others.

 

There seems to have been an outpouring of Sherlock Holmes related media the past few years, which spurred my interest in reading the actual stories by Doyle. With the surprising Hollywood debut and sequel featuring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law, I was certain that it would be a horrendous version that I would be sick at, but was surprised when I finally watched it that I loved it. Then came BBC’s absolutely genius modernized version that has many people in absolute agony while they wait to figure out how Sherlock survived his ‘fall’. That in and of itself is a brilliant re-imagined version, which is enhanced by Benedict Cumberbach’s manic energy and delivery of the famous detective, not to mention Martin Freeman’s incredible friendship and loyalty portrayed as John Watson. And, to top it off we have the recent adage of “Elementary” in America where Sherlock Holmes is, once again, a modernized character living in New York, a recovering drug addict that is just getting back into detective work. All three versions have their good points and bad, but all three are entertaining. Reading the original stories has been fun knowing the back-stories and having grown up with the Jeremey Brett episodes on PBS, which are more true to the stories than any other. I had fun reading stories that I’d never heard before, especially the engineer’s thumb and the man with the twisted lips. The blue carbuncle was actually quite funny, unless you were the antagonist of the story. I highly recommend reading the original stories if you are a fan of any of the above shows. After all, we all know that in the vast majority, the book is better than the movie!

I give it a 4 out of 5

 

Above: Elementary, New Sherlock and female Watson

 

Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law as Holmes and Watson