 | The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes | Some of the short stories, including The Adventure of the Speckled Band (its a snake) and the several (it seems like anyway) where a nasty old bloke tries to spoil the marriage of one his relatives in order not to lose the inheritance... | He definitely seems to be repeating plots a bit here. And I'm sure that in one or two of the stories Holmes doesn't actually do or solve or deduce anything - they just watch a series of interesting events unfold in front of them. Still, easy enough reading. Wikipedia says this is the first set of short stories. |
