Loved the first 40% of the book, then found the next 40% to be absolute drudgery. The ending was entertaining, but by the time we got there, I had been beaten over the head with who the killer was and why...so having it wrapped up so charmingly by our good Dr. Watson was a bit of an anticlimax.

Me ha gustado más de lo que esperaba, sinceramente. La narración es muy amigable para ser un clásico, y la historia es entretenida. Sólo sabía que este era el libro en el que Watson y Holmes se conocían, y aunque esa parte me ha gustado mucho, la otra me ha pillado por sorpresa totalmente.

Mormons and British and murder oh my!

A fun and interesting read.

I wanted to read the first Sherlock Holmes novel to compare it to modern mystery/detective writing, and the differences between the two were far greater than I expected.

The novel begins with Watson’s backstory, then an introduction to Holmes and his methods and theories. A straightforward enough murder mystery is introduced. Then, halfway through the novel, it switches abruptly from the British murder mystery to a Western tale centering around Mormons in Utah. This was rather unexpected and lasts for about a third of the book. The two stories do tie back together at the end, and the entire murder story is laid out plainly and explicitly.

I can’t say I’ve ever read a mystery formatted quite like this, but it was entertaining and worth the read.

The language use is also outdated enough to be quite funny, such as the use of “I ejaculated!” to mean a verbal outburst, or mildly offensive at times, like the term “street Arabs” for homeless children.

Very underwhelming...
I'm not quite sure how I feel about this book.
I had some high expectations since the character in the book is extremely famous.

But I didn't like it and I wasn't excited about the stories. The book was kinda boring and I understand why Arthur wanted to kill the main character so many times.

Their is no plot twist because you simply don't know any of the characters it's like we're just being kept in the dark all the time and it was executed in a way that didn't help the story.

Also the backstory to the killer was so bizarre, it started suddenly and was too detached from the main story that I actually thought it was a second short story or something, it was written in a decent way but it almost had nothing with the main story. It felt almost as if the writer had two things that he wanted to write about simultaneously so he ended up with merging and creating this bizarre combination.

I can see the book as a very good cinematic material but not a reading material.

Sir Arthur is definitely a great writer but I wish he has more adventure books like (The lost world) than this dull book with it's irritating main character and low quality events.