Book review
On reading David Sinclair’s brilliant introduction to this classic Everyman edition which I had the fortune of being gifted by a very good friend, I find myself realising even more convincingly what an accomplishment this meant for Arthur Conan Doyle, the man who created arguably the most iconoclast detective in all fiction. By the time when ‘The Hound Of Baskervilles’ was eventually thought and written, Sherlock Holmes had been thought by all his admirers to have died or disappeared, for once and for all. Indeed, Doyle, who could never let go of his greatest creation even till his final years, was about to make his shrewd, sharp-eyed, even more sharp-witted sleuth appear with truly grand style but surely, nobody expected him to write perhaps not only the greatest and most perfectly crafted novel starring Holmes but also one of the best thrillers ever written in the history of literature.
And that is the highest praise that I can award this novel, even to compensate the fact that once, in my boyhood, I had a dog-eared, pocket-sized adaptation with black ink illustrations – the calm, intelligent portrait of Holmes in his deer-stalker cap and with a majestic pipe in his mouth impressed me so much that I have often fancied smoking a pipe with the same silken elegance myself – and yet, perhaps, for some reason or the other, I ended up missing out on it completely. How reassuring it is to discover at ripe adulthood that there is still time to rediscover books one loved or wanted to admire in boyhood. Reading ‘The Hound Of The Baskervilles’ gave me the same feeling of being mesmerised, intrigued, enthralled, even eerily scared and unsettled, that I could never have experienced by reading its adapted version back in childhood. For it might not seem to many people but Conan Doyle was one of our most skilled, dexterous and agile storytellers, a writer gifted with such economy that this twisting and turning story, even as told through first-person accounts, reports and even diary entries, hurtles in the speed of a steam engine but also a writer blessed with such a vivid flair for atmosphere and characterisation that both actions and words and scenes of dread and suspense are etched indelibly in the mind.
I won’t reveal much about the story because I leave it to those who have not read it yet to discover each twist and turn in the tale first-hand and be completely startled, stunned, awe-struck and even terrified by what follows. There is indeed a hound, or what seems to be the legend of one running in the doomed family of the Baskervilles and Holmes, a rationalist but also not completely skeptical of the mystical, finds himself confronted with not only a problem that truly tries his and his aide Watson’s wits but also with what seems like a contest between hard logic and the indecipherable mystery of the supernatural. Who or what will triumph? Or will the sleuth whose eyes never miss even the most seemingly irrelevant details, be able to tie all loose knots skillfully or not?
These are all fascinating situations that one will have to discover for oneself. But I will surely promise the reader that he or she will be plunged very soon into the very thick of the mystery, even more so this time than in any other story starring Holmes. This is because of Doyle’s ingenious decision to keep Holmes out of most of the narrative action for a good part of the book and instead take us deeper into the mystery and its puzzling predicament through the eyes of Watson himself. The fact that Watson is entrusted the difficult task of investigating clues, casting suspicions and trying to make some sense of it all heightens the tension superbly and as the story even gets dramatically intense by taking him out in the foggy, desolate moor at night, with the lurking danger of the unimaginable beast somewhere in the shadows and the mist, we are excited and superbly unsettled by Doyle’s almost poetic but never purple description of this simmering backdrop.
The story, as said before, moves ahead at a relentless speed, each chapter offering ingenious, audacious surprises that can shock you and make you gasp and even as there is a suitably satisfying conclusion awaiting you all, Doyle refuses to let the mystery dissolve so easily into the quagmire of the moor. Intense, intelligent, cunningly wrought and skilfully orchestrated, ‘The Hound Of The Baskervilles’ is indeed an unforgettable, almost haunting reading experience.
- Goodreads rating – 4.13
- REVIEW – Zoeb