First, a note on the copy editing, which is surprisingly dimwitted: Confused are the two “end tales” of Conan Doyle’s efforts to quit writing these adventures. The back copy references “The Final Problem” as included, which is not, in this second volume, while the biographical note on Conan Doyle suggests “His Last Bow” as the one that featured Holmes’ apparent death. Switch these, dear readers.
This second volume sees Conan Doyle come to peace, eventually, with his famous creation. The problem was that he eventually saw himself little to the task of chronicling Holmes, and even in this one you can see how he tries to soften the detective’s abilities so as to distance himself, and yet in the final stories there’s a renewed, a new creative focus, which was first evident in the most famous Holmes story, The Hound of the Baskervilles, presented out of order in the volume since thematically it fits here better (though as noted I hardly accord the editors much credit). Conan Doyle plumbs new ways to tell his tales, and dances ever further into the limits of credulity…
One of the curious marks against the creator is his late dalliance in the fantastic, in his personal life, and yet, is this really so surprising? Like Holmes and Watson, the brain and the heart, the man capable of seeing all and the one somewhat gloriously incapable, Conan Doyle constantly relied on the natural penchant of readers to expect the fantastic, as readers of literature often are. He himself was never truly capable of following Holmes’ logic; in essence he really was Watson, and he conjured all manner of tricks to get around truly exploring Holmes, even in the odd mysteries from Holmes’ own perspective. The rational Holmes, then, is fronted by the irrational Watson, Arthur Conan Doyle.
None of this is truly classic literature, but in the character of Sherlock Holmes himself the first truly transcendent character in literary history, who stands apart from any one story (I read Hound in high school but now would not particularly recommend it as formative material for young minds) and yet is unmistakably magnetic, the foundation for the next hundred years or so of popular storytelling, the first and greatest pulp sensation.
Had Conan Doyle started with the material of this volume as his foundation, I believe he would have come up with something truly great. But, alas, a little too late.