A fantastic collection of short stories, representing the most interesting cases of Holmes. I was thrilled to read the superb writing of Doyle, the delicious turn of phrase, the vocabulary. I had forgotten how wonderful a writer he was and it makes me want to return to his longer works. ( )

Eight selected tales of Sherlock Holmes to give the reader a taster of the brilliant sleuth and his cunning methods.

Having never read any Sherlock Holmes before, I spied this nice collection and decided it was a great way to get acquainted with what everyone else seems to know so well already. The stories included are as follows:

The Adventure of the Speckled Band
The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle
The Musgrave Ritual
The Reigate Puzzle
Silver Blaze
The Adventure of the Dancing Men
The Adventure of the Six Napoleons
The Missing Three-Quarter

I didn't realise the Holmes stories were all short (30-40 pages) and originally published in the Strand Magazine. I also didn't know that the author was tired of Holmes after three years of writing his adventures and wrote a story that included his death but after public outrage at the killing of their favourite, he was persuaded to resurrect him. Interesting.

To the tales themselves, they are well written and also more surprisingly, not always about a crime as I had expected. Holmes is brilliant at deducing the clues from seemingly mundane and trivial facts and having the narrator as John Watson worked very well, I enjoyed his voice and the way he explained the idiosyncrasies of Holmes' odder behaviour.

I appreciated the length of these tales as they were perfect to sit and read one over lunch or when you just needed a short break, you could finish one complete tale at a time and not leave the mystery halfway through. Although, it is always harder to rate a selection of short stories as they chop and change from one to the next, but this volume has definitely whetted my appetite and I will be reading more of Holmes and Watson. ( )