A Sherlock Holmes mystery.

Sublime. The greatest literary detective of all time in some of his best cases.

There is an awful lot for the Holmes Fan, and the Watson fan, or indeed anyone coming new to the stories, to enjoy here. From a low-life London lying in the grip of a fog/smog that renders the city sinister, to Holmes working at the behest of his brother Mycroft to ensure the safety of the Realm (again!), to Holmes and Watson happening across devilish goings on in sleepy rural locations, to misunderstandings being resolved in the very, very nick of time.

If you’ve never read a Sherlock Holmes story before then here, at the end of the canon, is actually not a bad place to start. The adventures encompass all that is Holmes and Watson: London shrouded in fog, an English countryside shrouded in mystery, macabre and apparently unconnected events, a whiff of the supernatural and, of course, Holmes and Watson dispensing justice. Not law, justice.

There is also ‘His Last Bow’. For once not told through the pen of Doctor John Watson and with a spectacular concluding paragraph. Never mind going over a waterfall with your hands round the throat of a criminal mastermind, what English detectives do at the conclusion of arguably their greatest triumph in England’s most perilous hour is growl the sort of words that would give a spine to a Frenchman, and then make a remark about taking money off the very cad they have just probably delivered (rightly) to the gallows. Marvellous!

Also clear here are Holmes’s frailties. Well, one in particular, smoking. Holmes smokes so much in the stories in this book that I, who don’t smoke as a rule, enjoyed a cigar. Oddly, at no point in the prose does Sir Arthur describe Holmes’s mouth as tasting like a badger’s arse in the morning, which was my experience.

These quibbles aside, there’s so much to enjoy that I’m already looking forward to re-reading. Possibly from the sort of smoke-scented arm-chair that Holmes appears to solve all his cases from.

Who among us hasn’t considered what we’d do if a cardboard box containing two ears preserved in salt was delivered to us? Complain to DHL? Possibly, but after that we’d obviously retain the services of a coke fiend and chain smoker. And again which of us would not, at the drop of a hat, send our dearest chum off across Europe to track down a missing aristocrat, while trailing him disguised as a Frenchman. Yet here such events just seem, well, right.

Which is not to say that things are not occasionally disturbing. No matter how vile the back-alleys of London, Conan Doyle reserves the most unsettling horrors for the green and unpleasant land of the English countryside. The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot is the perfect Sherlock Homes story. It has Holmes suffering from excess and yet unable to compromise his strict regime of lounging and strong tobacco, it has Holmes and Watson relocated to unfamiliar surroundings, it has the implication of supernatural goings-on and, pure delight, it has Holmes and Watson in their greatest roles, proving that they are agents of justice, not instruments of the law. They alone discover the truth and when they do they are judge, jury, executioner. This is at once chilling and just; it is one thing to read of Watson embarking on an adventure after pocketing his trusty service revolver, quite another for the pair of them to assume the mantle of justice themselves. As always, their actions are impeccable.

The stand out story though, even among a field of excellence, is His Last Bow. This time, there’s no mysterious foreign power, it’s the Germans, they are a threat and Holmes, pulled from a retirement of beekeeping, proves more than a match for the sharpest of the German secret service. In a neat twist it is revealed that although antagonists, Holmes had rendered service to the family of his enemy, and the enemy of England, in earlier, happier, days.

What is uncompromised is the effect of crime on the innocent. People do die in the pages of this book, not always justly (but, as this is Holmes, always avenged). ( )

Enjoyable, as always, although the title story (about Holmes's return from retirement) was a weak link. ( )

More short stories from Conan Doyle. ( )