Sherlock Holmes has been listed as the most portrayed film character, by the Guinness World Records. He has being played by 75 actors in 211 films, besides the many plays, TV shows, radio serials and computer games he has also appeared in . The author, Arthur Conan Doyle a physician by training and a writer through boredom, does not possess a good writing style. Although he preferred writing historical romances, his inclination is visible in the early Holmes stories, especially the first novel, A Study in Scarlet (1887), which is really only a detective story with a romantic narrative.

Sherlock Holmes:The Complete Novels and Stories:(Vol 1) by Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan is the  first  of a two volume set containing all Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s published works featuring Sherlock Holmes. Put in as a collection of the original publication, this volume includes the first two novels – ‘A Study in Scarlet’ and ‘The Sign of Four’, followed by the collection of short stories and ending with the third novel- ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’.

The short stories includes Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes besides a wonderful collection with some of the well-known mysteries such as “The Red-headed League”, “The Adventure of the Speckled Band”, and “The Final Problem.” Of all the stories in the book, Arthur  Doyle’s first novel, ‘A Study in Scarlet’ is where he introduces the famous consulting detective Sherlock Holmes to the world. But review of Sherlock Holmes:The Complete Novels and Stories:(Vol 1), mention this as the authors weakest novel.  The second work, which is also a novel – ‘The Sign of Four’ though a little better as per the reviews, it still falls short of general expected quality writing. Most reviewers have suggested skipping these two novels and starting from his collection of short stories.
 
The short stories are generally sharp-witted and endearing but with a mix of some exclusively amusing ones like the ‘The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle’ or the unsettling ones like ‘The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb’ and even wacky ones like ‘The Five Orange Pips’ where the author makes Holmes and Watson handle the Ku Klux Klan, “The Man with the Twisted Lip” and “The Musgrave Ritual”. But the best story in this volume as far as his writing and story form goes is the third Holmes novel, ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ . After buying Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories:(Vol 1), one gets hooked on to the mysterious murder and the strange puzzles brought in by Holmes and Dr. Watson in the stories.

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