Name: The Five Orange Pips and Other Cases
ISBN: 9780141199719

Arthur Conan Doyle

Sherlock Holmes, scourge of criminals everywhere, whether they be lurking in London's foggy backstreets or plotting behind the walls of an idyllic country mansion, and his faithful colleague Dr Watson, solve these breathtaking and perplexing mysteries.

The Five Orange Pips and Other Cases

Katharina Hoffmann

Doyle‘s stories were essential in paving the way for the genre of crime fiction and murder mysteries. His way of pairing up two very different characters (tall-small, clever-dumb, sarcastic-mild, thin-fat) has been copied hundreds of times and has become a quintessential trope for TV-series, movies and books dealing with detective/ police duos or teams.

This was my first time reading Doyle‘s stories in their original language. Of course, one is acquainted with them; through hear-say and movies or audiobooks. But reading them was quite different.
Not only to John Watson but to the readers themselves does Sherlock Holmes seem like a magician, being able to reconstruct even the most abstruse cases and incidents, that is until he explains how, by the use of his mind and simple logic, he has managed to solve yet another mystery.

Doyle‘s way of constructing the adventures and cases is witty and always left me yearning for the solution I myself could not seem to work out.
Yet what I could not help but notice his stance on people of colour and women. In some of his stories his misogynist attitudes are not only brought forward by Sherlock Holmes himself (who is known to have less respect for the "weaker sex" than for men), but through the way the stories are told and in one case the "weaker constitution of the female sex" is used as an evidential fact in support of the solution of a case.



The Sherlock Holmes stories are without any doubt classics and really fun to read. They provide their readers with entertaining, clever and mysterious stories and are thus perfect to forget about reality and the rest of the world. Yet, it is important to keep in mind that they are not perfect or inclusive (apart from some exceptions) and therefore should not be glorified as such.

Jade Flynn

Sherlock Holmes works a lot better in short story form. I'm listening to the Stephen Fry audio books alongside reading. Makes for a truly unique experience. 

Favourites -  The Adventure of the Final Problem, A Scandal in Bohemia, The Adventure of the Speckled Band, The Musgrave Ritual.

The Five Orange Pips and Other Cases

Reviews

Highlights