What one reviewer at amazon said about Scandal in Bohemia:
A Scandal in Bohemia was a nicely written short story. It was engaging and it is my favorite Sherlock Holmes tale. Its nice to see that for once he went up against someone whose mental capacity was in the same league as his. At first I didn't really like Irene Adler for no reason I can think of now. But she grew on me and by the end of the story, she was my favorite character. The King was an absolute idiot.
Begins:
To Sherlock Holmes she is always THE woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen, but as a lover he would have placed himself in a false position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They were admirable things for the observer--excellent for drawing the veil from men's motives and actions. But for the trained teasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such as his. And yet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory.
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