Conan Doyle Stories

by Arthur Conan Doyle

Includes:
The Ring and the Camp
Pirates and Blue Water
Terror and Mystery
Twilight and the Unseen
Adventure and Medical Life
Tales of Long Ago

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Mystery, Classics, Detective

1201 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1929

About the author

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was a Scottish writer and physician. He created the character Sherlock Holmes in 1887 for A Study in Scarlet, the first of four novels and fifty-six short stories about Holmes and Dr. Watson. The Sherlock Holmes stories are milestones in the field of crime fiction.

Doyle was a prolific writer. In addition to the Holmes stories, his works include fantasy and science fiction stories about Professor Challenger, and humorous stories about the Napoleonic soldier Brigadier Gerard, as well as plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction, and historical novels. One of Doyle's early short stories, "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement" (1884), helped to popularise the mystery of the brigantine Mary Celeste, found drifting at sea with no crew member aboard.

Reviews

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is a comprehensive collection and a lot of these stories are terrific.

[Martijn Vsho · Rating 3 out of 5]

A massive collection of various short stories by Conan Doyle, arranged into 10 categories: the ring (mainly boxing), camp (mainly military), pirates, blue water, terror, mystery, twilight and the unseen (mainly spiritual), adventure, medical life, and long ago.

The quality of these stories is all over the place, as expected in short story anthologies. Some stories are good, others not so much. Some are more humorous, others are quite dark. Doyle has a tendency of making extreme characters: characters who are the best at something, who have come across riches and fill up the rest of their days working on their one passion, or who are extreme introverts and want to be alone. This extremism tends to make characters shallow and one-sided. It makes for an easy short story but hardly for a convincing or gripping one.

Some of my favorite stories include: "The Pot of Caviare" which asks whether mercy killing is okay in the face of defeat against a merciless and savage enemy; "The Crime of the Brigadier" and "The Marriage of the Brigadier" which were quite funny; and "The Brazilian Cat".

Some notes on Doyle's writing:
1)These stories were published in 1929 and most of them happen in the 19th and early 20th centuries (except for the Stories of Long Ago). Doyle's stories are thus sometimes quite racist in how they describe non-western peoples, such as the Chinese in "The Pot of Caviare" and Africans in "The Green Flag". These were unfortunately common views in Britain at the time.
2) The collection of horror stories are not horror stories in the modern sense but rather more of a mix between mystery and being gruesome.

[Outlander · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five stars is the highest accolade on offer, but then I would have gone higher ! Aside from the lack of Sherlock Holmes (which are not included) there are 1201 pages of everything else in this book. There is something for every one, pirates, soldiers, hunting, etc. I particularly liked The Stripped Chest and One Crowded Hour.

[Simanto Mukherjee · Rating 3 out of 5]

The quality of stories in this collection is inconsistent. Some are very interesting while some are silly and pointless. I had very high expectations from this book after finishing the sherlock holmes stories. Only a few stories were ingenious enough to fulfill those expectations.

[Shy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this way more than I thought I would! Sherlock’s mind is fascinating and I love the friendship he has with Watson. I’m very happy that I took the time to read it.

[Paul Perry]

I stumbled upon this in a charity shop a couple of years ago. It's a huge volume, 1200 pages, collecting six previous collections of short stories. It's sits amongst other short story collections by my bed, and I dip into it occasionally. Always a good read, and something entirely different from Sherlock Holmes.

[Sudheer Madhava · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb storytelling and delicious language but then I am a big fan of Sherlock Holmes. Some stories are predictable and some sea stories can get a little technical but otherwise, most stories were unputdownable to me. In the author's own words, I would call this book "singularly noteworthy."

[Oanh Bettencourt · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hfcnn

[Bonnie Dale Keck · Rating 5 out of 5]

Have read all of Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and probably others as well, just never bothered to put them in to amazon or goodreads, so dates wrong. Some KU some paperback some hardback some collections.

[Adriano Barone]

Lettura doppia italiano-inglese di due classici Sherlockiani. Per tenere sempre in esercizio i muscoli letterari del crime col whodunit classico.