What one reviewer at amazon said about The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes & the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (Penguin Classics):
"Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes" was the fourth Holmes book and the second collection of short stories. Originally published in the Strand Magazine as "Adventures of Sherlock Holmes," it took the name "Memoirs" when published in book form, because the first collection had pre-empted the title "Adventures."
"Memoirs" consists of eleven short stories, none of which are as good as the stories in the first collection. In fact, several stories appear to be reworkings of stories from the original "Adventures." "The Stockbroker's Clerk" is a rehash of the plot of "The Red Headed League." "The Gloria Scott" seems to borrow heavily from "The Boscombe Valley Mystery." "The Greek Interpreter" replays "The Engineer's Thumb." "The Yellow Face" harks back to "A Scandal in Bohemia." In "Bohemia," Holmes was stymied, and in "Yellow Face" he again goes badly astray.
Obviously Doyle was growing weary of Holmes. So weary, in fact, that he killed Holmes off in "The Final Problem." Holmes fans everywhere would rejoice when Doyle resurrected their hero in "The Return of Sherlock Holmes," and Holmes went on to further, and better adventures. Mediocre Holmes is still far better than most detective fiction.
Holmes fans everywhere should also rejoice at the BDD publication of the BBC radio plays starring Clive Merrison and Michael Williams. Merrison and Williams make the best Holmes-Watson team since the Rathbone-Bruce collaboration. The production values for the BBC plays are excellent, far better than the production values of the 30's and 40's, when Rathbone and Bruce portrayed the crimefighting duo.
The BDD publication consists of three volumes, each volume containing two cassettes, and each cassette containing two plays. The eleven short stories of "Memoirs" does not quite fill the twelve play capacity of the cassettes. BDD solves the problem by borrowing "The Second Stain" from "The Return of Sherlock Holmes."
Download Memoirs Of Sherlock Holmes from Project Gutenberg
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