But these cases showed up the main story-arc. Whilst these mini-cases are clearly lifted directly from Arthur Conan Doyle short stories and demonstrate Sherlock Holmes’ impossibly quick powers of deduction and reason, the frankly ridiculous story involving Sherlock’s sister(?!?) Eurus made you realise that whilst Mark Gatis is an accomplished writer and a Holmes fan, he is no Conan Doyle.

If Sherlock returns for a new series, and I do hope it does, then I really would like it to return with maybe 6 hour-long episodes that stuck more closely to the Arthur Conan Doyle stories whilst bringing them up to date in the 21st century. Remember back to the very first episode A Study in Pink that was lifted directly from A Study in Scarlet! That’s the kind of thing we need.

#1HappyYear Day 354b: Its not often that we finish the Sunday roast in time to have a sit down and read and listen to music before watching something on tele (in this case #Sherlock) #100HappyDays

This is my second Sherlock Holmes adventure that I have read, and coincidentally one of only four full-length novels that he wrote. I also have jumped from the first to the last story…

If I was rating this story just on Part One, then it would have been starkly different. The story was immediate and the characters engaging, and Holmes’ deductions brilliant. But there then follows a long second half of the book that I plodded through out of duty, all the time thinking that I had read something similar to this before.

And I think I had. It’s not long since I read The Study In Scarlett, and for me this whole story was a revisting, if not reworking, of that story. A murder takes place in England, that it turns out is a revenge attack for murders that took place years ago in America.

A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle

I’ve always had it in the back of my mind to read some Sherlock Holmes. I never have until now, in part because I’ve imagined it to be quite a slow, difficult read. When the new television adaptations which transfers the Arthur Conan Doyle original stories to the modern day arrived on our screen I determined that I must go back to the originals…I’ve finally got around to it, with this the first Sherlock adventure, and I am sorry that it’s taken so long. The stories are very easy to read, and almost modern in their style. Or at least that is so for Part One of A Study in Scarlet when the action revolves around Sherlock, John Watson, Inspector Lestrade, the murders and the mystery that surrounds the inscription in blood of ‘Rache’ to the walls.

Part Two of the book decamps with out so much as a warning to what transpires to be a flashback to Utah, but it is a story that confuses me to the point of wondering if it was a completely separate story. At the end it all comes together in a brilliantly Sherlockian way – as you would expect.