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Tarma

This is my least favorite of the Sherlock Holmes stories, and it's a shame, because it's the beginning of the immortal duo. It would have been nice to see a story focused on the pair, but unfortunately Doyle seems to enjoy intruding on his longer Holmes stories with a completely different story in order to give us the back story of the murderer. This worked okay with Valley of Fear, in which I at least was given the story of a murderer that I liked, but this murderer - good heavens, we are given literally nothing to latch on to here. The story goes on and on about two other characters, who are then both whisked out of the story within pages of each other and never appear again, while the murderer is left to follow his course - with no more background or character given to him than before. Having said that, I still like to re-read it from time to time (and *very* hastily skim the backstory bits) in order to relive the first meeting of Holmes and Watson.