The Valley of Fear Annotated Canon of Sherlock Holmes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Books
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*This Book is annotated (it contains a detailed biography of the author). *An active Table of Contents has been added by the publisher for a better customer experience. *This book has been checked and corrected for spelling errors. The Valley of Fear is the fourth and final Sherlock Holmes novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It is loosely based on the Molly Maguires and Pinkerton agent James McParland. The story was first published in the Strand Magazine between September 1914 and May 1915. The first book edition was copyrighted in 1914, and it was first published by George H. Doran Company in New York on 27 February 1915. The novel starts with Sherlock Holmes receiving a cipher message from Fred Porlock (pseudonym), an agent of Professor Moriarty. After Porlock sends the message, however, he changes his mind for fear of Moriarty's discovering that he is a traitor. He decides not to send the key to the cipher, but he sends Holmes a note telling of this decision. From the cipher message and the second note, Holmes is able to deduce that it is a book-cipher and that the book used for the encryption is a common book, large (with at least 534 pages), printed in two columns per page, and standardized. An almanac fits these conditions exactly. Holmes tries the latest edition of Whitaker's Almanac, which he had only received a few days earlier, and fails; he then tries the previous edition. With this almanac, Holmes is able to successfully decipher the message as a warning that "some devilry is intended against one Douglas", a country gentleman residing at Birlstone House. Some minutes later, Inspector Macdonald arrives at Baker Street with news that a Mr. John Douglas of Birlstone Manor House, Birlstone, Sussex, has been murdered. Holmes tells MacDonald of Porlock's warning, suggesting Moriarty's involvement. However, MacDonald doesn't fully believe that the educated and well respected Moriarty is a criminal. Holmes, Watson, and MacDonald travel to Birlstone House, an ancient moated manor house, to investigate the crime.
The Valley of Fear Annotated Canon of Sherlock Holmes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Books
This is actually one of the better Sherlock Holmes books, as far as I'm concerned, because while reading it, I was very much reminded of just how wonderfully well written and incredibly inventive Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's very first story featuring the famous detective really was. Doyle's 'The Valley of Fear' isn't quite the sterling caliber of the seminal 'A Study in Scarlet,' of course, but it comes awfully close, because, in a similar fashion to the earlier work, the story is divided into two distinctly different parts.Surprisingly enough, the latter portion of the book hardly features the main characters, Holmes and Watson, at all! Even more startling is the fact that the solution of the crime is actually presented at the end of the first half of the book! What's most stunning and truly laudable of all, is that the second half, which is primarily a backstory, manages to be even much, much more of a page turner than the first part. By my way of thinking, that's superb storytelling, no matter how you slice it.
I've seen some reviewers deride this book as being of somewhat lesser quality than other volumes in Doyle's Sherlock Holmes collection, but DON'T YOU BELIEVE IT! The Valley of Fear may not be particularly engaging at first, but if you stick with it, the book is more than well worth reading.
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The Valley of Fear Annotated Canon of Sherlock Holmes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Books Reviews
This is a story inside a story setting the stage for Holmes and his archnemesis. There's a very nice plot twist.
I don't enjoy it because it's about a corrupt secret society criminal organization that controlled a small town in the mid west in the wild west days. So it's a little too dark and stark for me. Esp when you think that this type of activity still exists somewhere in the world. So don't recommend.
In the first part of the book, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson arrive at a manor house to investigate the murder of the man of the house. Sherlock focuses on a single strange clue in the room – a single barbell missing its partner. He solves the mystery, but not why it happened. That backstory is told in the second part when the man of the house lived in America and got mixed up in a gang posing as a respectable men’s society.
The way the story was told in the two parts is very effective. The first part is engaging and interesting throughout. The second part is slow-moving for about half of it. The two parts are of equal length so sometimes I felt like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had just added needlessly to the second part to make is as long as the first. Nevertheless, it’s a good mystery and I only guessed the answers just a page or two before my guesses were revealed to be correct. I recommend reading The Valley of Fear.
Absolutely perhaps the most entertaining Sherlock Holmes novel in my opinion. Faster paced than The Hound of the Baskervilles, more character depth than A Study in Scarlet, and as much a page-turner as The Sign of Four. For the Holmes purist, I think there is less deductive reasoning than some of the other stories, however the story itself appears more cohesive in some ways. I know I often put aside The Hound because it got a bit ponderous at times but TVoF kept my attention.
The Sherlock Holmes canon includes a total of 60 stories from the original author, AC Doyle. Of the 60, only four were full novels including this one. The rest are short stories published in five books, totaling 9 books. The first two stories penned by Doyle were the novels, Study in Scarlet (where Holmes and Watson first meet), and A Sign of the Four (which includes Watson meeting his wife). This is followed by short stories in book 3, the Adventures of SH. Ideally the stories are best read in order, but not critical. Unlike the rest of the canon, the two novels, Hound of the Baskervilles and Valley of Fear, can be read at any time - especially since they each defy the chronology. Hound was written about 8 years after the short story, The Final Solution, when Holmes died in a mortal struggle with the Napoleon of crime, Professor Moriarty, who was also killed. (But, Holmes doesn't die and is brought back, very cleverly and very credibly, 10 years later, in the story, The Empty House, written 2 years after Hound. Anyway, 10 years after all that Doyle wrote, The Valley of Fear - which is one of two stories that include Prof Moriarty - this is not a spoiler to the story and the Prof is only talked about in present tense. I guess my point is, this novel, and Hound of the Baskervilles can be read at any time whereas everything else is slightly better if read in order. Okay, enough of the background on the canon.
Valley of Fear is simply a great read with wonderful twists at the end that the reader will not likely see coming. I would put Valley and Hound as the two best novels, with Hound perhaps slightly better, but better is all about taste and preference. Anyway, this novel is broken down into two main parts, Part 1 is the Murder mystery, who killed...? Part 2 is a backstory, about 20 years earlier and has nothing to do with Sherlock Holmes. The part 2 story provides the motivation for the murder mystery in part 1. This format is the same as found in the first two novels but the backstory here is probably the best of the three - Doyle now has almost 30 years of writing experience. There is a very short part 3, the Epilogue which brings us back to Baker Street for a final update.
The Valley of Fear part 1 mystery the reader gets most of the clues the same time as Holmes does and is more or less free to try to figure things out himself but as I mentioned, there are twists and nothing in Valley of Fear is what it seems!!!! One noticeable difference for myself, who has now read 7 of the 9 books, and possibly fellow Sherlockians, is that the deep friendship between Holmes and Watson is just not there. The first page was almost disturbing in that regard. Watson is more of an object then a subject to Holmes, more like the modern adaptations. It's just something that jumped out at me since other than the Sherlock Holmes The Complete Granada Television Series series, which is extremely faithful to the original stories, Holmes and Watson have a deep personal friendship and respect. Watson is a friend, gentlemen, medic, soldier, and chronicler - not the bumbling sidekick of the Basil Rathbone movies. Anyway, the story, both part 1 and 2, are excellent and much better than I expected. Highly recommended.
This is actually one of the better Sherlock Holmes books, as far as I'm concerned, because while reading it, I was very much reminded of just how wonderfully well written and incredibly inventive Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's very first story featuring the famous detective really was. Doyle's 'The Valley of Fear' isn't quite the sterling caliber of the seminal 'A Study in Scarlet,' of course, but it comes awfully close, because, in a similar fashion to the earlier work, the story is divided into two distinctly different parts.
Surprisingly enough, the latter portion of the book hardly features the main characters, Holmes and Watson, at all! Even more startling is the fact that the solution of the crime is actually presented at the end of the first half of the book! What's most stunning and truly laudable of all, is that the second half, which is primarily a backstory, manages to be even much, much more of a page turner than the first part. By my way of thinking, that's superb storytelling, no matter how you slice it.
I've seen some reviewers deride this book as being of somewhat lesser quality than other volumes in Doyle's Sherlock Holmes collection, but DON'T YOU BELIEVE IT! The Valley of Fear may not be particularly engaging at first, but if you stick with it, the book is more than well worth reading.
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