Receive The Sign Of The Four [Literature Classics Series] (Annotated) Author Arthur Conan Doyle Offered As Audio Books

secret shared by four convicts and two prison guards, a daughter in search of her missing father, a strange gift of a single pearl received every year, a fabulous treasure buried in the ancient Agra Fort in India, an eccentric detective being consulted to solve a deadly puzzle.
All these events are set against the turbulent backdrop of the Great Indian Mutiny ofin the second Sherlock Holmes novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of the Four.


Mary Morstan, a lovely young woman, comes to the Baker Street lodgings shared by Holmes and Dr Watson, Her mother died when she was very little and her father, an army Captain stationed in India, sent the child back to England to live in a boarding house.
She had never seen her father, but ten years earlier, when she was seventeen she received a letter from him saying he had retired, was on his way home and asking her to meet him at the Langham Hotel in London.
However, at the Langham, she discovers that her father stepped out the previous evening and never returned, Since then, every year, on her birthday she has been receiving a present from an anonymous giver, It is a very expensive, lustrous, single pearl, And now, she has received a mysterious letter asking her to come to the Lyceum Theater at seven in the evening, bringing two friends with her, For Sherlock Holmes, this is an enigma that's simply crying out to be solved!

Added to this are masterly touches that provide more insights into Holmes' unconventional persona.
His uncanny ways of tracking through sight, sound and smell, his knowledge of diverse subjects and his fondness for obscure quotations in foreign languages are all aspects that went into the creation of the immortal detective.


Following the publication of The Sign of the Four, Doyle began concentrating on the short story format featuring Holmes and Watson, This met with immediate success and led to a revived interest in the novels and the rest, as they say, became literary history,

The Sign of the Four has been adapted extensively on stage, screen, TV and radio, In fact, more than eighteen different film versions have been made since, marking a century of perennial interest in the maverick sleuth and his faithful assistant!"
Definitely enjoyable but feels more dated than the other Sherlock Holmes novels Ive read
”Thank God!” I ejaculated from my very heart.


Conceived at a dinner with sitelinkOscar Wilde present, in the Langham hotel that is mentioned in the book, I expected quite a lot of this novel.
The book starts off edgy enough, with Holmes injecting cocaine due to boredom and casually unpacking Watsons brother misfortunes, Quickly a Miss Morstan, being all perfect, fetching her clues from her bag as needed, turns up at Baker Street,

Compared to sitelinkThe Hound of the Baskervilles or sitelinkA Study in Scarlet I felt Holmes didnt need to do as much in sitelinkThe Sign of Four, and there were hardly any sidetracks.
Also the treatment of women ”Woman are never to be entirely trusted, not the best of them, ” and Indians black fiends felt much more dated, or at least more obvious, than in those other two novels,

I mean, we have a dark dwarf with a poisoned dart weapon who of course has a chapter on its demise while all caucasians survive, which is hardly compensated by a wild river chase.

Also I wondered how someone threw something in the river and shoveled coals at the same time
Still a quick and entertaining read so I round my .
stars up anyways, also due to Watson being all lovey dovey, Despite being a huge crime/mystery reader, Ive never been a big fan of the Sherlock Holmes stories, After recently reading A Study in Scarlet and now The Sign of Four, I realize that its not me to blame, Its Holmes. Hes just too much of an obnoxious showoff for me to like, Add in some Victorianera English arrogance, and I feel like flipping off any Holmes novel I see on the shelf when browsing a mystery section in a bookstore.


Holmes and his fulltime professional kissass Watson get hired by a young lady who has been receiving expensive pearls anonymously and now has a mysterious request to meet someone regarding the jewels.
Accompanying the woman, Holmes and Watson soon get wrapped up in murder involving a wooden legged man, a savage cannibal and a hidden treasure, Oh, and Watson stops heaping compliments on Holmes long enough to fall head over heels for the girl,

I dont need a likeable main character to enjoy a story, In fact, someone who is brilliant but arrogant and abrasive can be a very interesting if done right, See Lisbeth Salander in The sitelinkGirl With the Dragon Tattoo for a recent example, Im a little surprised at how much I found myself disliking Holmes, Its not like I didnt know he was an aloof logic junkie,

But what bugs me about him is the whole attitude he has about claiming that his methods are simplicity itself while still doing everything he can to milk every moment and make everyone marvel at his amazing talents.
He cant let Watson go to the post office without turning it into a showcase for his deductive reasoning, but once Holmes has the doctor gushing about his brilliance, he just coldly dismisses it as simple logic.
Asshole.

I did enjoy the fact that this is the one that established the idea that Holmes would inject a liquid form of cocaine into his veins when he got bored and reaches for the syringe the second the case is over.
It made him a little more human and relatable, And Watson shows his cutting edge medical skills by cautioning Holmes that the coke might be unhealthy, Maybe even habit forming. That Watson is a helluva doctor, Tsk, Tsk, Tsk, . . apparently thats NOT tobacco Sherlock Holmes is smoking,
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You have to love the daring Sir Arthur displayed in this novel visàvis his iconic detective.
How many writers would have the chutzpah to risk tarnishing the mystique of their signature creation by depicting him shooting cocaine as a cure for boredom

Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantelpiece and his hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case.
With his long, white, nervous fingers he adjusted the delicate needle, and rolled back his left shirtcuff, For some little time his eyes rested thoughtfully upon the sinewy forearm and wrist all dotted and scarred with innumerable puncturemarks, Finally, he thrust the sharp point home, pressed down the tiny piston, and sank back into the velvetlined armchair with a long sigh of satisfaction,

Now that is what I call an opening paragraph, Well played, Mr. Doyle.

Im a big fan of the Sherlock Holmes stories, and one of my favorite aspects of the stories, odd as it might sound, is how thoroughly unlikable Holmes is.
Lets face it, the man is an asshole, Hes cold, callous, arrogant, misanthropic, consumed with his own needs, and sociopathic in his lack of empathy for others, If it were not for his unparalleled gifts for observation and deduction, there would be nothing to recommend him as a person,

And that is precisely what makes him so interesting and so much fun to read about, He comes across as more antihero than hero, despite the fact that he is not generally classified as such, I would argue that he certainly fits under that label, especially now

that we can add junkie to his list of flaws, Incidentally, suddenly casting Robert Downey, Jr, in the role of Holmes makes a whole lot more sense,
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Just kidding,

Anyway, back to the story

In addition to introducing readers to the monkey on Sherlocks back, this novels also noteworthy for being the first appearance of Mary Marston, the beautiful young woman who would go on to be Mr.
Watson's beard wife, Mary calls on Holmes and entices him out of his melancholy with the promise of a challenging mystery involving the strange disappearance of her father many years before.
Brightened by the prospect of being able to employ his prodigious mental faculties, Holmes accepts, . . and the game is, once more, afoot,

What ensues is a complex, multilayered plot that, while not my favorite of the Holmes mysteries, was solid enough to keep my interest, Starting with nothing but a few flimsy clues, a letter from an anonymous benefactor, and a story with large chunks in it, Holmes proceeds to works his usual magic and mesmerizes all concerned with a dazzling display of crimesolving.


Of course.

Along the way, Doyle weaves into the narrative an eclectic assortment of supporting players for Holmes and Watson encounter, including:

a woodenlegged villain,
a killer with baby feet,
a group of criminal with a secret pact,
a pair of corrupt prison guards,
the Baker Street Irregulars,
aboriginal tribesmen with bad attitudes, and
a whole host of dead bodies.


Overall, a solid Holmes mystery with some classic moments of Sherlockian lore, including the first utterance of the famous truism, "when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
” In comparison to the other two Holmes novels I've read, I didnt like this quite as much as sitelinkThe Valley of Fear or sitelinkA Study in Scarlet.
The main reason for this is simply that I found the mysteries in the former books more appealing, Still, there is a lot to like here and Holmes manages to to unload quite a few notable quotables,

He smiled gently, It is of the first importance, he said, not to allow your judgment to be biased by personal qualities, A client is to me a mere unit, a factor in a problem, The emotional qualities are antagonistic to clear reasoning, I assure you that the most winning woman I ever knew was hanged for poisoning three little children for their insurancemoney, and the most repellant man of my acquaintance is a philanthropist who has spent nearly a quarter of a million upon the London poor.

As I wrap this up, I want to give a final kudo to Doyle for the very end of the novel, In my opinion, it could not have been written better and I almost bumped the whole novel up tobased on it alone, Even though it doesnt give away any plot information, I'm still going to hide it behind a spoiler tag since it includes the final lines of the novel.

The division seems rather unfair, I remarked, You have done all the work in this business, I get a wife out of it, gets the credit, pray what remains for you
For me, said Sherlock Holmes, there still remains the cocainebottle, And he stretched his long white hand up for it,

In a wordPerfect,

.stars. Recommended. .