Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Collection

I don't rate any of the 10 volumes in this mammoth collection of 2200+ pages five stars per-se, but I do rate this body or work five stars. How does that make any sense?

Because of what it means to me from a historical upbringing perspective. Because of the memories, the nostalgia, the pompous British spirit, the everything associated with Sherlock Holmes, investigated crime, Victorian England, steam trains and what goes bump in the night with logical reasoning behind it.

This collection consists of 10 volumes: Four books in their own right + six separate collections of short stories. Three of the single books are excellent and nearly all of the short stories equally so.

These 10 volumes are ordered in such a way as to retain a logical timeline of events such as when Holmes and Watson first meet and when they decide to reside together at Baker Street and how their friendship and professional relationship develops over time. There are deaths and resurrections and other events that make more sense this way.

If you read these volumes in chronological order it's more intelligible than picking up one of the volumes at random, although it's not essential that you absolutely do that because the timelines start to make less sense as times goes on, but with this amount of material it's good to have less confusion.

This collection is absolutely epic for attempting to put it all together and become the definitive amalgamation of everything Sherlock Holmes. Arthur Conan Doyle writes in such an appealing and fluent style that you can't fail to be charmed from the start.

Amazingly, this was the first book I officially bought on my Kindle, before anything by Jane Austen or other amazing authors, and for practically tuppence ha'penny, guvnor!

If you like Arthur Conan Doyle, be sure to check out H.G. Wells for similar fluency from that period, a long long time ago... in a galaxy far far away.