Please note: I first published this book review on the “Goodreads”-website in 2022.
My rating: 3 (of 5) “stars”
I bought a paperback copy which was published in 2014 by Penguin Random House. The book was originally published in 1887.
In this book, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson make their first appearance, and that’s why I decided to read it. First published in 1887, it holds up fairly well. Doyle created two iconic characters, and their interactions are the book’s best part.
The book’s weakness is its structure. Almost half of the book’s pages are dedicated to the backstory (the killer’s motive) – something that happened many years in the past, in a different country. Arthur Conan Doyle plunges the reader into a completely different story, and while the backstory is interesting in and of itself, it doesn’t work very well within the structure of this detective novel. That’s why I’m only giving this book “three stars.”