The Hound of the Baskervilles: Another Adventure of Sherlock Holmes (Oxford World's Classics)

I absolutely loved this story. Dartmoor is a great setting for a murder mystery. The descriptions of strange happenings on foggy days and dark nights really get the imagination flowing. The Oxford Classics version has many explanatory notes. On the whole, these are just not required. For example, do we really need to be told that a "wicket-gate" is a "small gate", that a "wire" is a "telegram" or that Waterloo Station is one of London's major railway stations? Worse than this though, the explanatory notes contain SPOILERS. The note relating to page 50 tells you who the perpetrator is! Another note tells you who the strange man living on the moor is. Another note tells you that a certain character is alive at the end of the story. This ruins a certain other piece of the story. I had last read the Hound probably 35 years ago. I had forgotten who did it! The notes spoilt my enjoyment of the book - don't read them!

The hound is, in my view, the best of the Holmes stories. And that is saying something. They are all great. The BBC series staring Jeremy Brett is the truest to the story and a worthwhile companion to the novel.

Amazon lumps everything together, so you see reviews about the book rather than the Stephen Fry CD reading. Fry does a very good job, and seldom mixes his accents when speaking in the American accent of Henry Baskerville and then switching back to Dr. Watson. One thing about all these Fry cds is that whether MP3 or regular cds the track listings is a bit weak. Here are the listings for HOUND Chapter 1: Mr Sherlock Holmes (CD 1: tracks 1-8) Chapter 2: The Curse of the Baskervilles (CD 1: tracks 9-12) Chapter 3: The Problem (CD 1: tracks 13-22) Chapter 4: Sir Henry Baskerville (CD 2: tracks 1-10) Chapter 5: Three Broken Threads (CD 2: tracks 11-18) Chapter 6: Baskerville Hall (CD 2: tracks 19-27) Chapter 7: The Stapletons of Merripit House (CD 3: tracks 1-10) Chapter 8: First Report of Dr. Watson (CD 3: tracks 11-16) Chapter 9: The Light Upon the Moor [2nd Report of Dr. Watson] (CD 3: tracks 17-24) (CD 4: tracks 1-7) Chapter 10: Extract from Diary of Dr. Watson (CD 4: tracks 8-14) Chapter 11: The Man on the Tor (CD 4: tracks 15-23) Chapter 12: Death on the Moor (CD 5: tracks 1-9) Chapter 13: Fixing the Nets (CD 5: tracks 10-19) Chapter 14: The Hound of the Baskervilles (CD 6: tracks 1-10) Chapter 15: A Retrospection (CD 6: tracks 11-19)

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson at their finest. It has great character development and a plot that will keep you guessing. I personally like the macabre of the story; you get an eerie feeling while read the book that peaks your interest about the hound.

I read this as a kid and the creepiness of the legendary hellhound made quite an impression. I decided to re-read it when I found out it was set in Devon, which has special associations for me. Fortunately, there is a lot of description of the Devon moors by Dr. Watson (a tad bit unrealistically, it must be admitted, in his letters to Holmes and in his diary) and it contributes to the brooding mood of the story. The book is, of course, well-written, but what I noticed was that it's when Sherlock Holmes is present that the pages turn the fastest. Doyle does a terrific job of creating an unforgettable, quirky character through mostly dialogue. Holmes is often a bit of a buffoon, really, who can't let an opportunity go by to show his genius. At the end of the book, when he could have gracefully allowed Dr. Watson to take all the credit for having found out, entirely on his own, a vital piece of information, Holmes says: "This also you cleared up in a very effective way, though I had already come to the same conclusions from my own observations." He has to drive it home that nothing escapes his brilliant investigative skills. As if Watson didn't already know that. What would it have hurt to have allowed Watson to think he had contributed something necessary? Somehow, despite this selfish boorishness, you still find Holmes endearing. Maybe that's because it hints at a chink in his armor, an underlying need to be seen as perfect in this area of his life. A hint of insecurity in such a "masterful" man, as Watson calls him, is appealing. One part of the book made me laugh, and not in a good way. The escaped convict, a vicious and diabolical murderer--who Dr. Watson is at pains to point out is unrepentant and unredeemable and likely to commit more murders if he isn't apprehended--is allowed to go free for the sake of one weeping woman's feelings about what he'd been like as a child. But here's the truly awful part. He's only allowed to go free if he leaves England and takes his murderous ways to South America. Obviously, S.American lives cannot compare in value to English lives, so it makes perfect sense to send a murderer off to that distant land. What a happy outcome for all involved! They congratulate themselves on this intelligent solution. Another thing that struck me as I read was how many of Agatha Christie's mysteries (particularly her Poirot stories) had elements taken from this one Doyle mystery. I began to understand why she was so modest about the success of her books and didn't like to be praised for them. I imagine she felt the credit often went to Doyle. Though, in fact, her own writing has stood the test of time so whatever she owed to him for plot points , she certainly deserved the credit for her own creations. I would have given this classic five stars except for the two last paragraphs in the book, whic...