Speaking of the person "Conan Doyle", some people may not be familiar with it, and even think of the manga "Detective Conan" by Tsuyoshi Aoyama in Japan. In fact, "Detective Conan" is named after this "Conan Doyle".
Because of the famous detective "Sherlock Holmes" he created, it can be said that it is popular in the world.
The form of "Sherlock Holmes Detective Collection" is a bit like a "folding play", and it is naturally more complete to read the whole book, but there is no dyslexia in looking at each story alone.
This book is more like a "long novel" that is a collection of "short stories" with some connections.
This is really very friendly for the reader's reading experience.
Some of the classic elements of "Sherlock Holmes" are "pipes", "violins" and magical reasoning, often finding clues from the details that the reader ignores.
Yes, almost all of these clues are written in the book, but the reader often does not pay attention to it until "Sherlock Holmes" unveils the mystery one by one, and the reader will suddenly realize.
And this is also one of the charms of the "Sherlock Holmes" series of stories.
In terms of the whole structure, the story of "Sherlock Holmes" has a "dualistic opposition", and the protagonist Holmes is a contest between the forces of Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty, known as the "Napoleon of the Criminal World".
One of the two sides uses a high IQ to commit a crime, and the other uses a high IQ to detect, and the battle of wits and courage is extremely exciting.
The character of Professor Moriarty is almost never portrayed in all the stories, and it is through Holmes's narration that people know the terrible things about the "leader of crime".
There is also a wonderful place in the book, the story uses the first person "I", but this "I" is not "Sherlock Holmes", but the "Watson" doctor who met him by chance and eventually became a combat partner.
Watson was a layman in the detective world, so describing the "Sherlock Holmes" in his eyes has a sense of mystery and wonder.
This kind of writing technique is very rare, which shows how interesting the way this story is told.
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Conan Doyle was not originally a writer, and "writing" was just his side hustle.
He graduated from the Medical University of Edinburgh, practiced medicine for more than 10 years, but he was only able to feed himself, so he picked up the "literature" he loved since childhood and began to create detective novels.
There are many of his novels, not just the "Sherlock Holmes" series, but this is his most famous work.
The first work of "Sherlock Holmes Detective Collection" is "Blood Letter Research", which is also one of the "four major cases" in this book, but it also went through twists and turns, and it was rejected several times before it was published.
But it was this work that began a series of stories with "Sherlock Holmes" as the protagonist, which made him famous.
The "Sherlock Holmes" series has become popular and has gained countless praises and fans, which invisibly put great pressure on Conan Doyle.
After all, if it is a work that is not very popular, it does not have much impact on good writing and bad writing; but this kind of popular best-selling story work, he must consider the satisfaction of readers.
While praise pours in, there are naturally many "keyboard men" who are dissatisfied with the storyline.
So Conan Doyle wrote to his mother at the end of 1891, expressing the idea of "killing" Holmes, precisely because of this pressure.
In December 1893, Conan Doyle published The Last Case, in which "Sherlock Holmes" and Professor Moriarty, the biggest leader of the criminal gang, were killed and buried in the Leisingbach Falls.
With this sudden turn, Conan Doyle actually sends a signal that the story of "Sherlock Holmes" has ended and will not be continued.
However, he clearly underestimated the importance of the image of "Sherlock Holmes" in the hearts of readers, and some female readers openly called Conan Doyle a "beast", and even received threatening letters of intimidation, and some readers threatened to "assassinate" him.
For a time, Conan Doyle could be said to be living in a situation of thin ice, which he did not expect.
Fortunately, he did not publicly promote the end of the "Sherlock Holmes" series, so there is still a chance of remedy.
Thus, in 1903, Conan Doyle published the short story "The Empty House", officially announcing the return of "Sherlock Holmes", and a series of subsequent stories used "The Return" as the name.
It turned out that Holmes did not die, but only made a false appearance to escape the revenge of Professor Moriarty's gang of remnants.
Later, Conan Doyle wrote "The Hound of baskerville" and "Uncanny Valley", two novellas featuring "Sherlock Holmes", which once again pushed this series of stories to new heights.
In this way, the four major cases of "Sherlock Holmes" were put together. The four novellas are:
Blood Letter Study, Four Signatures, Baskerville's Hounds, and Uncanny Valley
Personally, I think that the story of "Uncanny Valley" is the most grand and the most thrilling.
These four novellas support the skeleton of the two stages before and after the "Sherlock Holmes" series, so that many short stories cooperate with them and form a whole.