The Valley of Fear
Mystery
Arthur Conan Doyle
Sherlock Holmes, Book # 7
Headline
February 27th 1915
eBook
141
English
February 4, 2021 February 6, 2021
Beat the Backlist, Cloak and Dagger, Finishing The Series, The Backlist Reader, Virtual Mount TBR
The greatest detective of them all is back...
'It is the Valley of Fear, the Valley of Death. The terror is in the hearts of the people from the dusk to the dawn. Wait, young man, and you will learn for yourself'.
A coded message summons Sherlock Holmes to the aide of one Mr Douglas. But before Holmes can reach him Douglas is found dead. He recognises the calling card of his nemesis, Professor James Moriarty - this was most definitely murder...
About the book
Seventh book dedicated to Sherlock Holmes and this is the last long novel. Sherlock need to decrypt a message which will bring him to investigate a case with origins in the new world and the first American gangsters.
What I think
When I read Sherlock I never have much to say. Honestly, I didn’t like this book that much, it has the same style as the first book in which in a first part we are in the present with the investigation and a second in which we go back in the past to understand how we got to the present. I don’t like this form, but at least we have first the solution of the case and then the story in the past, here.
Moriarty’s name still appears, but honestly I’m not really understanding the story. He doesn’t seem like that criminal mind as Holmes wants us to believe and honestly not seeing his crimes I can’t consider him as Sherlock’s arch enemy. Perhaps it is also because the stories are read not in chronological order.
I don’t know, I still need to read two books and both are two collections of short stories. As already said, I don’t like short stories as a literary form, if we add that Sherlock doesn’t give me anything special I don’t even know whether to read them or not. Maybe I read one short story per night so I don’t get bored.
