Seeing the two big names in one story (especially in the confrontation type of scenario), I expected it to be breathtaking, filled with brilliant plans of two geniuses trying to outsmart one another.
Alas, compared to the first book, the two stories included here felt neither exciting nor captivating: just nice, simple adventures of Sholmes, trying to win the battle of wits with Lupen. The traps and distractions were mostly set by Lupen with Sholmes always falling into them, while learning nothing at all in the process (in terms of falling into traps). Most of them were quite repetitive, too, i.e.: some suspicious person catches Sholmes' attention resulting in tracking; the said person then vanishes leaving Sholmes without any positive result and gain. If felt like I was reading some “goofy ahh” story with the main character, despite trying his best, ending up in funny or ridiculous situations. This is not how I imagined the confrontation between (S)Holmes and Lupen.
The other thing feeling out of place was the relationship between local Holmes and Watson (Wilson). Sholmes treats his friend as some kind of slave: Wilson gets his arm broken – Sholmes puts his hand on the shoulder of the damaged arm; Wilson, being in a fever, asks for a glass of water – Sholmes gets distracted by tobacco and leaves his friend to suffer; Wilson almost getting killed, now staying in the hospital – Sholmes doesn't even think of visiting him.
Furthermore, Wilson is full of extreme servility towards Sholmes, not even paying attention to his friend's behavior and, in some cases, willingly demeaning himself. Sholmes, on the other hand, is too self-centered, while also having anger issues. Perhaps, Leblanc wanted to make a sort of satire on Holmes, but in my opinion the degree of trolling here is way too high it becomes ridiculous. The story about Sholmes from the first book was filled with respect towards the source material, this one, on the contrary, is not.
Still, the stories themselves were nice. Focused mostly on Sholmes, they showed the whole thing from the point of the sleuth, switching to Lupen only in rare cases. Both stories ended in a way, making you think, who was the actual winner of these battles of wits – perhaps, there wasn't any. I just wish we got a somewhat balanced narration, showing both Lupen and Sholmes, trying to outplay each other.