I finished the second Holmes novel "The Sign of Four" today and while the mystery in this novel isn´t one of my favorites, I completely adore Toby and Mary. And Watson being in love never gets old.

Just finished "A Study in Scarlet" and I have to admit, it will never be my favorite Sherlock story. I always have the impression that these two widely different narratives don´t fit together and that there is a disjointed feel about this novel. 

What I realized for the first time during this reread, though, is the psychological terror that is going on in the Utah chapters. I really appreciate that Conan Doyle didn´t shy away from the dark side of religious fanaticism.

3 Stars. 

I´m too tired to read my Dunnett today, so instead I started my next audiobook.

This is the complete Sherlock Holmes, narrated by Simon Vance. I have the Stephen Fry as well, but I prefer Vance over Fry, tbh. Simon Vance could read the telephone book to me and I would be happy.

As usual, the collection starts off with "A Study in Scarlet". This must be my third or fourth reread of this story. Even though Holmes and Watson meet up for the first time, this story isn´t my favorite because of reasons. Everyone, who is familiar with this story, knows what I´m talking about.

In this second Sherlock Holmes novel, Dr. Watson falls adorably in love and we discover that Holmes has to keep his busy brain stimulated with cocaine when he doesn’t have a mystery to work on. As Watson regards this habit with the same level of disapproval that in 2019 we might regard a tobacco or junk food habit, I guess things were a bit different in the late 19^th century. As chips & queso are an unfortunate habit of mine, I’ll not judge Holmes too harshly for his Victorian bad habits.

The mystery itself is a fun one, involving ill-gotten treasure, prison breakouts, murder, not-murder, greed, goofy landed gentry, and damsels in distress. And bumbling police, of course. Lots and lots of bumbling while Holmes gleefully smirks at them.

Unfortunately, it also involves a very Victorian attitude towards imperialism and non-white races, so some of the clues require the reader to embrace those attitudes as fully as do the characters.

Audiobook via Audible, from the wonderful complete collection read by Stephen Fry, who does a fantastic job as always. 

I read this book for the Booklikes Halloween Bingo 2019, for the square Genre: Mystery: Anything that fits the Mystery genre.

Prior Updates:

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None of the mystery audios available in the library were appealing to me, so I decided to go with the next Holmes book in my wonderful audio compilation read by Stephen Fry.