Look at this absolutely ridiculous cover! And man!
Anyway, this is the fourth and final Sherlock Holmes novel and it’s much too like the others for its own good. It would be one thing if this was purely structural, but it’s not. In this novel Holmes is brought on to a case of a home invasion and self-defense murder….just a man getting shot in the face with a shotgun. And as the crime and investigation unfolds, we are treated to a very long section in which the interested party tells us about American intrigue! Wherein in a small town in Pennsylvania, a coal-mining town, a labor union and a crime syndicate and a free mason like group and the local mine are all in a push and pull for control. Enter our lead man McMurdo, an Irishman from Chicago who joins the secret society and helps to ferret out a mole. And as it happens, there’s more than meets the eye!
So yes, this novel has almost exactly the same plot and structure as A Study in Scarlet and that’s really frustrating for two significant reasons. One, there’s only four Holmes novels, and the stories always prove to be better unfortunately because there’s a real chance for Holmes to stretch his legs out. But Doyle tends to fall into this habit of taking far away from the mystery itself.
And two, The Hound of the Baskervilles is SOOOOO good and EXACTLY what a Sherlock Holmes novel can be, that it sucks that these others are less good.
(Photo: https://www.amazon.com/Valley-Fear-Sherlock-Holmes/dp/085768406X/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=valley+of+fear&qid=1557674966&s=gateway&sr=8-4)