The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (SH #4)

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy is a mammoth 1200-1400 pages long, depending on the version.

Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Collection is 2188 pages long and split into 10 volumes: Four separate novellas, five volumes of short stories, and a final set of outtakes (Vol. 10).

Whew!

This book is Vol. 4 - the second set of short stories after Vol. 3.

You can pick this up and read about the adventures and escapades of Sherlock Holmes with no former introduction, but where's the fun in that? And there's a good reason why the 10 volumes are ordered a certain way, to give maximum continuity and fluency.

🤔 Is this volume essential? Yes, pretty much.

🤔 Is it the best volume? Not really, because bar the outtakes and the rather rambly Vol. 9, all the other short story volumes are brilliant.

If you like crime, thrillers, adventures, shenanigans, historical fiction, and fabulous writing fluency - Arthur Conan Doyle being one of the best - you won't go wrong with this.