The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1903-1904)
My review:
The Empty House
The return of Sherlock Holmes from the dead and Reichenbach is a memorable event, and a fine sequel to the powerful “Final Problem.” Holmes does not detect in this story, but sets an effective man-trap for that tiger-hunting villain Colonel Sebastian Moran, using the murder of the Hon. Ronald Adair to solve his problem.
The Norwood Builder
An undoubted classic, in which Holmes at his most rational reasons from physical clues (including a red thumbmark, which, like Dr. Thorndyke, he knows to be false), in order to unmask a most surprising villain. The idea is so good Doyle repeated it in The Valley of Fear, and has been attempted by nearly every writer (hopefully with variations—e.g. John Rhode’s Death at Breakfast).
The Dancing Men
The famous case in which Holmes, who has, of course, written a monograph on secret writings, deciphers a particularly ingenious code of dancing men, and, when the case turns tragic, uses the good clue of the smell of smoke to prove the presence of a third party: a gangster from America.
The Solitary Cyclist
An entertaining melodrama marred by the fact that Holmes does nothing to discover the identity of the man following Violet Smith on her bicycle in Surrey except send Watson to the locale, achieving no result, and punch up the villain, while failing to spot the very obvious significance of the necktie; rather, he allows the girl to be kidnapped and married.
The Priory School
One of the few Holmes cases to take place in the twentieth century, this classic tells of the kidnapping of the son of the Duke of Holdernesse, and of Holmes’ superb following of bicycle tracks in order to reconstruct the crime. The solution involves pathological sibling rivalry à la Sussex Vampire.
Black Peter
A good tale, in which Holmes reasons from plentiful physical clues to find the type of man who stuck a harpoon through the villainous Captain Peter Carey of Woodman’s Lee, the motive for which crime lies on the Norwegian Sea.
Charles Augustus Milverton
Although without any benefit of detection, this classic shows Holmes to be as much of a chivalrous knight errant as Sir Nigel as he defends the honour of fair ladies (not necessarily maidens!) from the fiendish C.A.M., who is murdered before the eyes of Holmes and Watson.
The Six Napoleons
The problem here is to discover why a maniac should commit burglary and murder in order to smash busts of Napoleon. The villain’s identity is known quite early on, but there is still plenty of detective interest in a tense and sinister tale, which is ruined neither by the Mafiosi nor by the Black Pearl of the Borgias.
The Three Students
A very minor tale—Holmes’ task is to discover which of three students is a cheat, a problem hardly worthy of his powers. Some interesting clues, however.
The Golden Pince-nez
The “golden pince-nez” is the clue which enables Holmes to draw up a picture of the woman who committed the motiveless murder of the secretary, an argument proved by the cigarettes of the victim’s employee.
The Missing Three-quarter
Like Holmes, “football does not come within my horizon,” so I am allergic to this tale of a missing “three-quarter,” whatever such an appellation may designate, and by the reams of gibberish spouted by the client. The end, even for such a dull tale, is disappointing. With "The Yellow Face," the worst until The Casebook.
The Abbey Grange
A tale that shows Holmes’ powers of observation at their keenest: although Sir Eustace Brackenstall’s wife and maid claim that he was murdered by burglars, the lie is given to their story by a bell-rope and three glasses of wine. Holmes is brilliant, and the ending, where justice is poetic rather than legal, is unusual.
The Second Stain
“The most important international case which [Holmes] has ever been called upon to handle” is a classic, demonstrating both Holmes’ brilliance and chivalry, and the plot, involving a missing letter from a foreign potentate which could spark off W.W.I, is a classic of its kind.