The Valley of Fear

Author: Arthur Conan Doyle

Format: Digital (ty Project Gutenberg)

Finishing out the Holmes novels, The Valley of Fear is a return to form (derogatory). The novel begins with a pretty standard murder case brought to Holmes which involves a country aristocrat, Douglas, being murdered in a castle with a moat and raised drawbridge. After your standard round of Holmes shenanigans, it eventually turns out that (spoiler?) the man was not actually murdered, but instead was pursued by some mysterious assailant; he kills his attacker and realized he had the chance to fake his own death. At this point, the novel then completely swerves into Douglas’s backstory and why he had so many mysterious enemies. To make a long story short, Douglas was a Pinkerton agent who had infiltrated a corrupt Freemason lodge/union/gang combo in the US and eventually revealed himself and prosecuted the gang. The reveal that all along, the sudden new protagonist that the narrative was following was a double cover agent was reasonably well executed, but the backstory was just like, not interesting enough at all to feel like it deserved an entire half of the novel (the first half would have made like a totally fine short story case on its own….). Anyway feels like Doyle really doesn’t know how to write a full length novel minus getting lucky with the Hound of the Baskervilles that one time.