I first went on a Sherlock Holmes bender when I was in middle grade – I was twelve or thereabouts. The national TV had ran a cycle of old Basil Rathbone movies, and I checked out the Holmes stories in the school library. I was by then a solid science fiction reader, but as a reformed mystery fan, I enjoyed Conan Doyle’s stories a lot. I came back to them later, in high school, and I have been a sui generis Sherlockian ever since.

This morning, the postman delivered a paperback copy of The Best of Sherlock Holmes, a selection that includes the 12 stories that Conan Doyle himself had singled out as his favorites, plus other eight chosen by editor, critic and mystery writer David Stuart Davies. Published by Wordsworth Classics and sold for two bucks and a half, this 460-pages book is the perfect thing for anyone in need to refresh the basics, and whose complete Sherlock Holmes is buried somewhere in a box in the attic.
At the tail of the long Sherlockian winter I have been through, in the next few weeks I’ll have work to do on Holmes, and this selection is just what the doctor (Watson, of course) ordered.

And in the meantime it’s been pointed out to me that Conan Doyle’s prose might be off-putting for a teenager. It’s over a century old, and not so easy.
Which, given my experiences, left me somewhat baffled.