One of my all time favourite sets of books.
I feel "Hound the Baskervilles" and :The Sign of Four" are the best of the lot.

Tremendous work in breadth of annotations, beautiful book.

That took a while to read, but it was worth it; and also, this includes three books. The long novels of Sir Conan Arthur Doyle age well and are intriguing. Sherlock Holmes, the master detective shows his stuff.

Okay, I honestly thought that his gift for deduction was exaggerated, but there’s an excellent example of it in The Valley of Fear. It hit me by surprise because you follow along, like Watson, and are equally astonished. That is until Holmes explains his reasoning and then it all becomes clear.

There are also some scenes that speak of the era with brutal honesty. One scene shows Watson reproaching Holmes while he is shooting up cocaine!

Excellent read.

(Note: this review addresses editor Leslie S. Klinger's essays, annotations, and appendices rather than Doyle's works. For my reviews of the individual Holmes novels, please see my separate entry for each particular book.)

I'll save the bulk of my comments for when I finish the short story volumes, but what will apply there will largely apply here as well. As a shepherd through the Holmes canon for a reader on their first trip, this volume provides a lot of very welcome background, some inane but ultimately harmless digressions based on the theory that Holmes and Watson were real, and... spoilers.

I'm happy to report that this disappointing trend seemed to become less of a problem with the two later books in this volume, but Klinger's annotations for both n  A Study in Scarletn and n  The Sign of the Fourn gave away the perpetrator's name long before Doyle mentioned it within the narrative. I suppose the fact that Doyle didn't design either book as a modern-style whodunnit (where the author allows the reader to solve the mystery for herself) somewhat mitigates that problem, but as I didn't understand that fact going in, it took me more than a little by surprise. The issue becomes even more glaring in the annotations for the later books, where Klinger seems to have already learned his lesson, and either disguises references within the annotations, or makes reference to later annotations that come after the secret gets revealed.

Still, many, many more of the annotations delivered valuable explanations of Victorian-era trivia and slang, and I find that they overall improved and deepened my appreciation for these books beyond what I might have experienced otherwise. The seasoned Holmes reader will savor this volume as a treat. For the Holmes newcomer... let's say that while I don't have any regrets, I lament that Klinger apparently too late considered a wider audience.

Det er lækker udgave at have i hånden, stor, tung, flot, men da jeg gik i gang med at læse den bed jeg mere mærke i ting jeg ville ønske var anderledes end ting jeg kunne lide. Noterne og illustrationerne er for forstyrrende og kunne med fordel samles på den højre side så at man altid havde originaltekst til venstre og ekstra-materiale til højre, i stedet er det lidt et hullet kludetæppe at sidde med.

En realidad, esta no es la edición que yo tengo, la que es mía tiene el ISBN:84-7530-396-X, que contiene las obras de: "Estudio en Escarlata" "El signo de los Cuatro" "El sabueso de los Baskerville" y "Memorias de Sherlock Holmes" el cuál no es una historia en sí, son varias recopilaciones de cuentos (el último cuento llamado "El problema final" me dejó con una especie de problema emocional, no podía creer que todo hubiera terminado)
¿Qué puedo decir? Había tenido las obras de Conan Doyle en mi estantería desde hace años, el libro que tengo le perteneció a mi papá y también a mi tío entonces ha ido de generación en generación, hace algunas semanas me atreví a abrirlo y leerlo, no me arrepiento de hacerlo.
Sherlock tiene una capacidad de deducción increíble, pasó a convertirse a mi personaje masculino favorito de toda la historia, los misterios son bien estructurados y cuando Holmes da a conocer tu teoría te das cuenta que se basó en cosas en sí sencillas que no se notan facilmente.

A superb edition of the classic crime novels. Not only do the stories themselves (mostly) hold up very well, changing a misleading impression one might have of Sherlock Holmes, but you can learn an awful lot just from the annotations.

If you are not well up on Victorian British English, you'll miss things when reading Sherlock Holmes. This book solves that problem - not just vagaries of the language, but obscure references to what were then famous happenings, common things/jobs/people that no longer exist (mudlarks, for instance) - everything you need to understand Doyle. One of the more entertaining things about the book, is that it's written as though Watson were a real person and Doyle his amanuensis. Pretty cool.

The pick for book club was actually just The Hound of the Baskervilles, but as I had the book from the library, I thought I'd read the other stories too. As stories go, they were great. You really can't go wrong with Sherlock Holmes for a good, quick mystery. I've had to rate this edition down a star though, because of the annotations. I couldn't ignore them (if there are words I must read them LOL) and I found them both illuminating and annoying. Sometimes the information was beneficial and actually improved my understanding of the story, but most of the time it did not. Much of it was arcane information on the history of some institution mentioned in the text, but none of the background information was even remotely relevant to the story. In addition, the editor is evidently a "Sherlockian", one of those people who like to pretend that Sherlock Holmes was a real person and these were real cases. Thus, most of the annotations persisted in pointless speculation as to where this or that location actually exists, what breed the Baskerville hound *really* was, and other such fantastical argument. So for the distraction from the stories, I'm only giving this 2 stars. Next time I want to read Holmes I'll get an edition without all the extraneous verbiage.

Beautiful edition. This never gets old.

This volume provides all four Sherlock Holmes novels with loads and loads of annotations that provide historical and literary context and definitions, plus some inconsistencies. I am new to Sherlock Holmes and enjoyed how the annotations helped me understand some things I otherwise wouldn't. I could not read all (indeed, most) of the annotations because that would take an incredible amount of time. Yes, the volume is also large and not easy to carry around in traditional book format. I'd say this is perfect for readers who are already Holmes fans. Readers like me, who are new to the stories, sometimes have to be careful to avoid annotations that are spoilers.

I've already read 3 of these novels, one recently, but i cannot wait to see what information may be contained in the annotations. (plus to read the Valley of Fear)